The third plait of the discourses of anger which form the braid of the analysis brings together the threads of interpersonal discourses in anger talk. In this and the two chapters follovving, I examine discourses which position anger in social relations. In this chapter I focus on anger as a response to injustice. In Chapter Eleven, I focus on anger as a means of negotiating social and interpersonal communication. In Chapter Twelve, I look at age and gender in participants' accounts to examine issues of status and power for women and children.
The previous two chapters traced in the texts the reproduction of the traditional construction of anger in psychology. The construct 'anger' is a compilation of discourses which reify anger, locate the constructed entity within individuals and within the body split from the mind. The practice of counselling within the discipline of p sychology is theoretically constrained by these discourses to privilege cognitive-behavioural approaches which emphasise cognitive control of barely controllable emotion. Wider counselling practice also takes up psychology discourses and talks about expressing internal anger for psychological and physiological health, and controlling anger for social safety. Throughout this thesis I have argued for a wider vie'w, that anger is of the social body, and arises in the spaces b etween persons, from social interactions with social functions. Social construction accounts (Averill, 1982, 1 986; Harre,
1 986) take up this approach, yet continue to reify anger as a unitary predictable phenomenon which is the socially appropriate response to injustice. Crawford et al. ( 1 992) take a different position in their memory work and state that anger is constituted in more social and interpersonal purposes than simply to protest against injustice.
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E thnographic studies of other cultures find anger spoken of as belonging to groups (Brenneis, 1 990; White, 1 990) which suggests that anger is culturally relative. Produced discursively and constituted in social practice, anger maintains and is maintained by the dominant world view of the given culture. In Western cultures anger is therefore reified and located within individuals. Psychology as a social institution produces and re-produces knowledge/ power (Foucault, 1972) and informs anger talk accordingly. The discourses of psychology I read in the texts were discussed in the previous chapter. \,yhile participants' accounts do reproduce traditional psychology discourses, other explanations are also utilised as in the defining talk presented in Chapter Seven. Interpersonal discourses in these texts are likewise varied, protesting injustice and also calling for changes in communication and power relations.
Anger constituted in the interpersonal
In our individualistic society, we place great importance on interpersonal relationships and intimacy . The social is constructed around the individual. The term 'interpersonal' connotes dyads, and many examples of anger in the texts are between the speaker and one other person. Emotions are spoken of as if on the boundaries between persons, as a form of communication. The telling of anger stories constitutes subjectivity in relation to an other. Anger is an indicator of power in that relating, and frequently functions to claim and shift power in relationships.
Anger stories have characters, usually the narrator and the people they live and work with. Subjects are frequently positioned in an observer metaposition which enables comment on how anger operates in interpersonal networks:
I now think anger is fundamentally a good and beneficial emotion, that we have been given the we've been given it, the potential for it for some reason, and I think if we can learn the skills to use it, i t should b e effective i n improving and enriching our lives and our relationships. (Rosemary)
Interpersonal politics . .. 1 08
The first person plural and lost performative "should" position the subject in the discourse of anger as interpersonal. All the texts include stories about being angry in relating intimately:
\'Vhich is the saddest part of it all I think because I get really angry with the ones I am closest to. But it's not just angry about them, it's angry about overall everything. (Karamu)
The auxiliary verb 'get' positions Karamu as subject of a middle voice action, with little agency. Anger is directed towards the generalised referential index 'ones' she is closest to, but the cause of anger is located not in (just) 'them', but in 'overall everything' . The double univers al quantifier 'overall everything' adds to the linguistic helplessness of the subject who is grammatically re-placed by the unspecified referential index 'it' . Anger in this utterance has no specificity, and the subject is a passive object of emotion. The close others are indeed indirect objects in this account, both indirect objects of the verb and of anger. This suggests that anger arises from wider social contexts outside the subject and that the legitimate expression of anger is limited to few people. The family recurs as the usual arena for legitimate anger expression, especially for women. In the next fragment, anger is the object in a communication game between partners, something like a tennis rally, where both players express anger nonverbally, leading to verbal negotiation:
Say, say I was angry at (partner) for doing something and I didn't tell him, then I'd become resentful at him because of what he'd done, and I hadn't told him so I'd become stressed and I'd be banging things around, or I'd not talk to him or I'd set up behaviours, set up conversations so that I could snap at him, he would then get angry at me for being angry at him and he wouldn't know why I was angry at him because I hadn't told him and then he would in turn, it's a just a vicious circle, just end up bouncing off each other. So you've got to at some point sit down and work out what's going on and what you're going to do about it, b ecause if you don't it's finished our relationship. (Melissa)
Interpersonal polltics ... 1 09 The conditional tense constructs a hypothetical example. The auxiliary verbs 'be' and 'become' add to the conj ectural language, and the negotiating phase is framed in the unreferenced second person. The last phrase lour relationship' positions the example in Melissa's own life. The conditional constitutes anger in general rather than a specific personal example, enabling subjectivity with knowledge of general principles about anger as interpersonal communication.
Anger stories in the texts are interpersonal stories, where anger is produced in social relations. Discourses of justice and fairness are invoked to bring into the centre of the story justifications for anger.
Anger as a response to injustice
Social construction accounts of anger fram e anger as a response to injustice (Averill, 1 982, 1 986: Harre, 1 986, 1 992), a discourse which is prevalent in the texts. Anger talk in the texts frequently warrants anger as a response to injustice and unfairness:
One day we had to bike to catch the bus to come into school and I had a comb stuck in my blazer pocket and we all used to carry combs then to make sure we looked how nice girls ought to look, and we got d own to the bus stop and she had forgotten her comb. I didn't want to share my comb with her, not at all, but she was powerful big sister and made me give her not only share it with her, but give her my comb for the day. I was really angry at that, there was nothing I could d o about that except to feel angry. We were out in the middle of a road, there was no door to slam, nothing to do except j ust anger. I can remember that feeling of anger. We talked about it since, she d oesn't actually remember the incident, but it's so clear in my mind. I think it was the unjustness of it that made me angry. I'd taken care to bring it, and perhaps I could have lent it to her, but she wanted it for the whole day, but it was the unjustness of it that triggered the anger. (Iris)
Sharing the comb would be just, but the person 'with more power, Iris' "powerful big sister" "made" her give it to her for the day, and that was