prowess. For a number of fundamentalists, donning a military uniform, car-
rying a gun, and willingness to die in combat, provide a valuable compen-
satory identity that provide piety and aggressive masculinity when the more
typical channels are blocked or limited.^54 Thus give the current conditions of
degradation and despair, many young men, and some women, find com-
munity, dignity and agency by linking themselves with the legacies of the
“heroic warriors” who created one of the great civilizations of the world.
Terrorism, when seen as the action of a “heroic warrior”, serves to empower
the person and restores his/her honor.
Fundamentalism provides a number of compensations for frustrated long-
ings and desires, not the least of which is valorizing a self-identity based on
moral virtue rather than material accomplishments. One of the fundamental
challenges to traditional expressions of selfhood has been the rate of tech-
nological and social change that has made a stable, cohesive sense of self
problematic. The pluralization of self that is so highly celebrated by Western
postmodernists, brings a great deal of anxiety, and even shame and self den-
igration for those without the resources to take advantage of the opportuni-
ties of modern societies. Moreover, an essential moment of later modernity
has been gender equality and erotic hedonism in both its life styles and pop-
ular culture. Fundamentalisms provide a stable, cohesive self identity, bound
by fixed rules and regulations, sustaining essentialist notions of gender hier-
archy, and clear-cut meaning systems that decry hedonism and any sexual-
ity outside of heterosexual male control.
- Ressentement: For Nietzsche, the subjugation of the Christians by the
Romans fostered ressentement on the part of the weak and powerless as a
form of self hatred. The slaves suppressed desire for revenge against their
masters and repressed their envy for the wealth, power and emotional/sex-
ual freedom of the Romans. This inward hate and loathing by the powerless
leads to the desire for revenge through the deaths and/or destruction of the
powerful and their material and psychic advantages. But unable to express
that anger, the slave embraced the values of kindness, mercy, charity and
humility in face of the power of his/her master. But in so doing, s/he hated
him/herself. His/her redirection of aggression to the self, embodied in the
internalization of the slave morality, sustained his/her subjugation.
330 • Lauren Langman
(^54) It might be also noted that the deeply ingrained gun culture of the US is not sim-
ply a product of the NRA and gun makers, but endures as a symbol of empowered
manhood.