This paper investigates Audre Lord’s intuitive claim that anger is a progressive emotion, developing the theoretical context that underwrites this critical insight. Drawing on Martha Nussbaum’s work on emotions, the paper argues that anger is a cognitive and evaluative emotion, containing assertoric propositions which are amenable to discourse. Beginning form the cognitivist view of emotions, the normative grammar of a progressive expression of anger is brought into the preview of Jürgen Habermas’ discourse ethics. Despite the strategic nature of anger as an assertion of particularistic grievance, the work of Arash Abizadeh expands communicative action to encompass speech acts with perlocutionary aims, repositioning the propositional content of anger as the motivationally efficacious component of discursive engagement. This however is only achieved within the bounded space of institutions nurturing of civic engagement through the medium of talk. The later part of the paper develops the dialectic between the institutional space of the public sphere and that of its counterpublics, where diffuse experiences of anger are conditioned and refined by the plurality of perspectives comprising counterpublics for the purpose of therapeutic grievance airing, identity confirming discourse, and the dialogical development of political interests.