All The Rage: The Fashion in Our Fury is Little More than a Refusal to Engage
by Saba Razvi
Slate.com features a gallery on its website called “The Year of Outrage,” in which it showcases a breakdown of the trending topic of outrage for each day of the year 2014. Yes, that’s right – each day. There are no date-gaps in the gallery, and it is easy to see that on every single day of the year, someone was outraged about something and took to the Internet to make that rage known by way of action. With so much impeccable anger, one might think that some significant progress may have been made on at least one of those 365 fronts, that beyond a trending melodrama of expression, some change or activism might, at least, have been seeded in the collective community to address so much grievance in meaningful ways. One might, in some important ways, be wrong. (One might also be right, in other ways, but that is a consideration for another time.) You see, it is fashionable to be worked up about things. It demonstrates to others what deeply-thinking, passionate, socially-conscious individuals we are – except, not really. It is not quite as fashionable to move into the realm of activism, something that borders dangerously on concepts like “revolution” or “radicalization” or other fanaticisms; we can abide a fandom more readily than a fanatic – and we do draw a distinction between their two domains.1
Fandoms are generally received as harmless obsessions, developing ideas with favor and positivity instead of challenging them with dangerous criticism, whereas fanatics remind us of the ephemerality and instability of all things – our power, our privilege, our comfort – by raising the stakes of conviction and obsession into some desire for change or action, whatever the cost. Outrage among fans and fanatics may both be born of a sense of betrayal of ideologies, but the latter often leads to broken bodies and kinetically energetic anger, whereas the former usually reminds us of broken-heartedness within otherwise static conditions. The extent to which we “mobilize” our passion, the stakes upon which its dealings are found, and the scale of influence of that volatile energy do matter. And so, the reception of outrageous sentiment must also be considered alongside the sincerity of its expression.
Similarly, we can draw a distinction between rage and outrage by examining the discourse of cultural controversy. In the acclaimed Smashing Pumpkins song, “Bullet With Butterfly Wings,” Billy Corgan sings, “despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in a cage,” expressing the melodramatically woeful frustration of an inexhaustible feeling: here is so much rage that it typifies the singer, and yet the singer has no agency to do anything about that feeling, however much he may repeatedly express it. In the aggressive, politically charged lyrics of Zack De La Rocha’s riotous band Rage Against The Machine, feeling moves beyond expression and into action (as the band is known for its activist leanings, we recognize that their words carry weight, that their energy is meant to strike instead of just ring out); its iconic song, “Killing in the Name,” moves beyond an expression of anger about police brutality, channeling it into a frenzy, achieved through the use of chant-like repetition and insistence alongside frenetic performance.2
This linguistic combination incites the listener to action, to embody an outrage that demands interventional action beyond simply the performative expression of feeling, to address the issue.3 Songs today do what poems have done for years; in our recent past, the political gestures of the 1960s were culturally disseminated through musical subculture, and in our contemporary world, the global communities that struggle against the strongest oppression find outlets in lyricism and poetry, even today. By examining lyrics that have transcended the page into idiomatic expression or cultural representation, we can connect to these intersections between complex sentiment and motivation for action, if not outcome. Dylan Thomas reminds us that sometimes life is typified by the rebellious desire to hold tight to what is ephemerally alive, that passionate feeling can be productive, and that we should “not go gentle into that good night. / Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”4 Unfortunately, less psychic affirmation presents itself in current trends involving inflammatory sentiment, where participants and spectators alike find less struggle and more shouting. In the conversation surrounding rage, outrage, and intellectual discourse in general, it is important to think about both context and aims, as well as to consider what attitudes about the contemporary human condition emerge from these phenomena.
At the heart of our outrageous zeitgeist seems to be a tension between a cultural willingness to confront ugliness or darkness with compassion and a desire to repudiate its existence with vehemence of voice; the former makes for constructive discourse, while the latter shuts down not only discourse, but any hope of progress by means of spectacular obfuscation. If we think of Debord’s idea of the role of spectacle in modern life 5, imagining the disruption between social relations and the ways in which situations are perpetuated, we can make sense of the use of rage or outrage as elements of progress. However, as our feelings about literature and culture have been filtered through the legacies of postmodernism, detachment, and skepticism, and as our contemporary experiences have become mediated by allegiances to technologies and empirical evidence that amplifies our desire for instant gratification, our senses of connection have become conflated in a meta-modernist capacity. We seek a proximity borne of distance, and a detachment made from intimacy. We, as a culture, tend to gravitate toward the sensational and respond in dramatic ways, focusing on domination or escalation instead of compassion or acceptance, perhaps because it simulates a sense of frustrated agency left to us by our experiences of instability, insecurity, precarity, and obligation.
