Remarks on Age of Anger: History of the Present

Age of Anger: History of the Present

 Introduction

Pankaj Mishra is an Indian writer.  His works are From the ruins of empire, Age of Anger: History of the Present, Temptations of West, An end to suffering: Buddha in the world, The Romantics and Butter Chicken in Ludhiana. One of his famous books is Age of Anger. It is an attempt to address present history by looking at the trends in the intellectual thought that had led to the present global crisis. He tries to make explanations for the present-day terrorism and militant nationalism by presenting the intellectual trends from the 18^th century to today. His incisive and scary book is a wake-up call to the world. Mishra attributes the phenomenon of continuous terrorist attack to ressentiment, a word taken from the French Philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. He describes a global pandemic of rage. The seven chaptered book shows that as the world became modern, those who were unable to enjoy its promises- of freedom, stability, and prosperity were increasingly susceptible to demagogues. It is a book of immense urgency and profound argument. It is a history of our present predicament unlike any other. Let us dive and pick the pearls of his thoughts.

 Forgotten Conjectures

In the prologue, Pankaj Mishra asserts of Terroristic violence[1] by presenting the views of the Italian Poet Gabriele D’ Annunzio. He continues that a universal crisis is underway in which violence, terrorism, despotism, and authoritarianism, among other things, prevail amid the continuing globalization of societies and economies, and that this crisis is not new.[2] He explains the rise of terrorism, nationalism, and chaos in the global civil war. The rise of liberal capitalism is the cause of all. Cosmopolitan liberalism advocated by Adam Smith and Montesquieu “has everywhere weakened older forms of authority”.[3] He argues that the disorder, which followed the rise of the industrial capitalist economy, is blamed for the ‘infection’ in other parts of the world instead of Islam and religious extremism. [4] He tells, in this “global age of frantic individualism,” there has been a shift away from collectivized thinking of one’s own society and a shift towards individual rights, which therefore makes social discrimination and inequality highly noticeable to a person. Isolation in the form of the loss of postcolonial nationalism further emphasizes new resentments and hierarchies, initiating the global turn to authoritarianism.[5] He finds that in today’s world, like in the aftermath of the First World War, “a moral and spiritual vacuum is yet again filled with anarchic expressions of individuality, and mad quests for substitute religions and modes of transcendence”.[6] Mishra discredits another misleading idea that of Islamic fundamentalism as the primary cause of terrorism. His reason behind this skepticism is that he views the scapegoating of Islam as “a concept in search of some content,” and just another example of fear-inducing people to blame others “socialists, liberals, a dark-skinned alien in the White House, Muslims,”  for their own problems and insecurities. To Mishra, Islamophobia is still just a phobia, an expression of fear, and not a factual force.[7] The realization today does not exist independently of yesterday is a key feature of this prologue.

 Clearing a space: History’s winners and their illusions

Mishra defines and expands on ‘ressentiment,’ which arose in “Prologue: Forgotten Conjectures,” because it is key to understanding the world crisis which he sees taking place around the globe. Originally coined by Nietzsche, ressentiment is, according to the author, “existential resentment of other people’s being, caused by an intense mix of envy and sense of humiliation and powerlessness”.[8] To the author, this the feeling is only natural when people for whom the Western model of progress has not borne considerable fruits realize their disadvantage. Therefore, the author’s use of Nietzsche’s term in the current chapter is not misplaced when he refers to the disaffected and disillusioned figures of modernity, nor is it misplaced when he extends that group to include the hateful terrorists wreaking havoc across metropolises and the far-right nationalists across the globe. In order to understand ‘Western model,’ Mishra insists that we must analyze the the post-1945 climate of ideas in the U.S. “Economic growth was posited as the end-all of political life and the chief marker of progress worldwide,” says Mishra, “not to mention the gateway to happiness”.[9] Ethnic cleansing reappeared in Europe after 1989, and later fundamentalist hatred brought about 9/11, “briefly disrupted celebrations of a world benignly globalized by capital”.[10] Mishra posits that these shocks failed to reignite debate about the Western model and its ability to ensure peace, instead, it further entrenched binary oppositions between the ‘free’ and ‘unfree’ worlds, which Mishra says revived “nineteenth-century Western clichés about the non-West”. [11]Mishra compares ISIS’s ability to recruit members with the lessons learned from tormented rational thinkers of the past, who were desperate to latch onto the existence of a Creator. Mishra acknowledges the power of the ideas of liberty, rational thought, fraternity, and more. Yet he writes that the French Revolution’s violent side that wreaked havoc upon other countries also led to those countries engaging in ‘appropriative mimicry’: “desiring objects because the desires of others tell us that they are something to be desired”.[12] It is easy to see, says Mishra, how and why other countries felt that they must catch up to the West in any and every way, leading to great disappointment and resentment upon the realization that ‘catching up’ simply is n’t possible. Mishra speaks a lot of the individualism which prevails in the West and which pushes forward the capitalist machine.

