Anger in festivals: Contradiction in terms or a desirable part of the program?

Abstract

Festivals, as their etymology suggests, are festive, celebratory occasions. They are also opportunities to have fun and forget the worries of the day. In such an understanding, aggression, anger, fear, frustration, and other negative emotions and attitudes are associated with attendee dissatisfaction and, as such, are hopefully exceptional conditions to be avoided through skilful event management. This paper challenges our conventional wisdom about festivals by bringing up the example of festivals of gender dissent (women's, feminist, LGBTQ+), which deliberately allocate parts of the program for the expression of anger and fear, to name a few of such negative emotions, through different art performances, workshops and dance. In particular, the paper examines whether and how the liminality of festivals i.e. their temporal and spatial exceptionalism allows for the disruption of culturally conditioned and gendered patterns of emotional expression and experience. In order to do so, the paper situates personal observations and interviews with festival organizers and performers within a broader framework of literature on emotions in critical event studies and anger and gender (dissent).