Anger Gaslighting and Affective Injustice

Nov 16, 2022 - Feb 5, 2023

Thursday, January 26, 2023 | 7:00 - 8:30PM (EDT) | Fully Online Lecture

Eligible for 1.5 CE for Psychologists and Social Workers. CEs for LMHC have been submitted for review to respective credentialing bodies.

Cost:

This event is free to the public. Please use the promotional code ETHICSERIES23 to register at no cost.

This event is $25 for practitioners seeking CEs for this lecture. As per the credentialing bodies, we can only grant CEs for attendance of live events. Please pay and register for the lecture so that we may keep track of your attendance. You CE registration status may not be changed after the event.

Description:

If gaslighting makes its target doubt herself, anger gaslighting makes its target doubt herself about her anger. Clinical psychologists have treated gaslighting as a form of psychological abuse in interpersonal relationships, but the term is increasingly being used to describe manipulative tactics used in politics and culture to support large-scale social injustices like sexism and racism. What is the injury and injustice of gaslighting in this broader sense?

Scholarship on gaslighting in feminist philosophy has tended to analyze it as epistemic injustice (an injustice that concerns knowledge and credibility). Focusing on anger gaslighting as a paradigm case, Dr. Shiloh Whitney argues that gaslighting can be an affective injustice (an injustice that concerns emotions and affective influence). Dr. Whitney adapts Marilyn Frye’s notion of “uptake” to identify the uniquely affective dimension of anger gaslighting. In order to identify what’s unjust about it, she then appeals both to contemporary scholarship on the moral psychology of anger and to a critical phenomenology of emotion to understand the moral and sociopolitical functions of anger, and to explain why anger gaslighting as a uniquely affective variety of both moral injury and a social injustice. Additionally, Dr. Whitney turns to some other cases to expand the account of affective injustice beyond anger and beyond gaslighting.

Learning Objectives:

Describe anger gaslighting behavior and its effects.
Identify contemporary arguments for the moral and sociopolitical functions of anger, and evaluate the moral injury and social injustice of anger gaslighting.
Apply the concept of uptake to anger gaslighting and other affective injustices.

Timeline and Requirements:

The lecture will take place on Thursday, January 26th, 2023. This lecture is presenter-led and is a fully virtual experience. This will be conducted synchronously online via Zoom from 7:00 - 8:30PM (EDT).

CE Sponsorship:

Application for CEs has been submitted for LMHC. We will update this section as soon as we hear back from the credentialing bodies.

University Counseling Services of Boston College is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. As a co-sponsor of this program, University Counseling Services of Boston College maintains responsibility for this program and its content. Participants will be eligible to receive 1.5 CE units from University Counseling Services of Boston College.

Application for MaMHCA/MCEAP continuing education credits has been submitted. Please contact us at lynchschoolpce@bc.edu for the status of CE’s for LMHCs.

This program has been approved for 1.5 Social Work Continuing Education hours for relicensure, in accordance with 258 CMR. NASW-MA Chapter CE Approval Program Authorization Number D91550.

Participants must attend the lecture in full and complete the post event survey to be eligible to receive CEs.

This lecture does not offer CEs for other clinicians not listed above.

Fees and Policies:

This event is free if you are NOT seeking CEs towards your license. If you plan on seeking CEs for this lecture, the cost is $25. Once you have registered for the class, your CE registration status is fixed and cannot be adjusted at a later time.

Payment is due by credit card at registration. Registration closes January 26th at the time of the lecture. Refunds will be granted only up to the time of the lecture.

Additional offerings from the Lynch School Professional & Continuing Education Office can be found on our website.

Presenter:

Dr. Shiloh Whitney is a critical phenomenologist and feminist philosopher leading efforts to theorize affective injustice and emotional labor. An Associate Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University, last academic year (2021/2022) she was also a research fellow in residence at the Humanities Institute at the University of Connecticut. Her book project on affective injustice aims to theorize uniquely affective varieties of injustice: just as epistemic injustices concern knowledge and credibility, affective injustices concern emotions and affective influence. Beginning with a study of the phenomenon of anger gaslighting as a paradigm case, she develops concepts for identifying and evaluating affective injustices and our agency to intervene in them. Affective life, she argues, is a powerful site of political struggle. Her published work on French thinkers such as Merleau-Ponty and Fanon (“Affective Intentionality and Affective injustice” and “From the Body Schema to the Historical-Racial Schema” are key publications) contributes to the emerging area of Critical Phenomenology by developing the phenomenological theory of the body schema into a theory of affect, and by offering a critical phenomenology of emotional experience and affective influence. Some key publications can be found in Hypatia, Philosophy and Social Criticism, Southern Journal of Philosophy, Chiasmi International, Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, and the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, and well as in the edited collection 50 Concepts for a Critical Phenomenology.

Full course description