Theorising community rage for decolonial action

Abstract

Rage is under-theorised in South Africa. This absence is more pronounced in psychological scholarship. This is a remarkable oversight since we have gained infamy as the world’s epicentre of protest action. In this article, I read the landscape of scholarly production to conduct an analysis of how community rage and protests are made sense of. The analysis focuses on work from the past decade as it has been reported that this period has witnessed the greatest intensity of protest action within the post-apartheid period. I contend that protests are a form of community rage at sedimented oppressions. I demonstrate that the expression of community rage provides us the opportunity to work towards our collective decolonisation. In this analysis, I offer that affective meaning making in the theorisation of rage can craft a scholarship that enables praxis towards decolonial action.