Confrontation breeds the possibility of contamination, the ultimate collapse of separation. Literature and culture that bring us too close to the uncomfortable seem to create not dialogue but clamor. So, instead of that confrontation enabled by a discourse about those incredibly difficult, complicated topics, we choose demand and complaint – a simple, reductive cry to dispel the monsters in the shadows, and all the shadows besides. Where are all the men who must account for the violence of the patriarchy? Where are all the non-European immigrants who must decry terrorism and pledge obvious allegiance to each member of the country? Where are the women who shed their damsel-in-dress couture for the sexless androgyny of the power of denial?6 And why do all of these things seem utterly ridiculous?
Well, aren’t they? Is that all we’ve come down to – a false binary of “with us or against us” that must be worn on every sleeve or sound-byte? Somewhere in the wake of the very real atrocities in the world – in the Charlie Hebdo attacks and the massacres in Gaza, in the video game-like violence and cruelty of Elliot Rodgers or its meta-modern reflections in poetry, in the Open Letters to accountable women or foreign nations, in the question of whether three young professionals were murdered in a hate crime or a parking dispute – we have discovered that everything is equally atrocious and that instead of the painful act of addressing any of it squarely, we should simply refuse to engage in discourse, instead ranting and raging about the words carried by the messengers over the issues their words signify.7 After all, if we repudiate the ugly, it won’t have a chance to infect us.
Ugly, unpalatable, unpleasant, and painful stuff exists in the world – and being mad at it won’t make it go away. People sensationalize things to distance themselves from the implications, consequences, or ideas associated with the questionable; this is where rage shifts into outrage. Not only must the idea be repudiated, but there should be no way to mistake that repudiation, and so “allegiance” is demonstrated by action. Is dissent the same thing as defiance? Or is there some way that honoring a sincere examination of events with some intellectual distance might afford something more than a waving flag wrapped around a fist waving a gun as an affirmational gesture of righteousness? Just as binary distinctions between accepting the monstrous unconditionally and rejecting the monstrous unquestioningly are insufficient, the refusal to engage with the ugly side of life, obfuscated by anger, is the result of giving in to rage and outrage. Rage at the right of a thing to be expressed or to exist, or outrage that intervenes based on the self-righteous assumption that the rage is universally shared, are refusals to face the demonic, the bestial, the monstrous.
In the face of so much darkness, many feel utterly helpless. Perhaps displays of outrage, however ultimately futile they may be for most of us on the internet, have begun to gain greater appeal because they afford us a sense of hope and potential power, instead of just shame and helplessness. Passion and conviction have long been held as key in resisting defeat by obstacles, in fighting an obstinate struggle, and in pushing back against oppressive ideologies. And, while we may not really like our sentiment to be unironic anymore, we certainly want our passion to be sincere!
We express our feelings as if doing so will effect change; our culture’s sense of entitlement and privilege has conditioned us to believe that a complaint will be met with action and remediation, especially when it is expressed passionately and angrily, in a way that makes a spectacle or a scene. Why write an open letter instead of a private one? There is strength in numbers, there is support in strength, and that support creates a kind of pressure, one which implies that non-action is a non-possibility. So we expect that when we complain loudly and angrily, something will change – and when it doesn’t, we turn to outrage, to an expression that seems interventional and deliberate. When acts of outrage committed in response to literature, culture, and life are hyperbolic, they divorce themselves from the consequences that a more directly motivated expression of activism might make possible. Is it self-sabotage or defiant militarism that asks us to behave in egregious ways, compliant with the spectacle rather than the thought? Those latter gestures of activism or outreach are usually quiet, though – reasonable discourse on Twitter or the Blogosphere is either dominated by keyboard warriors or largely unnoticed by the wider audiences – and they do not make as much fuss — which matters when the world is full of so much soundbite and fury. Professors reading YikYak complaints or Rate My Professor reviews on YouTube videos are funny, but they don’t stick in the mind as much as the insults themselves; individuals on viral videos reading hate-mail posts about their communities with incredulity entertain the audience, but only as long as there is an open-minded audience to listen. It’s the outrageous that generates attention, audience, and propagation. People who catch “outrage fever” feel the need to express themselves, exert themselves on a world stage, often doing so through the pseudonymous, detached planes of cyberspace. It is easy to be an armchair critic because so little is at stake; the un-reality of virtual life and cyber-connections encourages a sort of activism without consequence or thought – and it often looks like condemnation, like an outrage summoned in order to push away an ideological boogeyman.
