{"id":6495,"date":"2020-06-21T16:38:44","date_gmt":"2020-06-21T16:38:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/?p=6495"},"modified":"2020-07-04T14:38:57","modified_gmt":"2020-07-04T14:38:57","slug":"emotional-politics-some-notes-on-anger-resentment-and-compassion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/volume-15-no-2-2020\/conference-proceedings\/emotional-politics-some-notes-on-anger-resentment-and-compassion\/","title":{"rendered":"Emotional Politics \u2013 Some notes on anger, resentment and compassion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\t
\n\n\t\t<\/i><\/span> <\/a>\n\n\t<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n

The recent upsurge in interest in the role of emotions in politics is not a coincidence, but linked to our current political situation: We have extreme nationalism in India, authoritarians like Erdo\u011fan and Orb\u00e1n, as well popular far right political parties like the French National Front in Europe, and right-wing populists[1]<\/a> like Trump and Bolsonaro in power in the US and Brazil. According to the sociologist Cas Mudde in his book The Far Right Today<\/em> there is something new in this situation compared to a few decades ago: During most of the postwar era, the far right was seen as a \u201cnormal pathology\u201d of western democracy, that is, as essentially a pre-modern fringe phenomenon, ideologically unconnected to modern democracy, and supported by just a small minority of the population (Mudde, 2019, 106-107).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The current emotional climate and the populist far right<\/strong><\/p>\n

Today\u2019s situation is different according to Mudde; the far right is no longer a \u201cnormal pathology\u201d but a \u201cpathological normalcy\u201d, in that the far right\u2019s talking points about immigrants and minorities to a large degree have been mainstreamed, and mainstream values \u2013 support for the nation-state and law-and-order policies\u2013 have become radicalized. Drawing on international surveys, Mudde claims that that large part of the population hold a combination of authoritarian, nativist, and populist attitudes, combined with anti-establishment sentiments. Hence, the populist far right differs from the mainstream in degree <\/em>rather than kind; \u201cthe populist radical right does not stand for a fundamentally different world than the political mainstream; rather it takes mainstream ideas and values to an illiberal extreme.\u201d (Mudde, 2019,170-171).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Angry White Men?<\/strong><\/p>\n

One emotion that has been at the forefront of the public debate about the current shift in politics is anger.<\/em> During the presidential race, Trump told CNN: \u201cI\u2019m angry, and a lot of other people are angry, too, at how incompetently our country is being run.\u201d and continued: \u201cAs far as I am concerned, anger is okay. Anger and energy is what this country needs.\u201d While most thought that Trump would soon be out of the race, a psychology professor at the University of Massachusetts who had studied anger as a social phenomenon is reported to have commented the following: \u201cHe understands anger,\u201d \u201cand it\u2019s going to make voters feel\u00a0wonderful<\/em>.\u201d [2]<\/a><\/p>\n

The American sociologist Michael Kimmel also links the rise of the populist far right to the anger of a specific demographic, which he explores in Angry White Men<\/em>: American Masculinity at the End of an Era.<\/em> Based on interviews with members of the American far and extreme right, Kimmel suggests that \u201dPopulism is not a theory, an ideology; it\u2019s an emotion. And the emotion is righteous indignation that the government is screwing \u2019us.\u2019\u201d[3]<\/a> (Kimmel 2017, xi.). A rather obvious response is to link this anger to the huge increase in economic inequality in the last decades \u2013 both in the west and globally \u2013 and as a reaction to an out-of-touch political establishment. This is the view of for example Thomas Piketty who in in The Guardian<\/em> explained Trumps victory as \u201cprimarily due to the explosion in economic and geographic inequality in the United States over several decades and the inability of successive governments to deal with this\u201d.[4]<\/a> According to Kimmel, however, it is not the poorest, but white men from the downwardly mobile<\/em> middle and lower middle class who form the backbone of the far right, and this also holds for the extreme right (i.e. neo-Nazis and white supremacists).[5]<\/a> Kimmel found that the anger of his informants was driven by a sense of having been duped, that a \u201ctacit contract\u201d had been broken: the understanding that the government was \u201dfor the people\u201d and that if they worked hard they could support their families and retain their self-respect.[6]<\/a><\/p>\n

Kimmel stresses that while economic <\/em>inequality has risen dramatically in the US\u00a0 (\u201dWe are more unequal economically than at any time since the Gilded Age\u201d) at the same time as society has become more equal when it comes to race and gender, and these two different processes have somehow fused in the minds of these white men who feel anything even remotely approaching equality as a catastrophic loss. (Kimmel 2017, xi, 281). In Kimmel’s view, it is thus precisely the very belief <\/em>in the meritocracy of \u201dThe American Dream\u201d, \u00adand a deep and abiding faith in America, its institutions and its ideals that is the \u201dtragic flaw\u201d of the angry white men: A rhetoric of masculinity combined with racism, nativism, anti-Semitism and antifeminism serve to resolve the tensions in their worldview and enable them to fix blame for their suffering. They are firm believers in capitalism, the free market and free enterprise but hate corporations, patriots who love America but hate its government. In short, the story Kimmel gives us in Angry White Men<\/em> is about the misdirected <\/em>anger of a declassed group: \u201dAmerica\u2019s angry white men are right to be angry, but they are delivering their mail to the wrong address. That mail is now a letter bomb, and it will take a nation to defuse it.\u201d (Kimmel, 2017, xiv). According to Kimmel, the anger of lower middle-class white men has a specific character; it is a fusion of two sentiments \u2013 entitlement and a sense of victimization, what he terms \u201caggrieved entitlement\u201d. They believe that they are entitled to benefits and a status that have been taken away from them, and it is this sense of entitlement (i.e. their whiteness and maleness) which leads them to identify \u2013 socially and politically \u2013 with those above, even when they have economically joined the ranks of those who have historically been below them.[7]<\/a> This aggrieved entitlement gives rise to a sense of lost masculinity:<\/em><\/p>\n

