Disruptive Emotions and Affective Injustice Within an African-Inspired Relational Ethics What Has to Give?

• Published in: Theoria (Pietermaritzburg) Vol. 71; no. 179; pp. 28 - 52
• Main Author: Carman, Mary
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: Afrikaans; English
• Published: New York Berghahn Books, Inc 01-06-2024
• Subjects: Anger; Communitarianism; Emotions; Ethics; Injustice; Justice; Values; Violence
• ISSN: 0040-5817; 1558-5816
• DOI: 10.3167/th.2024.7117902

Abstract Forms of African relational ethics that prioritise the value of harmony struggle to accommodate arguably valuable disharmony, such as disruptive emotions like anger. A wider literature on political emotions has defended the value of such emotions and even proposed that a particular form of injustice, affective injustice, can arise if we fail to create space for them. While it has recently been proposed that Thaddeus Metz's African-inspired relational moral theory can accommodate disruptive emotions and address affective injustice, in this philosophical article I argue that any success that Metz's account has in this regard is superficial. This critique has important implications: either we need to engage further with disruptive emotions and affective injustice within an African relational ethics, or it may be the case that we instead need to return to how we conceptualise affective injustice to ensure that it does the justice-promoting work that we want it to do.