After all, rage looks a lot like passion; it gets people worked up. It rallies them out of their complacency. It implies that caring about our world and the people in it is worthwhile. And that’s the kind of hope that we can hang on to – without admitting too much vulnerability — vulnerability that might lead to setting down arms and relinquishing the catalytic fear that supports our banners of hostility. Both rage and outrage feed off of the insecurity of the contemporary condition. When rage moves into the realm of outrage, when it blends into the concept of outrage, it manifests almost as an obfuscationary tactic that garners a lot of support and can easily fit into the agenda of zealots (secular and religious alike), fear-mongers, and panic merchants. It blows up the idea of taking a stand and often does so without even questioning whether a stand should be taken. In the lessons of classical rhetoric, one learns that it can be helpful to meet in the middle in order to solve a problem or discuss a problem with an eye toward resolution, but a cool head makes for a pathetic spectacle, and without a spectacle, what is there to entertain?
Meeting in the middle, however, whether one intends to discuss an issue or consider its dimensions, whether one intends to compromise one’s power and privilege or simply exert it, comes with risk. Consideration of the other side of the discussion requires vulnerability. And, in some instances, an empathetic conversation can do more to connect the disparate ideas of opposing viewpoints than a willful wielding of power and privilege can do. You don’t talk a man off of a ledge with a SWAT team, but with a psychologist. Unfortunately, among highly charged issues, people are afraid of the consequences of losing power, losing face, or losing privilege, and vulnerability is perceived as weakness. When dealing with reproductive rights, marriage equality, gender equity, and racial equality, especially in arenas that have been long troubled with inequality and oppression, the conversation becomes highly charged, inflammatory, and unintentionally volatile; in these instances, guilt and guile are not the best opportunities for growth or development, as they reduce the issue into a rudimentary polemic. Defensive, reactionary, affronted language does seem to achieve certain outcomes; while it isn’t the case that every offended or outraged person is actively seeking change, the two are conflated in our culture, at least in popular discourse. At times, discussion is seen as negotiation with undesirable others. And, yet, sometimes, instead of taking a stand, it can be useful to deliberate, to consider the other side in the context of discourse as well as action. Rage is a refusal to see the other side, to examine the issue with compassion or empathy, a desire to push aggressively forward the refusal to engage in meaningful discourse. Rage is a refusal to come to the table to talk because one risks not getting one’s way. Better to huff and puff and blow the matter down than to seem indifferent (or too vulnerable) to the condition of insecurity that pervades modern life.
Of course, I don’t advocate for the removal of passionate discourse; sometimes one needs to upset the apples in the cart, and sometimes one needs to upset the whole cart of apples to sort out the good and the bad; the approach varies with the occasion. Without passion and conviction, human experiences become flattened and lifeless. There is no beauty without the grotesque. Passion, engagement, sincerity, and criticism create dynamism in life, dynamism which might at times feel like instability for a short while. Critical inquiry and examination, however, are not anathema to a passionate experience of life or even certainty, though they may not provide an unconditional squadron of cheerleader energy. Whereas critical inquiry invites skepticism and investigation to discuss and bring forth a conversation, whereas it seeks to take a thing apart in order to make sense of it and then potentially move toward some action, rage and outrage do the opposite: in seeking to create harmony and shut out discord by way of compliance and blind obeisance to the loudest voice in the room, they shut the door on discourse. It becomes very difficult, then, to criticize individual responsibilities in acts of atrocity without somehow blaming the victim; the outrage bunnies seem to imply that we cannot even question one side without aligning ourselves with the other. This is a deliberate shut-down of discourse – and it serves no progressive, productive social end. Perhaps one key to progress is awareness: intellectual and cultural issues should not fall into the trap that equates passion with bluster.