 Loving oneself Through Others: Progress and its Contradictions

Here Mishra compares and contrasts two famous intellectual figures of 18^th century: Voltaire and Rousseau. “Loving Oneself Through Others: Progress and Its Contradictions” dwells increasingly on the parallels between movements originating in the past and their violent or radical interpretations in the present, showing that the present state of affairs in the world is neither new, nor born in a vacuum. The late eighteenth century saw a rise of commercial the society which prioritized wealth over other, older symbols of value and which arguably led to individuals in such a society becoming individualistic, focused on themselves, competitive, ambitious, and ruthless. The rat race, which developed alienated many, and Mishra selects Rousseau, the famous Western thinker, to illustrate the way that such a new society could make one of its own feel left behind, or obsolete. Mishra uses very specific phrases to allow us to feel the parallel situation occurring in both the eighteenth century and today: “It isn’t just that the strong exploit the weak,” he says, “the powerless themselves are prone to enviously imitate the powerful”.[13] The wording used by the Mishra could have come from the mouths of men and women today, though Mishra himself was speaking of the past. The same anger and resentment is applicable, and the author’s language encapsulates the sentiment timelessly. Here Mishra uses the figure of Rousseau as a typology. Mishra says, as preposterous as it sounds to many, the ‘Western’ Rousseau’s Sparta was “as historically grounded and idealized”[14] as the ‘Eastern’ ISIS Caliphate. Mishra uses Rousseau’s writing to provide examples of counter-current thought in the eighteenth century which condemned the same mainstream trends which many condemn today, and  also discounts the idea that Westerners have always been the proponents and beneficiaries of the modern industrial age while it was only Easterners who rejected it or had to ‘catch up’ Mishra uses intentionally gendered language to highlight the role which traditional ideas of masculinity play in the rejection of the status quo arising in the modern industrial era. He says, “The rapid overturning of these entrenched prejudices in our time is one major source of male rage and hysteria today”.[15]He compares the past to the present and sees similarities in the way in which males react often violently and with indignation to changing dynamics, which give women greater power. In many ways, masculinity and emasculation are two factors which feed into feelings of belonging: either one’s masculinity is intact in society, meaning one has power and respect and feels sure of one’s self or one is emasculated and thus inferior, humiliated, unable to reach the heights that others reach. Feelings of emasculation can be projected onto national levels, transcending normal political categories and “intellectual vocabularies of left and right to outline the basic psychological outlook of those who perceive themselves as abandoned or pushed behind”.[16] Therefore, those “who perceive themselves as left or pushed behind by a selfish the conspiratorial minority can be susceptible to political seducers from any point on the ideological spectrum,”[17]which helps to explain much of the radical extremism and discontent festering in today’s world.

 Losing My Religion: Islam, Secularism, and Revolution

Mishra introduces the “vision of human project”[18] of modernization and development and how the newly-decolonized states struggled to catch up with the west. Through the thoughts of Octavio Paz, Sayyid Qutb, Jalal Al-e-Ahamed, and Driss Chraibi, Mishra depicted the psychic damage in the individual of the post-colonial world or third world. Islam was kept as the enemy of the West especially of the United States. According to Mishra, it had led to the war on the freedom of speech, a product of so-called Western Enlightenment. “Long bearded activists and thinkers speaking of Islam in the East”[19] began to respond to the failed nation-building process and tried to eradicate cosmopolitan west. India, China, and Turkey were not tabula rasa and they were actually systematically destroyed by the colonial rule. Mishra explains this failure as a result of the “cultural makeover forced upon socially conservative masses” which “aggravated a widely felt sense of exclusion and injury”[20] The wide gap between the tiny governing elite and the majority of poorer people led to a generation of Islamists rebelling against their societies. Actually, by all these, Mishra explains the identity crisis arising from attempts at modernization in non-Western countries. The process by which the West had achieved the state of superiority it felt itself to claim was, in fact, “calamitously uneven, fuelled by a rush of demagogic politics, ethnic cleansing, and total wars”. [21] According to the Western model, “the old and the unfit, it was widely felt, had to be weeded out in projects of rapid-fire self-empowerment,” [22]which was the kind of rhetoric non-Western leaders took to heart just as it was the kind Western demagogues like Hitler used to fuel their own fantasies of modernity. There were a great number of issues with the idea of modernity which the West proclaimed and which non-Westerners sought to follow, therefore it is no great surprise that applications of the model often had disastrous results. Mishra concludes these ideas by telling that ““The key to mimic man’s 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”.[23]

