What is ressentiment?

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I'm very tempted to use it in a review ("This book is six hundred pages of grinding rock ressentiment.") but I'd like to know exactly what it means before I do.

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Sunday, 9 March 2003 20:48 (twenty-three years ago)

Arrgh, dang italics.

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Sunday, 9 March 2003 20:49 (twenty-three years ago)

if dictionary.com is to be trusted, it's "A generalized feeling of resentment and often hostility harbored by one individual or group against another, especially chronically and with no means of direct expression".

― mitch lastnamewithheld (mitchlnw), Sunday, 9 March 2003 20:56 (twenty-three years ago)

cf. old ilm vs nu ilm

― mitch lastnamewithheld (mitchlnw), Sunday, 9 March 2003 20:57 (twenty-three years ago)

How direct is "direct," though? Is it still ressentiment if a person feels resentment towards this and that, but expresses only to a tiny minority of the already convinced?

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Sunday, 9 March 2003 21:14 (twenty-three years ago)

i think so. it colours the way you feel, infects your life. but it doesn't even have to be expressed. can't think of the essay i read about the notion...bah!

― gaz (gaz), Sunday, 9 March 2003 21:29 (twenty-three years ago)

I'm vague on the distinction between this and 'resentment', to be honest.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Sunday, 9 March 2003 21:54 (twenty-three years ago)

i'm wondering now what else i've read and has been important in defining my attitudes and which i now can't remember too clearly.

― gaz (gaz), Sunday, 9 March 2003 21:58 (twenty-three years ago)

The concept was developed by Nietzsche in the Geneology of Morals in terms of the master-slave dialectic.

Simon Reynolds says this, "Player-hating is hip hop's vernacular equivalent to Nietzche's concept of ressentiment--the self-defeating rancor and impotent rage of the oppressed towards the ruling class."

― Mary (Mary), Monday, 10 March 2003 02:56 (twenty-three years ago)

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