As they saw it, they\u2019d lost some words that had real meaning to them: honor, integrity, dignity. They\u2019d lost their autonomy, their sense of themselves as \u201csomebody.\u201d And, as I heard them say<\/em> it, they\u2019d lost their sense of themselves as men. Real men. Men who built this country and who, in their eyes, are this country.<\/em> (Kimmel 2017, x)<\/p>\n

Kimmel does not only stress economic motives for the anger of a downward moving middle class, but explicitly links \u201caggrieved entitlement\u201d to a traditional notion of masculinity which equals manhood with power and domination. These men feel powerless but still entitled<\/em>; they have a strong sense that they ought not<\/em> feel this way, and that fuels anger. As he phrases it: \u201dthey are humiliated\u2014and that humiliation is the source of their rage\u201d (Kimmel 2017, xi). The anger that stems from \u201daggrieved entitlement\u201d can mobilize politically \u2013 but only in a nostalgic fashion, as attempts to restore that which one feels has been lost. (Kimmel 2017, 24). Angry White Men<\/em> ends on a note of cautious optimism; the angry white men are a rearguard in a lost fight, since the clock cannot be turned back neither on women\u2019s liberation nor racial equality. As Kimmel sees it, the anger\u2019s address <\/em>is women and racial minorities, but the \u201dengine\u201d of the rage is the growing chasm between rich and poor, and the sinking middle class. Kimmel\u2019s \u201dremedies\u201d are therefore classical social democratic politics of solidarity with one\u2019s economic class, unions, social safety nets, and New Deal.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Age of anger?<\/strong><\/p>\n

A more global \u2013 as well as more pessimistic \u2013 perspective is offered by Pankaj Mishra in Age of Anger: A History of the Present<\/em>. Mishra describes his project as an exploration of a \u201dparticular climate of ideas, a structure of feeling, and cognitive disposition from the age of Rousseau to our own age of anger.\u201d (Mishra 2017, 28-29). His starting point is the paradox that while we in today\u2019s global market are more literate, interconnected, healthy and prosperous than any other time in history, we still find ourselves in what he call \u201dan age of anger\u201d, with authoritarian leaders manipulating the discontent of furious majorities: \u201dThe world at large \u2013from the United States to India \u2013 manifests a fierce politics of identity built on historical injuries and fear of internal and external enemies.\u201d (Mishra 2017, 170). Mishra\u2019s intuition (which he, as we shall see, shares with Martha Nussbaum) is that liberal political theory has gravely underestimated the importance of emotions in politics and that the traditional liberal model of the rational citizen\u00a0 \u2013 which focused on material progress alone \u2013 is fundamentally wrong<\/em>; we are in fact less motivated by a rational pursuit of our own interests than by the fear<\/em> of loosing honor, dignity and status, the distrust<\/em> of change and the appeal of stability and familiarity, as well as negative emotions such as envy and ressentment: \u00a0<\/strong>\u201dThose who perceive themselves as left behind by or humiliated by a selfish conspiratorial minority can be susceptible to political seducers from any point on the ideological spectrum,\u00a0 for they are not driven by material inequality alone.\u201d (Mishra, 2017, 114).<\/p>\n

Mishra attempts to cast light on a wide range of phenomena from identitarian movements to ISIS and Hindu nationalism by comparing them to nationalism, proto-fascism and nihilism in 19th century Europe through a reading of early modern critics of the Enlightenment, especially Rousseau. In Rousseau (\u201dhistory\u2019s greatest militant lowbrow\u201d) he sees one of the first to criticize the belief that the interplay of individual interests could produce harmony and civilization; on the contrary, due to our \u201damour propre\u201d \u2013 a kind of mimetic self-love that always compares oneself to others and seek status and recognition from them \u2013 a commercial society will end in envy and hatred (both of ourselves and others). A society based on competition, emulation and the power of money, might promise progress, but is psychologically debilitating for its citizens. (Mishra 2017,113). His main point is that the violent reaction to modernism by those left behind, those who do not feel that they benefit from the promise of progress, prosperity, stability and individual freedom, are not <\/em>some atavistic remnants of the pre-modern, but rather intimately linked to effects of the modernization-process itself.<\/p>\n

The global situation today is thus read as a repetition of the European backlash to the modernization process in the nineteenth and early twentieth-century. This reaction is furthermore not a case of simple opposition between modern and traditional but rather what he with a psychoanalytical twist calls \u201dmimetic desire\u201d; those gripped by resentment will mimic the very groups they claim to oppose: \u201dThe key to mimic man\u2019s behavior lies not in any clash of opposed civilizations, but, on the contrary, in irresistible mimetic desire: the logic of fascination, emulation and righteous self-assertion that binds the rivals inseparably. It lies in resentment,\u00a0 \u00a0the tormented mirror games in which the West as well as its ostensible enemies and indeed all inhabitants of the modern world are trapped.\u201d (Mishra 2017, 161). On the one hand, this story is that of \u201clatecomers\u201d to the globalized modernity, but on the other, it is about inherent contradictions in the modern project itself: Modernization dismantles premodern social structures, beliefs and communities, and urbanization uproots masses of people. While many traditional structures was intensely unequal and deeply unfair, modern society promises equality<\/em> while its economic system generates inequality:<\/p>\n

The ideals of modern democracy \u2013 the equality of social conditions and individual empowerment \u2013 have never been more popular. But they have become more and more difficult, if not impossible, to actually realize in the grotesquely unequal societies created by our brand of globalized capitalism<\/em>. (Mishra 2017, 28-29).<\/p>\n