Rage is important for revolution, but not all things are the basis for revolution; sometimes, “methinks the Lady doth protest too much” to seem credible. People are lately writing “open letters” without even stopping to question whether the open letter is the appropriate venue for that discourse. In the case of diplomacy, one might pause to think about implications carried by an interruption of otherwise appropriate means. Should people intervene without considering consequences? What is the value of the private appeal and what is the value of trying to garner a show of support by making that appeal public and pressuring the hand of the actors? Consent and compromise are complicated further by making a public spectacle or a display of power out of a conflict that might better be handled with less collateral damage; and that is worth considering because change doesn’t come from actions that are pressured constantly, though compliance does – sometimes carrying resentment with it. The problem with outrage in these cases is that it disrupts the process that is already taking place; sometimes that outrage is helpful because it can stall a problematic process and draw attention to a need for larger structural evaluation, but that doesn’t always need to be the case. In the case of Elizabeth Ellen’s, one might read the letter itself before railing against it.8 Along with critical inquiry, it seems that rhetorical awareness has fallen out of fashion. But really, can we not consider what Bradley’s poems ask us to question? Can we not seek the root of Hash-Berryman’s stance? And, can we chronicle the pain represented by Abramson’s verses without decrying an exploitation?
When the mob mentality takes over in response, people are in a frenzy and they do not stop to think about consequences of shutting down discourse in such an important struggle. Rage and outrage have a place in the discourse, but not every discourse needs to fall into the false binary of rage vs. acceptance, or outrage vs. endorsement, or us vs. them. This may be a difficult binary for us to overcome, as a culture: mob mentality, rampant in modern life and discourse, feeds from the open veins of all that rage. People get all worked up, and an idea gathers momentum, and that kinda feels a little bit like progress to people who can’t seem to access their belief in their own agency to create the changes they seek. And as the snowballing sentiment becomes outrage, people begin to feel that all this collected, shared emotion now must yield some kind of action – even if that action is condemning everyone who sees that sentiment in a contrary light. The problem is, that it isn’t progress.
In literature, as in discourse about literature, we can also find representations alternative to such a striking back of reactionary sentiment, a cultivation of diplomacy and discourse. Consider CP Cavafy’s famous poem “Waiting for the Barbarians,” in which a city stands at the edge of collapse and takeover by barbaric foreign invaders, its leaders poised to hand over rule and riches alike, while its citizens watch the imminent exchange and question the terrifying, imminent dread that accompanies such a change, however expected it may be. When the barbarians never arrive, Cavafy leaves us with the echoing question of agency – not with revolution or battle cry, not with fury or aggression, but with the simple feeling as a result of inquiry and discourse that perhaps something can, after all be done. The discourse raises the issue of logic and acceptance, but is ultimately left unrealized in action, though it is present in language. All that fear and fury were brought to the surface in response to the barbarians beyond the borders, due to arrive at any moment, and yet without those barbarians to receive the action generated by that feeling, what will happen to all the fear, the energy, the motivation, and the mobilized feeling? Cavafy leaves us to think about the language that stands in place of any action. Through language comes consideration and possibility; through dialogue and diplomacy may come cooperation, some possibility for that energy and desire for change to be deliberately used in shaping a new structure for the society depicted in his poem. It is the kind of reasoned discourse that is capable of seeking resolution instead of just fanning the flames in fear of the potential of barbaric siege, one we seldom see in a contemporary public discourse so aggressively quick to turn any statement into a stand, unquestioningly, or into an Internet Flame War.
Rage and outrage make a place for progress, at times – when they fuel acts of art and expression, when they motivate movements of resistance against tyranny, when they stand against oppression and with community, when they catalyze discourse and real action. The kinds of rage that have become popular in discourse about human issues and literary ones, political issues and personal narratives – these are the kinds of outrage that burn up the light that might otherwise illuminate the shadows and the monstrous within them. They frequently reinforce our fears of vulnerability, and do not make a place for progress but place an obstacle before it. Rage is not passion. Outrage is not activism. Dominance is not power. Not every struggle must make a noisy clamor because discourse can seek resolution instead of spectacular escalation. And, a dramatic, sensationalized ruckus is not progress, just as a storm in a teacup is not a fucking cyclone.
1The way I see it: we tend to see the former as support, culminating in the idea of the cheerleader or groupie, but we see the latter as tyrannical, imagined as the terror-peddler or kamikaze. The former speaks to hope, while the latter evokes desperation.
2It is possible to use words that are insistent in a performance that is muted. That combination of content and form is pretty common in our culture and comes across as a plaintive expression. It is possible also to use plain speech, simple words in a forceful manner, something we often associate with politics and propaganda. But, the combination of insistence in word-choice and reiteratively forceful performativity is a lot like the language of revolution and upheaval.
3Just as not every complaint needs to be addressed and not every problem that needs the same solution, so not every artist will create work rooted in a desire to make change. The registers by which we acknowledge these differences are apparent if we look carefully at both the content and the context of the work; similarly, people in our culture speak out frequently and sometimes in dramatic ways, but there is a difference between seeking attention and appealing to the interventionally protective spirit of the audience. Often, these differences have to do with how power is utilized and recognized among those uttering the expression and how it is received by their audiences.
