The polemics of ressentiment: variations on Nietzsche

The rise of populism, cynicism, fanaticism and fundamentalism challenges us to reconsider the problem of ressentiment, characterized by Friedrich Nietzsche in 'On the Genealogy of Morals' (1887) as the self-poisoning of the will by interiorization of trauma in the form of a postponed and imaginary revenge.

The concept of ressentiment is now making a comeback in political discourse.

The aim of this book is to examine the divergent senses in which the concept of ressentiment is used today.

We have been told that, throughout modern history, ressentiment has been the basic affective pathology of ideologies of protest on the left and the right.