In short: The rise of inequality in a world that believes in equality<\/em> breeds resentment<\/em>: \u201d\u2026 an intense mix of envy and sense of humiliation and powerlessness, resentment, as it lingers and deepens, poisons civil society and undermines political liberty, and is presently making for a global turn to authoritarianism and toxic forms of chauvinism.\u201d\u00a0 (Mishra 2017,14). Unlike righteous anger, resentment is an inhibited and impotent emotion which lacks proper expression, a kind of constant simmering that eventually might build up to an explosion. Ressentiment is thus according to Mishra a distinctly modern phenomenon \u201dinherent in the structure of societies where formal equality between individuals coexists with massive differences in power, education, status and property ownership.\u201d (Mishra 2017, 336). What held liberal societies together, Mishra claims was the promise of future progress and equality, which they have failed to deliver. When it comes to what to do in our age of anger, Mishra does not give us any answers, but warns us that the neglect of emotions in politics is dangerous, because if we do not acknowledge our need for belonging and identity, this will only be offered by the extreme right in the form of exclusion and persecution of\u00a0 \u201dthe Others\u201d. Not just inequality, but also a lack of \u201dspiritual substance\u201d in society is part of the problem, and at the end of his book Mishra refers to Pope Francis and his call for compassion with the poor as an important and hopeful political figure, while in other settings he has argued that socialism must be revived as an ethical project.[8]<\/a><\/p>\n

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Marta Nussbaum on fostering a political culture of compassion<\/strong><\/p>\n

Martha Nussbaum attempts to rectify this lack of focus on the emotions in liberal political theory that Mishra criticizes in Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice<\/em>. We do not only need principles, she claims, we should also think of strategies to actively employ certain kinds of emotions in order to create a more just, redistributive and inclusive society. It is both mistaken and dangerous to suppose that only fascist or aggressive societies are intensely emotional and that only such societies need to focus on the cultivation of emotions: \u201cAll political principles, the good as well as the bad, need emotional support to ensure their stability over time, and all decent societies need to guard against division and hierarchy by cultivating appropriate sentiments of sympathy and love\u201d (Nussbaum 2013, 2\u20133).<\/p>\n

Nussbaum\u2019s vision is a liberal society, that is, one in which there is an overlapping consensus about fundamental principles and constitutional ideals without a common comprehensive view of \u201dthe good life\u201d. So the challenge is how to foster political emotions through leadership, education, government policy and culture without impinging on liberal principles such as pluralism and personal autonomy. Rather than following the idea of civic religion from Rousseau and Comte, she follows a thread through Mozart (sic!) Mill and Tagore with emphasis on aesthetic education: public artworks, monuments, parks, festivals and celebrations, humor and comedy, songs, symbols, official films and photographs, but also the rhetoric of politicians, public education, and even the public role of sports. Liberal democracies should<\/em> cultivate certain emotions, Nussbaum claims, including love of country in the form of patriotism, although not in a form that romanticizes one\u2019s own country, but loves it \u2013 warts and all. She argues that patriotism helps people \u201dthink larger thoughts and recommit themselves to a larger common good\u201d (Nussbaum 2013, 3).<\/p>\n

Worthy projects require effort and sacrifice, and among such worthy causes Nussbaum mentions national defense, economic redistribution, inclusion of previously excluded or marginalized groups and protection of the environment. I am not going to discuss patriotism and its problems here, but only mention that while a form of patriotism might function \u201cprogressively\u201d in the US (She refers here to Luther King\u2019s speeches and Roosevelt\u2019s New Deal) playing up patriotism would probably only exacerbate xenophobia in European nation states. Nussbaum defends patriotism for liberal societies generally, however, not merely as a tool for a specific society. However, as her own example of Finland shows, while a country with a strong sense of interconnection between citizens and wide support for social security, can also be very reluctant to take in refugees, and the normalization of far right nativism that Mudde talks about has also happened in countries with more social cohesion and far better social security than the US.<\/p>\n

According to Nussbaum, the most promising, \u201cpositive and helpful\u201d emotion for establishing \u201cdecent\u201d societies and political systems is compassion<\/em>, <\/strong>and she envisions the good society as one where we cultivate a \u201cpublic culture of compassion\u201d (Nussbaum 2013,157). An interesting point to notice here is that while compassion also was the prime virtue for Rousseau, his \u201cSpartan\u201d vision of the good society was extremely \u201cmasculine\u201d, and its emotions (shame, honor etc.) as Nussbaum points out, resembled those of the anci\u00e9n regime. Nussbaum\u2019s \u201clove and compassion\u201d offers an alternative, more \u201cfeminine\u201d register of positive political emotions as well as discouraging emotions such as fear, envy, shame, and disgust that can erode support for what she deems good political causes.<\/p>\n

Nussbaum defines compassion as \u201da painful emotion directed at the serious suffering of another creature\u201d and distinguishes it from empathy \u2013 the ability to imagine the situation of the other, taking the other\u2019s perspective (Nussbaum 2013,142).\u00a0 For Nussbaum, compassion is not only a private emotion but also a collective one, and she claims that although our compassion is often partial and narrow, we are able to widen our circle of concern up to the national level \u2013 and beyond \u2013 through education (ibid). Hence, compassion should be practiced in schools and other institutions with the help of literature and role-play (Nussbaum 2013, 276\u2013279). As sympathetic as I find Nussbaum\u2019s vision of a compassionate society (and it is certainly hard to dislike) I would like to problematize this idea of a political culture of compassion and ask if there are some points in Arendt\u2019s rather infamous criticism of compassion and pity in On Revolution<\/em> that may cause us to approach this strategy of making society better by fostering \u201da culture of compassion\u201d with some restraint. [9]<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Arendt: Compassion as a-political<\/strong><\/p>\n

Arendt\u2019s view of compassion as a visceral basic emotion is comparable to Nussbaum\u2019s, but unlike Nussbaum she does not think that compassion could ever be a public <\/em>sentiment. Compassion is being \u201ctouched in the flesh\u201d \u2013 it is a literal \u201cpassion\u201d, something we suffer \u2013 and hence a direct reaction to individual and concrete suffering that relates to persons in their singularity. (Arendt 2006 b, 80). In compassion, we suffer with<\/em> another person as a response to the suffering one perceives in them, and as such, compassion is limited to a personal connection between individuals. Compassion is therefore essentially an apolitical<\/em> emotion according to Arendt. Like love, it abolishes distance, \u201cthe worldly space between men were political matters, the whole realm of human affairs, are located\u201d (Arendt, 2006 b, 76). Political interaction on the other hand, involves a certain distance according to Arendt, because it consists of speech \u201cin which someone talks to<\/em> somebody about something that is of interest to both because it inter-ests<\/em>, it is between them.<\/p>\n

