If You're Not Angry, You're Not Paying Attention: Anger, Empathy, and Activism in Crisis

Abstract

If You're Not Angry, You're Not Paying Attention:Anger, Empathy, and Activism in Crisis Catherine Heiner (bio) Do you feel anger? This question, which provides both the title and general form for Mara Nelson-Greenberg's play, initially appears deceptively simple. Taking up Nelson-Greenberg's question as a challenge, I consider how anger operates in our particularly tense and uncertain moment. After all, what is anger? Should it be considered a trait—part of an individual's inherent personality revealed through their thoughts and actions? Or a state—a temporary condition that individuals experience for a short time before transitioning to a different condition ("Difference")? What might it mean to "feel" anger? What sensations, reactions, or impulses do we associate with anger? And whose anger do we justify? In her work on resilience, researcher Brené Brown conducted surveys asking participants to list all the emotions they could recognize and name. In reviewing more than seven thousand surveys across five years, Brown and her team identified that the average list included three emotions: happy, sad, and angry (xxi). While ninety-one percent of researchers studying emotion consider anger a primary emotion (Ekman 32), others contend that anger operates as a secondary emotion—a reaction tied to experiences of grief, injustice, shame, betrayal, or fear (Brown 221). When reacting to moments of injustice, anger can appear as the most immediate response on behalf of those who have been wronged, working in tandem with empathy. Empathy, which includes extending compassion and understanding toward the situation of another, can operate alongside anger in defense of marginalized or vulnerable populations. This catalyzing quality of anger has made it a prominent feature of social movements, namely in citing that "if you aren't angry, you aren't paying attention." (This quote has been attributed to several thinkers and writers over the years, including writers Michael Cunningham in a 1992 edition of Mother Jones magazine and Donald Kaul in 1989. Perhaps most recently musician Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine has received credit for the quote, however it has more accurately been attributed to Son Nun, a rapper on Morello's record label.)1 Although this drive toward action can make anger a valuable tool for activist movements, it can often mask or distract from larger issues—particularly when some reactions of anger get categorized as justifiable, while others are painted as unwarranted. Do You Feel Anger? first premiered at the Humana Festival in 2018, although I did not encounter it until 2021 in the midst of meetings for season selection. Nelson-Greenberg's play follows Sofia, an empathy coach recently hired by a debt collection agency, as she attempts to teach workers how to properly empathize. What begins as a straightforward office training quickly spirals out of her control, as she's confronted with employees who spend more time swearing at clients and attempting to hit on her than on self-reflection. Two male employees, Jordan and Howie, remain convinced that empathy is in fact a bird. (They never fully clarify if they mean that literally or metaphorically. Maybe both.) Their coworker Eva does her best to avoid inconveniencing anyone, even though she keeps getting mugged on her way to the kitchen. [End Page 37] Reading the script left me craving further discussion—particularly given the ways Nelson-Greenberg leaves such juicy space for a multiplicity of meanings. The emotionally inept characters provide an insightful look at the politics and power dynamics of emotion, demonstrating the pitfalls when "the problem is that some people's feelings matter more than others'" (Page-White 3). Taking up this idea more pragmatically, Nelson-Greenberg indicates in her notes on the play that it "deals with power, violence, and complicity, so please be aware of the story you are telling based on the actors you cast in each role" (6). My analysis here can only function as a gesture toward the play's dynamics with empathy and anger because of its reliance on the script. The line of questioning I follow seeks to engage the broad gender politics of Nelson-Greenberg's work; however, much like the playwright, I recognize that the affects of anger and...