Iván Vial

This article addresses a central yet under-thematized aspect of Hartmut Rosa’s influential theory of resonance: the exclusion of ‘negative resonance.’ Rosa characterizes resonance as a responsive and transformative relation to the world. For him, whereas resonance is inherently tied to the ‘good life,’ negative emotions and relations constitute forms of alienation. However, upon closer inspection, this latter claim rests on a phenomenal misreading of the structure of negative affective experiences. We argue that negative emotions may exhibit all the experiential features Rosa attaches to resonance. To prove our point, we first present the phenomenological forerunner of Rosa’s concept: Fuchs’ notion of bodily resonance, which takes both positive and negative forms. By contrast, Rosa’s eudemonic conception leads him to erroneously regard negative affects such as hostility as forms of alienation. We then explore Rosa’s additional arguments for disregarding negative resonance, arguing that his account centers on the attunement between affectivity and evaluative experience—a “value resonance”. Acknowledging this value dimension not covered by bodily resonance alone, we draw on Husserl’s analysis of affectivity and axiological consciousness to provide phenomenological clarification. We propose a phenomenological model of resonant emotion encompassing both Fuchs’ and Rosa’s accounts. This model renders negative resonance as devotion to negative values (e.g., “bad,” “ugly,” “hostile”) arising in negative emotions endowed with bodily resonance. We demonstrate this thesis by describing hatred and indignation as concrete cases of negative resonance. We conclude that not all resonance is “positive,” and as shown by indignation, not all negative resonance is “bad.”