This relation is reminiscent of what the Norwegian philosopher Skjervheim calls a \u201ctriangular relation\u201d which characterizes a genuine intersubjective dialogue. In a triangular relation, I respond to an utterance by directing my attention to the same subject matter in such a way that we share a common object as participants (Skjervheim, 1996). The alternative relation is that of the spectator, to merely register the other\u2019s utterances, or infer his\/her motives and thus make the other into my object. According to Arendt, this \u201ctriangular\u201d relation is alien to compassion, which is directed only at<\/em> the suffering person. In so far as compassion actually sets out to change the world, it tends to claim swift and even violent action, rather than persuasion, negotiation and compromise, which Arendt sees as the very substance of political life (Arendt 2006b, 77).<\/p>\n

A further complication with evoking compassion as a political emotion is what Arendt refers to as \u201cthe darkness of the human heart\u201d which she contrasts to the \u201clight\u201d of the public sphere.\u00a0 This notion of \u201cthe darkness of the human heart\u201d points to the fact that we are never fully transparent to ourselves. The reason for her skepticism towards emotions in politics is not that the devalues them, but as Degerman points out, that we cannot truly know ourselves, nor fully trust ourselves either, since our emotional life is radically subjective, ambivalent, conflictual and changeable. (Degerman 2019, 156). Arendt has a radically relational view of selfhood and reality, our very sense of ourselves as \u201csomeone\u201d is dependent on our appearing to others through \u201dwords and deeds\u201d, and our capacity to make and keep promises, which likewise depends on others (Arendt, 1958, 237). Likewise, our sense of the reality and objectivity of the world is provided by the presence of others who see what we see and relate to the same objects. According to Arendt, what does not appear in a common world remains dream-like and without reality.<\/p>\n

For us, appearance\u2014something that is being seen and heard by others as well as by ourselves\u2014constitutes reality. Compared with the reality which comes from being seen and heard, even the greatest forces of intimate life\u2014the passions of the heart, the thoughts of the mind, the delights of the senses\u2014lead an uncertain, shadowy kind of existence unless and until they are transformed, deprivatized and deindividualized, as it were, into a shape to fit them for public appearance<\/em>. (Arendt 1958, 50)<\/p>\n

The expression or representation of an emotion transforms something subjective and involuntary \u2013 the experienced emotion \u2013 into something communicable. What is intersubjectively \u201creal\u201d and objective is therefore not my emotion, but an appearance, it is my representation<\/em> of the emotion that can be seen, heard and evaluated by others. And in the political sphere appearances are all there is (Arendt 1958,<\/em>179-80, 193). Arendt\u2019s contention is that when compassion \u201cgoes public\u201d as it where, it stops being an emotion and changes into something else \u2013 the sentiment<\/em> of pity; being sorry without being \u201cstricken in the flesh\u201d: \u201cPity, because it is not stricken in the flesh and keeps its sentimental distance, can succeed where compassion always will fail; it can reach out to the multitude and therefore, like solidarity, enter the market-place\u201d (Arendt 2006b, 79).<\/p>\n

A sentiment <\/em>is a feeling evoked by and directed at an abstract depersonalized mage of \u201csuffering masses\u201d rather than immediately perceived particular persons (Arendt 2006b, 75, 80), and it is without limits \u2013\u201cboundless\u201d\u2013 and leads to an insensitivity to reality, which in the case of the French revolutionaries turned into cruelty: \u201c\u2026it has been the boundlessness of their sentiments that made revolutionaries so curiously insensitive to reality in general and to the reality of persons in particular, whom they felt no compunctions in sacrificing to their \u2018principles\u2019\u201d (Arendt 2006b, p. 80).<\/p>\n

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Compassion and the specter of hypocrisy<\/strong><\/p>\n

According to Arendt, Robespierre and the revolutionaries \u2013Inspired by Rousseau\u2013 saw compassion as a universal and natural basis for human relations and politics (Arendt 2006b, 71). Their conception of compassion\u2019s goodness stemmed from the idea that the subjective experience of compassion was \u2013 in itself \u2013 good. However since this emotion only exists within \u201cthe darkness of an individual\u2019s heart\u201d, we can never know<\/em> for sure that a person actually harbors this emotion. Of course, there are actions associated with compassion, but it is also a subjective emotional experience that cannot appear to others directly as such. As Degerman points out, \u201cThe French revolutionaries developed a veritable repertoire of pity \u2013 <\/strong>conspicuous crying at public events, calculated simplicity of dress, etc. \u2013 to demonstrate their pity to others. They quickly realized, however, that a show of pity could simply mask the absence of feeling within\u201d. (Degerman 2019, 166).<\/p>\n

Arendt\u2019s simple point here is that that words and deeds can never unambiguously prove<\/em> the presence of authentic emotions in the political sphere. If compassion is seen as a political virtue, the impossibility of confirming the authenticity of another person\u2019s feelings (and our own for that matter) becomes an insoluble problem since every expression can be seen as potentially hypocritical: \u201c\u2026the search for motives, the demand that everybody display in public his innermost motivation, since it is actually impossible, transforms all actors into hypocrites; the moment the display of motives begins, hypocrisy begins to poison all human relations.\u201d (Arendt 2006 b, 88). According to Arendt, the obsession with unmasking appearances in a field where only appearances exist lead Robespierre and his followers to an endless hunt for hypocrites and traitors that transformed Robespierre\u2019s dictatorship into the Reign of Terror (Arendt 2006b, 89). While I certainly do not think that Nussbaum\u2019s \u201cpublic culture of compassion\u201d would lead anyone to the guillotine, I would argue that a public culture of compassion faces risks of its own.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The pitfalls of pity <\/strong><\/p>\n