 Regaining My Religion: Nationalism Unbound and Messianic Visions

Mishra here explained struggling projects of India, China, and Russia, even though they are spiritually and morally superior to the west.[24] Mishra underlines that “the world of mutual tolerance envisaged by cosmopolitan elites from the Enlightenment onwards exists within a few metropolises and university campuses, and even these rarefied spaces are shrinking”.[25] Here Mishra delves deeper into the rise of militant nationalism which still plagues the world today. Mishra wisely demonstrates that many of the ideas fueling nationalism and violence today are not historical truths, neither are they inevitable trends. Rather, the leaders of such movements, such as Modi in India, according to Mishra, is either consciously or unconsciously adopting the terminology and ideas of thinkers who were mortal and fallible men, just like them. If one takes the highly controversial Nietzschean idea of the ‘superman’- a man who, “authorized by his successful self-overcoming personality to scorn ordinary mortals and their conventional morality,”[26] one can clearly see the potential for violence enshrined in such a concept. A ‘superman’ who feels himself better than his fellow men and whose superiority justifies his rejection of conventional morality is a figure who must, following that logic, lead others and make sacrifices few others would make. It is easy to see the seeds of Nietzsche’s idea in Adolf Hitler’s actions in the mid-twentieth century, or in Savarkar’s attempts to create a Hindu Indian ‘superman.’ By emphasizing the fact that such contemptible movements draw inspiration from the work of man and not a ‘superman’. Mishra can point out the irony in the situation: ordinary, mortal, and often insecure men are the very people whose theories of power and violence took hold of the minds of their successors. As such, the fallibility of the ideas is evident as well as the fallibility of the men who adhere to them. I think, Mishra uses the phrase ‘regaining my religion’ to show the troubling effects of the void which the Enlightenment’s rejection of religion left behind it. Many, like Nietzsche, prove Mishra’s point that there arose a need for something to hold on to whether that salvation came from a love of the homeland or a belief in the power of the individual to surpass ordinary expectations and pressures, religious fervor still seems an apt phrase to describe the feeling.

One of the an important theme in this part Mishra develops is Heroism.[27] Heroism represented the overcoming of obstacles and the triumph of man over his environment or circumstances. As Mishra mentions, ever since the beginning of the industrial age there have been disaffected individuals feeling left behind the remarkable demonstrations of ‘progress.’ Mishra says by “defining the laws of social evolution and progress”,[28] Spencer captivated many and contributed to the growing appreciation and gruesome admiration for war as a means of heroic demonstration. I feel Mishra expands heroism to explore the theme of warfare in greater depth and link it to the concerning undercurrents of nationalism. War is mentioned as an expression of heroism. According to Mishra, a desire for heroism bred a taste for warfare, while warfare was accompanied by concerns about masculinity. Interestingly enough, the “fixation with manliness cut across apparent ideological barriers”.[29] Masculinity is explored here not only in its physical manifestation but also in its psychological manifestation. All the threads of this part underline Mishra’s main argument concerning the origins of today’s militant nationalist movements and terrorism: namely, that those movements did not arise in a vacuum and are a response to historical changes which often began occurring in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Mishra concludes like this “nationalism is, more than ever before, a mystification, if not a dangerous fraud with its promise of making a country ‘great again’ and its demonization of the ‘other’; it conceals the real conditions of existence and the true origins of suffering”.[30]

 Finding True Freedom and Equality: The Heritage of Nihilism

All the ideas from the 18^th century to the 19^th century are presented chronologically here. The history of various ideas is punctuated by anecdotes and facts about the present day which pertain to them. This is done in order to greater prove the timeless quality of the ideas in question and of certain elements of human nature. To expand on this, whether nationalism, religion or another ideology like communism is in question, Mishra proves that it is the degree to which fanaticism in any one of these arenas is felt that determines its destructiveness or power. In essence, Mishra claims that extremism is at fault for the great number of global crises faced today, especially regarding terrorism and violence. Extremism is, according to Mishra, usually a response to some kind of oppression or repression. Mishra’s references of literature take on a new significance, demonstrating how real events can influence literature and how literature can influence real events, too. Mishra also explicitly refers to the role of technology in the circulation of ideas because, as time goes on, newer forms of technology greatly alter how information is received or affect whether it is received at all. Mishra concludes by stating that “Bakunin, one of the socially derailed and self-exiled figures of the nineteenth century, saw further than his contemporaries: to the waning of developmentalist and collectivist ideologies, a broader scope for the individual will to power, an existential politics and ever-drastic and coldly lucid ways of making or transcending history”.[31]

