Manuela Günter: Jean Amérys Ressentiments

Abstract: Against the powerful disqualification of ressentiment as »slave morality« (Nietzsche) in the sense of a psychosocial defect of the »weak«, this essay aims to recall the critical appropriation of this concept. Jean Améry, a Holocaust survivor, substantiated ressentiment as a passive strategy of resistant survival and as a form of remembering the Shoah. His »victim ressentiment« allows him to remain in opposition to the official discourse of remembrance, which culturally appropriates the past in its talk of ›overcoming‹ and thus dispossesses the victims oftheir history. In Améry’s logic, ressentiment is an »expression of a morality of the highest order«. As such it appears as a legitimate and necessary attitude of the marginalized and discriminated. Against the assumed moral superiority of reconciliation, their ressentiments are indispensable in order to establish urgently needed moral imperatives against contempt for humanity of all kinds.

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