Ahmed, Sarah. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. New York: Routledge, 2004.
Agenda: to explore “how emotions work to shape the ‘surfaces’ of individual and collective bodies.” (1) Starts by examining the discourse of Britain as too emotional, to soft a nation which works as a mobilization instrument for nationalist groups. “Soft national body is a feminised body, which is ‘penetrated’ or ‘invaded’ by others.” (2) Emotions perform multiple social roles, including securing social hierarchies. (4)
Theoretical discussion of what emotions are: “Emotions are both about objects, which they hence shape, and are also shaped by contact with objects.” (7) These makes emotions (a) social and (b) affective, where “feelings do not reside in subjects or objects, but are produced as effects of circulation.” (8) “Emotions should not be regarded as psychological states, but as social and cultural practices.” (9)
“Affective economies” – an excellent metaphor describing how the circulation of emotions in any given society involves its own logic independent of the primary referents of emotions; affective economies provide symbolic resources to organize social reality (thus becoming, in Zizek’s terms, parts of the ideology) – Ahmed is drawing on different examples of hate in the British society to demonstrate how certain political groups use the discourse of hate to mobilize the society against immigration or to reinforce the institute of private property. Hate becomes an important social phenomenon, as different forms of hate form alliances. In “economies of hate,” the very existence of certain selves and communities depends on hate, as “hate is involved in the very negotiation of boundaries between selves and others, and between communities, where ‘others’ are brought into the sphere of my or our existence as a threat.” (51) This relationship is somewhat more complex, actually, as “an ‘I’ that declares itself as hating an other... comes into existence by also declaring its love for that which is threatened by this imagined other (the nation, the community and so on).” (51)
Agenda: to explore “how emotions work to shape the ‘surfaces’ of individual and collective bodies.” (1) Starts by examining the discourse of Britain as too emotional, to soft a nation which works as a mobilization instrument for nationalist groups. “Soft national body is a feminised body, which is ‘penetrated’ or ‘invaded’ by others.” (2) Emotions perform multiple social roles, including securing social hierarchies. (4)
Theoretical discussion of what emotions are: “Emotions are both about objects, which they hence shape, and are also shaped by contact with objects.” (7) These makes emotions (a) social and (b) affective, where “feelings do not reside in subjects or objects, but are produced as effects of circulation.” (8) “Emotions should not be regarded as psychological states, but as social and cultural practices.” (9)
“Affective economies” – an excellent metaphor describing how the circulation of emotions in any given society involves its own logic independent of the primary referents of emotions; affective economies provide symbolic resources to organize social reality (thus becoming, in Zizek’s terms, parts of the ideology) – Ahmed is drawing on different examples of hate in the British society to demonstrate how certain political groups use the discourse of hate to mobilize the society against immigration or to reinforce the institute of private property. Hate becomes an important social phenomenon, as different forms of hate form alliances. In “economies of hate,” the very existence of certain selves and communities depends on hate, as “hate is involved in the very negotiation of boundaries between selves and others, and between communities, where ‘others’ are brought into the sphere of my or our existence as a threat.” (51) This relationship is somewhat more complex, actually, as “an ‘I’ that declares itself as hating an other... comes into existence by also declaring its love for that which is threatened by this imagined other (the nation, the community and so on).” (51)
A perfect quotation explaining the Soviet affection to
imported commodities or affection of former prisoners of Finnish camps to their
traumatic experience: “It is through affective encounters that objects and
others are perceived as having attributes, which ‘gives’ the subject an identity
that is apart from others (for example, as the real victim or as the threatened
nation).” (52-53)
Affective politics of fear: “fear works to secure the
relationship between... bodies.” (63) Like other forms of discourse, fear works
as by referring to past “histories of association” (cf. Western construction of
the Soviet Union as oriental and associated with disease during the Cold War).
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