Central for Nussbaum\u2019s vision is the idea of human equality, <\/em>that all human beings are worthy of equal respect or regard, just in virtue of their humanity. If we are to believe Pankaj Mishra however, it is precisely this same belief in equality that breeds resentment; the problem is not that we do not value<\/em> equality sufficiently, but that our societies fail to deliver it. In her article \u201dThe Pitfalls of \u2018Love and Kindness\u2019: On the Challenges to Compassion\/Pity as a Political Emotion\u201d Anne-Kathrin Weber points to another inherent tension in Nussbaum\u2019s emphasis on compassion\/pity and equality. Pity, she argues, involves a \u201ddual-level hierarchisation\u201d between a) those who are miserable and those who ought to pity them, and b) between the virtuous (those who pity) and those who do not pity. Pity establishes a hierarchy between the subject and the object of pity; with the result that we feel an immediate urge to help others, to rescue them, as Weber puts it: \u201cmaking politics for them, <\/strong>and not with them\u201d (Weber 2018, 56). In other words, pity does not encourage the triangular relation (me-you-our common object) but tends to objectify the ones that are pitied.<\/p>\n

Nussbaum suggests that by teaching citizens to love equality, freedom, liberal democratic institutions and other people, we could create a more just society; the hope is, in other words, that we can instill citizens with particular emotions in order to improve our societies. While I have no argument whatsoever with Nussbaum\u2019s view that art and poetry can teach us valuable emotional lessons that might have political relevance, I think that to explicitly cultivate compassion as a political sentiment faces some challenges. One of the worries expressed by Weber is connected to the second hierarchy of pity, namely that an \u201cemotion programme\u201d such as Nussbaum\u2019s \u201cmight potentially clash with the pluralistic and diverse (political) interests of each individual\u201d and hence resemble an attempt to inflict a single political \u201cpopular will\u201d in the shape of \u201crules of feeling\u201d onto citizens (Weber 2018, 57). Or to put it a different way: If M\u00fcller is correct in diagnosing populism as a particular moralistic imagination<\/em> of politics that sets an (imagined) morally pure and fully united people against corrupt and immoral elites (M\u00fcller 2006,19-20) and that populism\u2019s threat to democracy consists in its suppression of pluralism, would not a political culture of compassion only risk to increase the tendency of moralizing political debates? How we frame a political conflict matters; to frame it is moral or cultural terms rather than in terms of economy or a conflict of interests strengthens populism according to M\u00fcller, and populists will attempt to moralize political conflicts as much as possible (M\u00fcller 2006, 42, 92).<\/p>\n

A public culture where emotions such as love and compassion are considered essential political virtues\u00ad would certainly give political actors strong incentives to appear<\/em> loving and compassionate notwithstanding how they actually feel. Moreover, such a public culture would also demand strong expressions of these emotions in order for the speaker to appear as authentically<\/em> loving and compassionate. [10]<\/a> \u00a0We do not need any punishment for appearing \u201cunloving\u201d\u2013 sheer peer-pressure (which Nussbaum also is aware of as a problem) would suffice. A public culture of love and compassion risks being haunted by the old specter of hypocrisy, since, as Arendt reminds us:\u00a0 \u201c\u2026however heartfelt a motive might be, once it is brought out and exposed for public inspection it becomes an object of suspicion rather than insight.\u201d (Arendt 2006b, 86). If our emotions, rather than what we want to change or preserve in the world, take center place, authenticity<\/em> of appearance becomes paramount with the result that being emotionally honest can easily trump (pun intended) being factually truthful. As Harry Frankfurt points out in his book On Bullshit<\/em>, the bullshitter is \u2013 like the hypocrite \u2013 concerned with the impression he makes, but while the hypocrite misrepresents his feelings and character rather than facts, the bullshitter \u2013 who simply does not care about the facts\u2013 might very well provide a honest representations of himself\u00a0 (Frankfurt, 2005, 67).<\/p>\n

As Arendt often reminds us, human affairs are fundamentally unpredictable; since political action always takes place within a \u2018web of relationships\u2019 among plural individuals. This web is itself active and reactive, and new players and new ways of playing the game enter the scene continuously, and what an action finally amounts to in the public sphere, is not under the agent\u2019s control (Arendt, 1958, 190). The outcome of an action might be completely different from what we counted on, and we never quite know what we are doing when we act \u201cinto the web of interrelationships and mutual dependencies that constitute the field of action\u201d (Arendt 2005, 56). A fairly obvious problem in this context is that if a political culture of compassion is seen as compulsory and mandated \u201cfrom above\u201d it might just as well backfire and create more resentment towards the progressive social changes that Nussbaum supports. I think this is actually something we see pretty clearly today in American (and internet) debates in which alt-right memes such as \u201cPC-culture\u201d, \u201csnowflakery\u201d, \u201cvictim-culture\u201d, \u201cvirtue-signaling\u201d and \u201coppression Olympics\u201d have become common catchphrases. In short, I suspect that institutionalizing compassion only risks deepening resentment, rather than defusing the \u201cletter bomb\u201d described by Kimmel.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Solidarity vs. Pity – The role of principles<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fortunately, Arendt has an alternative to pity \u2013 namely the principle of solidarity. While the abstract sentiment of pity tends to lead us to see others as an abstract mass of sufferers, solidarity responds to suffering by deliberately establishing a community of interest with the oppressed and exploited (Arendt 2006b, 79). Solidarity may be aroused by suffering, but not guided by it, and might appear \u201ccolder\u201d than love, because it is committed to ideas like the \u201c \u2018the grandeur of man\u2019, or the honor of the human race\u2019, or the dignity of man\u201d (ibid.). Solidarity is a principle<\/em>, and thus not the same as an emotion, feeling or inner motivation, it is not located in the \u201cdarkness of the human heart\u201d but appears and \u201cshines\u201d in public, that is, it is made manifest in <\/em>the performance of the act itself and does not require people to infer the agent\u2019s motive or feelings (Arendt 2006, 88). Political principles vary with different polities and periods in history, and a part from Montesquieu\u2019s honor, virtue and fear she mentions freedom, justice, equality \u2013 and solidarity (Arendt 2005,195).<\/p>\n