 Finding Reality

Mishra refers here more to recent events and realities, drawing us away from an analysis of intellectual movements and towards a confrontation with the world they live in today. While discussing the frustration felt by populations containing a high percentage of educated young men unable to find work, Mishra inserts his eloquent and striking sentence .“The the number of superfluous young people condemned to the anteroom of the modern world, an expanded Calais in its squalor and hopelessness, has grown exponentially in recent decades, especially in the youthful societies of Asia and Africa”.[32] The imagery contained in the words ‘anteroom’ and ‘squalor’ as well as the reference to Calais, a notoriously chaotic and dismal refugee camp, serve to highlight the author’s point. Mishra says global capitalism has “exposed the severe disparities of income and opportunities, and left many to desperately improvise jaunty masks for themselves in the social jungle”.[33] The use of the word ‘jungle’ is what truly drives home the idea that humans live in self-help – or dog-eat-dog – the world in which each must look out for themselves. Mishra employs an almost mocking tone, attempting to force Western readers to confront the lies and myths, which have helped them build up their self-assurance in the world system which was built specifically with them in mind. For example, he writes, “We can, of course, cling tight to our comforting metaphysical dualisms and continue to insist on the rationality of liberal democracy vis-à-vis against ‘Islamic irrationalism’ while waging infinite wars abroad and assaulting civil liberties at home”.[34] Clearly, Mishra’s tone indicates that he finds much to complain of and much to condemn in the way the West has dealt with consequences of its own actions. Yet, this is not the sole example of such a snide remark. He also states, more in a more explicitly condemnatory manner, “in Europe and America, a common and effective response among reigning elites to unraveling national narratives and loss of legitimacy is fear-mongering against minorities and immigrants an insidious campaign that continuously feeds off the alienation and hostility it provokes”.[35] Here Mishra expresses his own personal thoughts, therefore it is no wonder that it contains more biting sarcasm and reprimands. It really explains the real challenge of the day. To Mishra, the challenge will be to stem the tide of ‘ressentiment’, which has resurfaced the world over in response to very real inequalities and oppressive environments. The conclusion of Mishra’s work is that confronting this challenge is extremely necessary, no matter how difficult it may seem or who is most responsible.

 Conclusion

Mimetic Rivalry, masculinity, Ressentiment, nationalism, and modernization are the important themes dealt with in this work. His central thesis is that the current “age of anger” demonstrated by the rise of Islamic State and right-wing nationalism across Europe and the The US  is best understood by looking at the 18th century. Mishra invokes the concept of “ressentiment”, or projecting resentment on to an external enemy; and the emergence of the “clash of civilizations” narrative, once used to justify imperialism and now used to turn Islamic extremism from a political challenge into an existential threat to the West. Mishra notes that disorder and violence naturally accompanied the coming of industrial capitalism in the Western world, citing the two World Wars and the rise of fascist governments in the early twentieth century. He argues that nationalist, isolationist, and chauvinist movements, ranging from terror groups such as ISIS to political movements such as Brexit, have emerged in response to the globalization and normalization of Western ideals such as individualism, capitalism, and secularism. Mishra here probes the roots of what it sees as a distinctly modern rage in order to sketch a history of our present gone mad. He considers anger as the spirit of our times. Mishra’s work leaves us to wonder; can we fight anger with anger, or will we have to find a new emotional engagement to usher in another age? He underlines the fact that modern society never delivered on its founding message of equality and democracy. Mishra ends with the present, an atomized, alienated world of social media.  Today’s politics of rage is the backlash of that broken promise.  Age of Anger is not a coherent doctrine but merely a postmodern collage.

Prepared by Shebin Joseph Cheeramvelil

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[1] PANKAJ MISHRA, Age of Anger, (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2017), 9.

[2] Ibid., 10.

[3]  Ibid., 14.

[4] Ibid., 16.

[5] Ibid., 17.

[6] Ibid., 33.

[7] Ibid., 25.

[8] Ibid., 30.

[9] Ibid., 49.

[10] Ibid., 53.

[11] Ibid., 54.

[12] Ibid., 69.

[13] Ibid., 96.

[14] Ibid., 115.

[15] Ibid., 114.

[16] Ibid., 119.

[17]  Ibid., 119.

[18] Ibid., 122.

[19] Ibid., 136.

[20] Ibid., 143.

[21] Ibid., 142.

[22] Ibid., 140.

[23] Ibid., 165.

[24] Ibid., 170.

[25] Ibid., 174.

[26] Ibid., 239.

[27] Ibid., 245.

[28] Ibid., 245.

[29] Ibid., 248.

[30] Ibid., 279.

[31] Ibid., 324.

[32] Ibid., 334.

[33] Ibid., 341.

[34] Ibid., 348.

[35] Ibid., 346.