The Cultural Politics of Emotion - Sara Ahmed

Introduction

For further reading on theories of emotion Sara Ahmed recommends following texts:

Campbell 1994 -> dismissing women

Lewis & Haviland 1993 -> interdisciplinary collection on emotions

Lupton 1998 -> interdisciplinary approach to emotions

Strongman 2003 ->psychological approach to emotions

Kemper 1990-> sociological collections

Bendelow & Williams 1998 -> sociological collections

Lutz 1988 -> anthropological approach

Solomon 2003 -> philosophical collection

Reddy 2001 -> historical approach

There is a significant split in theories of emotions:

BODILY SENSATION (William James, Descartes, David Hume) VS COGNITION (Aristotele, Solomon)

BODILY SENSATION: Emotion is the feeling of bodily change. We feel fear because heart is racing and we're sweating. No thought and evaluation involved.

COGNITION: Emotions involve judgements, attitudes etc

Many theorists suggest, that emotions involve judgement or bodily feelings as well as forms of cognition. Descartes "The passions of the Soul" talks about the relation between bodily sensation, emotion and judgement (vielleicht eher Sekundärliteratur lesen). Descartes (1985, 349) suggests that objects do not excite diverse passions because they are diverse, but because of the diverse way in which they may harm or help us.

Sara Ahmed states that the distinction between sensation and emotion can only be analytic. She uses the term impression to avoid having to make the distinction between bodily sensation, emotion and thought.

"Rethinking the place of the object of feeling will allow us to reconsider the relation between sensation and emotion. ... Emotions are intentional in the sense that they are "about" something. They involve a direction or orientation towards an object. Meaning the involve a stance of the world. Emotions are both: About an object which they shape and are also shaped by contact with the object (the object can also be a memory). "

"Primal scene" in psychology of emotions: Child & Bear

"Emotions are relational: They involve (re)actions or relations of towardness or awayness in relation to an object. The are "free"."

If the object of feeling both shapes and is shaped by emotion, then the object of feeling is never simply before the subject.

According to Sara Ahmed the theory of affect by Tomkins 1963 is comparable to her approach to emotions. Emotions are "free". they are contingent (involve contact) and they are "sticky". They can stick with some objects and slide over to others. Feelings are produced as effects of circulation of objects (see sociality of emotion in chapter 2).

INSIDE OUT AND OUTSIDE IN

INSIDE OUT

According to Sara Ahmed in everyday language there are presumptions of an interiority to emotions.

The model of emotions as interiority is cruicial to psychology. I have feelings and they are mine. I can express them and they become yours too. You can respond. If you sympathize: fellow-feeling and if you don't understand: Alienation. Sara Ahmed critisizes this idea of expressions of emotions being the externalisation of an internal state which is distinct and given. The logic of this model is: I have feelings, which then move outwards towards objects and others, and which might even return to me. -> Inside Out Model The critique is that emotions should not be regarded as psychological states, but as social and cultural practices. For further reading on that refer to:

Lutz & Abu-Lughod 1990

White 1993: 29

Rosaldo 1984: 138, 141

Hochschild 1983: 5

Kemper 1978:1

Katz 1999: 2

Williams 2001: 73

Collins 1990: 27

Durkheim 1966: 4

Sara Ahmeds Model of Sociality is informed by these texts.

Durkheim: His theory suggests that emotions are a social form rather than individual self expression. He considers the rise of emotion in crowds, suggesting that such great movements of feeling do not originate in any one of the particular individual consciousnesses, the feelings come from without. Durkheim later works on religion. For him emotions don't come from the individual body, but it is what holds or binds the social body together. (Collins 1990: 2)

OUTSIDE IN

Emotions are assumed to come from the outside moving inwards. This idea is evident to crowd psychology. The individual feels the crowds emotions as ones own. The critique on this theory is that the outside-in assumes that emotions are something "we have". Feelings become a form of social presence rather then self-presence.

Sara Ahmeds Model Of Sociality of Emotions

I suggest that emotions create the very effect of the surfaces and boundaries that allow us to distinguish an inside and an outside in the first place. So emotions are not simply something I/we have. Rather, it is through emotions, or how we respond to objects and others, that surfaces or boundaries are made: The I and the WE are shaped by, and even take the shape of, contact with others. She suggests that emotions are crucial to the very constitution of the psychic and the social as objects, a process which suggests that the objectivity of the psychic and the social is an effect rather than a cause. She states that objects of emotion take shape as effects of circulation (?). How so she will show.