The currency of "hurt" as a claim to, and pretext for, political correctionism―and often taking recourse to the logic of the antipopular as anti-State―has erected a machinery of censorship governed by the economies and excesses of a "marketplace of outrage." This volume seeks to map this ready vocabulary of a potential victimhood and its consequent excuse for repressive regimes of State vigilantism.

It investigates the ways in which such "hurt" is expressed and abetted by the State or its actors, staged by popular media and often subsumed as public opinion. It builds the necessary structure of argument around the idea of "hurt" with reference to recent political events, the history of sentimental mobilizations and various kinds of censorship attempts in India.