A principle is not \u201din\u201d the subject but \u201cinspire from without\u201d as she comments in \u2019What is Freedom?\u2019 A principle is more general than particular goals, but the goals of an action might be judged in light of its principle. While political action is notoriously unpredictable, even a \u201cfailed\u201d action that does not reach its goal can exhibit its principle and thus inspire further action, since the principle of an action can be manifested again and again. (Arendt 2006a, 151). The appeal of principles are also emotional, and Arendt is not as dismissive of emotions as she is often portrayed, and she is quite clear that absence of emotion does not promote rationality:\u00a0 \u201cIn order to respond reasonably one must first of all be \u2018moved\u2019, and the opposite of emotional is not \u2018rational,\u2019 whatever that may mean, but either the inability to be moved, usually a pathological phenomenon, or sentimentality which is a perversion of feeling\u201d (Arendt 1972, 161).<\/p>\n

Arendt actually shares Mishra and Nussbaum\u2019s criticism of the notion of \u201denlightened self-interest\u201d as the basis for interest in the common good. A public good cannot be equaled with self-interest, however \u201cenlightened\u201d it might be, in that it has a different temporal character; a common good belongs to the world,<\/em> which outlasts the lifespan of the individual (Arendt 1972, 78). The \u201dpublic good\u201d \u2013 the concerns we share as citizens\u2013 are and quite frequently antagonistic to whatever we may deem good to ourselves in our private existence.[11]<\/a> What is central to Arendt is that the common good is a public \u201dthing\u201d\u2013 it is something in-between us that unites and separates us at the same time. Institutions, material structures, artworks and infrastructure are things that make up an objective in-between, that can be seen and approached from different viewpoints. Principles share in this \u201cobjective\u201d quality due to their visibility and repeatability, while our inner feelings or attitudes can never be public objects in a similar way.<\/p>\n

Arendt\u2019s insistence on the separation of the moral and the political is tied to her view that politics is always about the world we share; moral considerations always turns towards the self and our conscience, while political considerations are directed towards the good of the world (Arendt, 2003, 153). Political evils demand political answers, and these must be found in the space in-between, and not within the moral life of the individual. From the perspective of the world, our inner motives (be it anger or compassion) are of little relevance, what matters is that a wrong has been done in the world (Arendt 1972, 62 and 2005, 106). The danger of making emotions explicitly political is that our focus becomes individualized \u2013 either by focusing on \u201cour own hearts\u201d or as various form of unmasking, diagnosing or pathologizing the other \u2013 rather than being about the world, a situation Arendt compares to the \u201cweirdness\u201d of a spiritual s\u00e9ance:<\/p>\n

What makes mass society so difficult to bear is not the number of people involved, or at least not primarily, but the fact that the world be\u00adtween them has lost its power to gather them together, to relate and to separate them. The weirdness of this situation resembles a spiritualistic s\u00e9ance where a number of people gathered around a table might suddenly, through some magic trick, see the table vanish from their midst, so that two persons sitting opposite each other were no longer separated but also would be entirely un\u00adrelated to each other by anything tangible.<\/em>\u00a0 (Arendt 1958, 53)<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n

When it comes to the question of how Kimmel’s \u201dletter bomb\u201d can be defused, answers varies with how the problem is understood \u2013 whether it is framed in economic, political, psychological or cultural terms. Is it anger or resentment itself that is the problem, or is it, as Kimmel suggests rather that it has the wrong address? Kimmel, Piketty and M\u00fcller all points to neoliberalism, downward social mobility and inequality as driving the populist right, while others \u2013 like Mudde and Norris\u2013 see the rise of authoritarian populism as first and foremost an expression of a social and cultural conflict.[12]<\/a> M\u00fcller, who is wary of psychologizing the rise of populism in terms of \u201dfear\u201d, \u201canger\u201d and \u201dresentment\u201d (which he sees as patronizing and condescending) in addition points to political \u2013 rather than economical\u2013 reasons for the upsurge of populism, namely the weakening of the party system. Populism is strong in places with weak party systems, and where populism claims to represent \u201dthe people\u201d as a whole, oppositional parties precisely represents \u201dparts\u201d of the people, and hence have an antipopulist meaning (M\u00fcller, 2016, p. 79). M\u00fcller suggests that a technocratic view of politics has paved the way for populism \u2013 in fact, they mirror each other: In a technocratic politics there is only one correct policy, in populism there is only one authentic will of the people\u2013 in neither case is there a need for democratic debate.[13]<\/a><\/p>\n

If the rule of experts has played a part in ushering in authoritarian populism, it is not likely that the threat to liberal democracy that it represents can be solved by experts \u2013 if we value our institutions we must engage in them as citizens. The resiliency of institutions, laws and political principles is not something that can be simply decided by politicians or professional policy makers or taught to school children (for example) but depend on citizens\u2019 active engagement. There appears to be a curiously non-conflictual backdrop to the picture Nussbaum paints; I would suspect that organizing for political power (in the form of organized labor for example) would be rather more effective in pushing progressive politics than making the wealthy more compassionate?<\/p>\n

Arendt muses in The Promise of Politics<\/em> that the sociological and psychological gaze is profoundly unpolitical in fixing upon man<\/em> rather than the world<\/em>, since we cannot \u201cchange the world by changing the people in it\u201d (Arendt 2005, 105-106). Mishra and Nussbaum are undoubtedly right, however, in claiming that the political is not just about rational interests but also always about emotions, and that the liberal tradition\u2019s \u201drational subject\u201d is a simplified fiction is even supported by findings in neurology and cognitive science. However, I think there are reasons to be skeptical of singling out specific subjective emotions as inherently<\/em> \u201dgood\u201d or \u201dbad\u201d for politics independent of context. One would be hard pressed to find anything constructive in Mishras \u201dressentment\u201d, but I am not convinced that anger and fear are always \u201dbad\u201d and compassion always an unadulterated good in political life. [14]<\/a> \u201dNegative\u201d emotions like fear and anger can prompt us to political action in order avoid disasters and correct injustices \u2013 like taking to the streets in indignation and solidarity when the principle of justice is violated.[15]<\/a><\/p>\n

