Events

Visiting Speaker Event with Dr Hannah Proctor

Wild Justice: The Politics and Psychology of Revenge

Dr Proctor is a Research Fellow at the Centre for the Social History of Health and Healthcare, University of Strathclyde

Event details

Abstract

Hannah Proctor holds a Wellcome Trust University Award at the Centre for the Social History of Health and Healthcare at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. She is the author of two books: Psychologies in Revolution: Alexander Luria's 'Romantic Science' and Soviet Social History (published as part of the Palgrave Macmillan series 'Mental Health in Historical Perspective' in 2020) and Burnout: The Emotional Experience of Political Defeat (Verso, 2024). She is a member of the editorial collective of Radical Philosophy and a contributing editor at Parapraxis for whom she has written essays on Jean-Luc Godard, Soviet psychoanalysis during perestroika, and psychoanalytic analyses of the 1968 uprisings at Columbia University.  

This lecture will explore the politics and psychology of revenge, probing the relation between vengeance and justice. Can vengeance be justified or is the pursuit of justice necessarily distinct from the pursuit of vengeance? Exploring the excessive nature of revenge, understood as a means that exceeds ends, the paper will build on arguments about the relationship between mourning and militancy made in my book Burnout: The Emotional Experience of Political Defeat and return to discussions of vengeance in relation to questions of political violence in the work of figures including Frantz Fanon and CLR James to ask why political thinkers tend to be wary of affirming revenge. It will also discuss the function of psychological fantasies of revenge that are not acted on, asking what role fantasies play in historical moments where action against injustice can feel impossible.  

Location:

IAIS Building/LT2