4I’m trying to say that Dylan reminds us how important it is to fight for our lives, to remember that life is precious. However, not everything has the same stakes. We must choose our battles. Not every conflict is a battle against death. Not every gesture is an act worthy of immortal valor. We should rage against the dying of the light so that we don’t die before we have lived; but we should not rage about every light that we see shining before us in the darkness we define as the world. The contemporary condition is so shaped by fear-mongering and panic that everything is dark and dangerous, every light stands for a beacon of hope, only…allowing that to happen makes everything devoid of value, really.
5Links for reader reference:
6I suppose I mean repudiation of their rights to be either/both. Our society expects women to be either sexed or unsexed, but doesn’t really give women the equal option of being both. Women who hold power are expected to deny some essential woman-ness in order to hold that power, or they are expected to deny the desire for power in order to remain desirable. Not much has changed since George Eliot wrote Middlemarch, unfortunately.
We hold all of a group accountable for the fanatics and extremists of that group, simply because it is easier to demand order than it is to confront complexity of structure. Our zeitgeist’s desire to be overly binary in our choices and allegiances presents a “with us or against us” mentality, even in thought, which interferes with consideration of any depth. All questions become ultimatums in the public discourse because one is either a hero or an enemy combatant, one is either an enemy combatant or collateral damage. The grey is infectious, the ambiguity unacceptable. Not all men are violent, not all terrorists are brown, and not all powerful women are interested in dominating discourse; and yet, focusing on these things are what fuels outrage instead consideration. It is easier to be affronted and offended by things, instead of considering their complexities with open-minded discussion, especially when those things defy our labels, when they deviate from our expectations in arenas or zones that we consider dangerous. It is easier to reject the thing that defies easy categorization than to restructure ideologies, and outrage serves as the passionate conviction that protects the status quo, even as it behaves as if it demands attention. Note that activism requires that the attention be motivated, whereas in most public discourse today, the attention shifts on to the next calamity before that energy has become activated. We can rage against the dying light to hold on for a while, but we can’t become immortal; so we can choose to leave a legacy or we can choose to cry out in complaint. Today’s anger just wants to be vented, not harnessed. Most people won’t care enough to follow up on the things about which they are worked up.
7Our culture wants black and white, not grey, because it’s easier to negotiate a nebulous world at war when we know how to identify the good guys and the bad guys. The trouble is that life is never so simple. If we acknowledge that hate crimes against Muslims really do exist and that our free and ideal society contains social problems of racial identity, it’s harder to identify the enemy – because we must acknowledge that not all Muslims are problematic; and so the wars of the Middle East come into question, as do our ideas about inclusivity and acceptance in American cultural identity. If we question people’s obsession with Eliot Rodgers and violent spectacle, we must also think about the ways in which male privilege, white privilege, and mental illness intersect with criminality, with hate crimes against women, with the glorification of violence in a culture typified, of late, by warfare and traditional patriarchal values. These questions challenge the paradigms of gender, race, and power in our society. If we acknowledge that consent isn’t always a clearly discernible yes or no, then we have to question what power structures create conditions of duress that complicate consent, as well as individual freedom. If we focus only on the painful atrocity of the Charlie Hebdo killings and not on the context of warfare, oppression, and provocation in which they occurred, then we ignore the larger context within which we must consider free speech, which is essentially why free speech is so important. None of these problems can be split into easy binary schisms of black and white, but anger and outrage fuel the possibility of flattening our discourse into “good guys” and “bad guys,” making it easier to target one issue instead of the larger structural problems through which otherwise innocent and well-meaning individuals become complicit in social ills.
8Even if her arguments are sometimes troubling and unappealing, she does raise some important questions of awareness and consideration before action that are worthy of discussion. By claiming that she contravenes progress and damages solidarity just by asking those questions, by vilifying her discourse (which is what that mob mentality seems to be doing), we lose an opportunity for meaningful discourse that might be productive! “How dare you raise these questions!?” Well, let’s look at the questions before we answer that.
Saba Razvi‘s collection of poems, Of the Divining and the Dead, is available through Finishing Line Press. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, and she has given readings in Los Angeles, Vancouver, Omaha, Honolulu, Glasgow & Stirling in Scotland, Lismore & Dublin in Ireland, Dallas, and in Austin, TX. She holds a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California and a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Texas. She teaches writing and literature at the University of Houston.