Compassion \u2013 being touched by the suffering of others\u2013 is undoubtedly a morally<\/em> good emotion, and perhaps even the most essential one \u2013but as I have tried to argue here, if it is always a beneficial political<\/em> sentiment is more dubious. One lesson we can take from Arendt is her insistence that political deliberation and action must be about the world<\/em> and not about our \u201dhearts\u201d. Referring to Rousseau, Arendt comments: \u201dwhile the plight of others aroused his heart, he became involved in his heart rather than in the sufferings of others (\u2026)\u201d (Arendt 2006, 78). Moral considerations tends to be directed towards ourselves, our conscience, emotions and what kind of person we want to be, but this involvement in \u201dthe darkness of our own hearts\u201d can also easily become a kind of entanglement, since we cannot truly know ourselves.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bibliography<\/strong><\/p>\n

Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition.<\/em> 1958. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.<\/p>\n

Arendt, Hannah. Origins of Totalitarianism<\/em>. 1966. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World.<\/p>\n

Arendt, Hannah. Crises of the Republic<\/em>. 1972. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.<\/p>\n

Arendt, Hannah. Essays in Understanding 1930-1954. Formation, Exile, and Totalitarianism<\/em>. Ed. Jerome Kohn 1994. New York: Schocken Books.<\/p>\n

Arendt, Hannah. Responsibility and Judgment.<\/em> 2003. New York: Schocken Books.<\/p>\n

Arendt, H. The Promise of Politics<\/em>. 2005. Ed. Jerome Kohn. New York: Schocken Books.<\/p>\n

Arendt, Hannah. Between Past and Future. <\/em>2006a. London: Penguin Books,<\/p>\n

Arendt, Hannah. On Revolution<\/em>. 2006b [1963]. New York: Penguin Books.<\/p>\n

Arendt, Hannah. \u201d<\/strong>Public Rights and Private Interests\u201d 1977. In Small Comforts in Hard Times New York:Colombia University Press.<\/em><\/p>\n

Clinton, Hillary: \u201cLove and Kindness\u201d\u00a0 https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=GHp69F7vrLU<\/a><\/p>\n

Degerman, Dan. 219. \u201cWithin the heart\u2019s darkness: The role of emotions in Arendt\u2019s political thought\u201d. European Journal of Political Theory <\/em>Vol. 18(2) 153\u2013173. DOI: 10.1177\/1474885116647850.<\/p>\n

Duhigg, Charles. \u201dThe Real Roots of American Rage. The untold story of how anger became the dominant emotion in our political and personal lives\u2013 and what we can do about it\u201d. The Atlantic<\/em>, January\/February 2019.<\/p>\n

Frankfurt, Harry. 2005. On Bullshit.<\/em> \u00a0Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.<\/p>\n

Mishra, Pankaj. 2017. Age of Anger<\/em>. Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.<\/p>\n

Mudde, Cas. 2019. The Far Right Today<\/em>. Cambridge and Medford: Polity Press. Wiley. Kindle Edition.<\/p>\n

M\u00fcller, Jan-Werner. 2016. What Is Populism?<\/em> Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc. Kindle Edition.<\/p>\n

Norris, Pippa. \u201cIt\u2019s Not Just Trump\u201d. Washington Post<\/em>, March 11, 2016. \u00a0https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/monkey-cage\/wp\/2016\/03\/11\/its-not-just-trump-authoritarian-populism-is-rising-across-the-west-heres-why<\/a><\/p>\n

Piketty, Thomas. 2016. \u201cWe must rethink globalization, or Trumpism will prevail\u201d. The Guardian<\/em> 16 Nov. 2016. https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2016\/nov\/16\/globalization-trump-inequality-thomas-piketty<\/a><\/p>\n

Skjervheim, Hans. 1996. Deltakar og tilskodar og andre essays<\/em>. Oslo: Aschehoug.<\/p>\n

Srinivasan, Amia. 2017. \u201cThe Aptness of Anger\u201d. Journal\u00a0of\u00a0Political Philosophy<\/em> 2018-06, Vol.26 (2), p.123-144. DOI:10.1111\/jopp.12130.<\/p>\n

Weber, Anne-Kathrin. 2018. \u201dThe Pitfalls of \u2018Love and Kindness\u2019: On the Challenges to Compassion\/Pity as a Political Emotion\u201d. Politics and Governance <\/em>Vol. 6, Issue 4, 53\u201361. DOI: 10.17645\/pag.v6i4.1393.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Endnotes<\/strong><\/p>\n

[1] <\/a>There has been a lot of discussion on how precisely to define the widely used label \u201dpopulism\u201d. I will here use the term in accordance with Jan-Werner M\u00fcller who defines populism as containing several interrelated features, all of which must be present: Anti-pluralism, moralization of the political, anti-elitism and exclusion. While not being anything like a unified doctrine, populism has its own \u201dinner logic; it is always a form of identity politics (although the reverse does not hold) where the populist party, leader or movement identifies as the true representative of an \u2013imagined, and ultimately purely symbolic\u2013 homogenous, unified people (in the singular) against a corrupt elite, and where opponens are seen as enemies of\u00a0 \u201dthe people\u201d.\u00a0 The core claim of populism is that \u201donly some of the people are really the people\u201d.\u00a0 See M\u00fcller, What is Populism?<\/em> (2016, p 19-20, 21, 29).<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a>\u00a0The psychology professor in question was James Averill, and the anecdote is from Charles Duhigg: \u201dThe Real Roots of American Rage\u2013The untold story of how anger became the dominant emotion in our politics and personal lives \u2014 and what we can do about it\u201d in The Atlantic<\/em>, January\/February 2019.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a>\u00a0Kimmel thus has a rather vaguer and much wider notion of populism than M\u00fcller, which allows him to classify Bernie Sanders as a left-wing populist, which M\u00fcller emphaticly does not.<\/p>\n

