Towards a typology of gendered rage

In dialogue with the six contributions to this special issue, here we offer a preliminary typography of the diverse forms of gendered rage which are helping to define our current moment. We suggest that contemporary manifestations of women's rage, and gendered rage more generally, can be broadly divided into three prevailing forms: voluble and visible; sublimated; and threshold. Rage as visible and voluble is most easily identifiable and arguably more likely to propel mass political mobilization and public demands for change. Sublimated rage, by contrast, avows negative effect only to transmute it into some other affective modality. Threshold rage simmers but does not necessarily erupt in spectacular or even as clearly discernible rageful form; it is less voluble, serving rather as a constant propulsive force that can propel individual and even collective action but can also lead to other more destructive or self-destructive affects. In short, and as all six articles underscore in different ways, neither women's rage nor gendered rage more generally is emancipatory or constructive in and of itself. Therefore, if we want to mobilize rage for emancipatory purposes, we need first to recognize that rage is always engendered in specific material, social, political and cultural conditions, where its iteration and reception is always inflected by one's subject position, and that rage's affective force is also always dependent on its relationship to and enmeshment with other affective states and modalities, which themselves are generated and circulate contextually.