Feminist Anger in German-Language Cultural Production

Essays by feminist scholars of German Studies looking at how women-particularly women of color-have put their anger to use in German-language cultural production and how they themselves might do so in their scholarship.

In Germany and in Western culture more broadly, women experience anger in response to misogyny, racism, and other injustice, but open expression of that anger is often considered unwomanly. Yet a rich tradition of feminist thinkers of color-including Audre Lorde, Brittney Cooper, Amia Srinivasan, and Sara Ahmed-understands anger as energizing and imperative for structural change. How might we cultivate an anger that is affirming, inclusive, legitimate, creative, animating, and most of all, feminist?

This volume of essays by feminist scholars of German Studies-writing in dialogue with such thinkers while acknowledging their own largely white, privileged positionalities-looks at how women have put their anger to use in German-language cultural production and how they themselves might do so in their scholarship. The eleven contributions approach the topic of female anger intersectionally and transnationally. They examine angry women in the contexts of politics, activism, philosophy, economics, race, nationality, sexuality, illness, and humour. Covering a wide array of genres and discussing works from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries, they explore creators including writers, filmmakers, comedian/activists, musicians, and journalists. They investigate the tensions between the emotion of anger and the practice of being an angry woman, global responses to anger, and artistic representations of angry women in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.