[4] <\/a>Thomas Piketty,\u00a0\u201dWe must rethink globalization, or Trumpism will prevail\u201d, The Guardian<\/em>, Nov, 16, 2016.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> The angry right is thus an intersection of race, class and gender; about 80 percent of all the jobs lost in the aftermath of the economic crisis in 2008 in the US were jobs held by men, (Kimmel 2017,15) and\u00a0 the lower middle class; independent farmers, small shopkeepers, craft and highly skilled workers, and small-scale entrepreneurs has been hit hardest by globalization. (ibid., 245).<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> “They believed that there was a contract between themselves, and guys like them, and the government \u201cof the people\u201d that is supposed to represent us. They believed in the corporations that they worked for, confident in the knowledge that they could support a family, enjoy a secure retirement, and provide for their families. That contract was the stable foundation for several generations of America\u2019s working men\u2014an implied but inviolable understanding between businesses and workers, between government and employers. They had kept the faith, fulfilled their part of the bargain. And somehow their share had been snatched away by faceless, feckless hands. They had played by all the rules, only to find the game was rigged from the start.\u201d (Kimmel 2017, 202).<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> “It\u2019s not that their path upward is blocked; it\u2019s that the downward pressure from above is pushing them downward into the ranks of the marginalized. \u201cThey\u201d might deserve to be down there, but \u201cwe\u201d do not. Their revolt is, therefore, nostalgic, pessimistic, reactionary.\u201d (Kimmel 2017, xiii).<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> See Mishra 2017, 327, 333 and H-Diplo Roundtable Review<\/em> Volume XX, No. 44, 2 July 2019.<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a>\u00a0My presentation here owes much to Dan Degerman\u00a0 <\/strong>(2019) \u201c<\/strong>Within the heart\u2019s darkness:\u00a0 The role of emotions in Arendt\u2019s political thought\u201d and Anne-Kathrin Weber (2018) \u201cThe Pitfalls of \u2018Love and Kindness\u2019: On the Challenges to Compassion\/Pity as a Political Emotion\u201d.<\/p>\n

[10]<\/a> Weber uses Hillary Clintons campaign video titled: \u201cLove and Kindness\u201d as an example example of the hierarchization and the \u201cmagic feeling\u201d involved in compassion, and I would add, the stress on emotion in the video combined with vagueness regarding concrete policies also makes it a prime target for a suspicion of hypocrisy.<\/p>\n

[11]<\/a> See Arendt 1977, \u201d<\/strong>Public Rights and Private interests\u201d from: Small comforts in hard times<\/em>, p.105. This text is also one of the few instances where Arendt appears to soften the political\/social divide in that she explicitly states that equality demands getting people out of poverty: \u201dBefore we ask the poor for idealim, we must first make them citizens: and ths involves so changing the circumstances of their private lives that they can become capable of enjoying \u2019the public\u2019\u201d. (ibid., 106- 107).<\/p>\n

[12]<\/a> See Mudde, p 101. Comparative political scientist Pippa Norris has also argued that income level is\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0a reliable predictor of support for authoritarian parties, which is better understood as a cultural backlash against social change. In her view, economic conditions and material insecurity are not the \u201dmotor\u201d but rather the accelerant of the \u201dauthoritarian reflex\u201d. See Pippa Norris, \u201cIt\u2019s Not Just Trump,\u201d Washington Post<\/em>, March 11, 2016.<\/p>\n

[13]<\/a> Here he has more in common with conflictual political theorists such as Chantal Mouffe who claims that the convergence of political parties, as well as the compulsion to reach consensus has provoked antiliberal countermovements. See M\u00fcller 2016, 53 and 97.<\/p>\n

[14] <\/a>Nussbaum tends to focus on the counterprodutiveness of anger but as Srinivasan (2018) has argued, justified anger can be apt<\/em> even though it is counterproductive, as a way of appreciating injustice, and that the situation of oppressed groups who must choose between getting aptly angry or acting prudentially suffers what she calls \u201daffective injustice\u201d.<\/p>\n

[15]<\/a> As is happening now in the US while I am writing this (June 2020). When it comes to fear, Nussbaum sees it as a \u201dnarrowing\u201d and centrifugal emotion that it dissipates a people\u2019s potentially united energy for a common project (Nussbaum 2013, 323) but the younger generation\u2019s activism against global warming is driven by a very reasonable fear for the future; in the face of ecological disaster one cannot \u201dsave oneself\u201d alone. The relative swiftness of the concrete policies established in most European countries facing the Covid 19 pandemic, compared to the tardy response to climate change is telling. In the latter case we are obviously not sufficiently<\/em> scared.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article presents some attempts to understand the recent political turn to authoritarian right-wing populism in terms of emotions \u2013 more specifically anger. This anger belongs, according to researchers, to a specific demographic; white, downward mobile, middle class men are the backbone of the populist far right in US and Europe. The move towards populist authoritarianism is, however, a worldwide phenomenon, and Pankaj Mishra links the authoritarian and illiberal turn to inherent problems in the global modernization process first envisioned by Rousseau and the failure of liberal political theory to take human emotions seriously. Martha Nussbaum\u2019s Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice<\/em> wants to amend this lack of attention to emotions in liberal theory. We do not only need abstract principles, she claims, governments should also actively encourage pro-social emotions such as patriotism, love and compassion in order to create a more just, redistributive and inclusive society. Drawing on Hannah Arendt\u2019s critique of compassion and pity in On Revolution<\/em> I will discuss some potentially problematic aspects with Nussbaum\u2019s suggestion that we ought to actively foster a political culture of compassion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":599,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1783],"tags":[1962,315,1963,1786,877,1964,1526,1965],"coauthors":[1961],"class_list":["post-6495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conference-proceedings","tag-anger","tag-arendt","tag-compassion","tag-hypocrisy","tag-inequality","tag-nusbaum","tag-populism","tag-resentment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/599"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6495"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6495\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6496,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6495\/revisions\/6496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6495"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=6495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}