Theorising community rage for decolonial action

Abstract

Rage is under-theorised in South Africa. This absence is more pronounced in psychological scholarship. This is a remarkable oversight since we have gained infamy as the world’s epicentre of protest action. In this article, I read the landscape of scholarly production to conduct an analysis of how community rage and protests are made sense of. The analysis focuses on work from the past decade as it has been reported that this period has witnessed the greatest intensity of protest action within the post-apartheid period. I contend that protests are a form of community rage at sedimented oppressions. I demonstrate that the expression of community rage provides us the opportunity to work towards our collective decolonisation. In this analysis, I offer that affective meaning making in the theorisation of rage can craft a scholarship that enables praxis towards decolonial action.

Participation in (non)violent protests and associated psychosocial factors: sociodemographic status, civic engagement, and perceptions of government’s performance

“…The salience of ‘race’ (see also Bohler-Muller et al, 2017; Lavery, 2012) in (non)violent protests is unsurprising; in South Africa, the majority of Black population continues to experience high levels of poverty, unemployment, and various forms of socioeconomic inequality. Assuming ‘race’ as a proxy for socioeconomic disadvantage, our results may be interpreted to suggest the poor who are unified around shared grievances and ensconced within networks that offer organisational skills and catalysts for collective mobilisation engage in (non)violent protests (see Canham, 2018; Runciman, 2017; Von Holdt et al, 2011). The poor may engage in (non)violent protests in a context that is marked by weak institutional arrangements and inadequate institutional mechanisms to respond to their demands for participatory democracy and basic municipal, health, and social services (see Alexander, 2010; Von Holdt et al, 2011).…”

“…This suggests that engagement in organisations enables poor people who have lower levels of formal education to learn about the workings of political institutions, develop advocacy skills and counter-hegemonic consciousness, build social capital, and cultivate trust, solidarity and loyalty – all critical enablers for individual’s participation in protests (Moseley, 2015; Van Stekelenburg & Klandermans, 2013; Verba et al, 1995). It appears that within social networks, individual grievances and affect are transformed into shared grievances and shared emotions as generative and political energy (see Canham, 2018; Van Stekelenburg & Klandermans, 2013).…”

“…In contrast, those who report engagement in violent protests (compared to non-violent protests) seem to adopt the insurgency path that may be exploited sometimes by ‘thuggish elites’ (see Von Holdt et al, 2011). Highly negative assessments of government’s service delivery performance and corruption, perhaps constituting betrayal of democratic principles and failures of social justice, may produce scepticism about the utility of normative forms of political engagement and rage directed at government, especially when the government may be experienced as being repeatedly uncaring about people’s basic needs for material well-being and dignity (see Canham, 2018; De Juan & Wegner, 2019; Moseley, 2015). Those who may be united by a shared identity, perhaps created through prolonged experiences of material deprivation and psychological disregard, as well as inaccessibility to government institutions, may adopt the insurgency path, encompassing affective practices, manifest partly in violence (see Alexander, 2010; Canham, 2018).…”

“…Shared emotional energy drives a sense of solidarity and collective action. In insurgent forms of protests, intense emotions like rage may be mobilised as a politically generative force and as part of a repertoire of affective practices to affirm the mutuality of everyday material and emotional experiences and bring public attention to hegemonic arrangements that fail to regard the humanity of the poor (see Canham, 2018; Van Stekelenburg & Klandermans, 2013, 2017).…”

“…Instead, we submit that protests, incorporating material and discursive forms of resistance, are directed at disrupting asymmetrical socioeconomic, political, and cultural systems (Duncan, 2016; Quaranta, 2017; Runciman et al, 2016), and as such may include a range of disruptive repertoires (see Day et al, 2019). Protests may be enacted as normatively endorsed actions such as petitions, boycotts, demonstrations, and marches, as well as activities constituting forms of insurgency and rebellion including affective practices that may be censured by ruling institutions (see Alexander, 2010; Canham, 2018; Pithouse, 2007, 2011; Quaranta, 2017).…”