ABSTRACT
Whereas the philosopher and the priest offer two types of medicalizing voices on ressentiment, this chapter introduces a third voice, embodied by Améry and, to some extent, also by Fanon. Their first-person take on ressentiment is that of the victim who bears witness to their own ressentiment and who provides an inordinate identification with it, as well as its ethical legitimization. With the help of Adorno’s negative dialectics, the aim is a dialectical reconstruction of this standpoint that, in its resistance to psychological and social good sense, completes the determination of the three mutually implied yet mutually exclusive personae, rendering possible a critical delimitation and assessment of their polemical consistency. The chapter also contributes to the Améry reception in three ways. First, it is no longer necessary to justify his tactlessness through the exceptional context of the objectively recognized, lived experience of victimhood. Second, it shows that Améry’s assumption of his authentic ressentiment is not just “anti-Nietzschean” (Jameson, Žižek) but, first of all, anti-pastoral. Beyond the question of (in)authenticity. Third, this also implies that the political significance of Améry’s testimony lies in its literary and conceptual systematicity no less than in its quality as testimony.
