Political Theory

H04(b) - Emotions, Affect, and Belonging in Politics

Date: Jun 3 | Time: 01:45pm to 03:15pm | Location:

Chair/Président/Présidente : Erich Daniel Luna Jacobs (University of Ottawa)

Discussant/Commentateur/Commentatrice : Justine Perron (University of Ottawa)

The motivational efficacy of solidarity practices: Patti Lenard (University of Ottawa), Emily Regan Wills (University of Ottawa)
Abstract: In this paper, we demonstrate that solidarity has several sources – shared identity, shared experiences of vulnerability/oppression, and shared practices, and then argue that the solidarity that emerges from shared practices has significant motivational power over the long term. To make this claim, we first examine the concept of solidarity as it is described in three distinct traditions: analytical political/moral theory, critical feminist theory and social movement theory. Of each of these traditions’ treatment of solidarity, we asked three questions: (i) how do these traditions define solidarity (what are the key dimensions/features of solidarity?) (ii) what is main the source of solidarity? and (iii) what does the presence of solidarity motivate us to do, specifically? In this review of solidarity traditions, our objective is to identify major differences and overlaps in the accounts of solidarity provided by these distinct theoretical traditions. Second, and with this background set, we argue that where solidarity emerges from specific practices – what we term solidarity practices – it is likely not only to motivate moral action, it is more likely than other forms of solidarity to do so in a sustainable way, over the longer term. That is, it is likely to be more robust against solidarity-straining challenges, including 1) deep disagreement (among those who are meant to be solidaristic) about how to achieve key objectives (and even what those objectives should be), 2) challenges in achieving shared objectives, and 3) the inevitable exhaustion that comes from carrying out solidaristic work. The theoretical claims we make in this paper draw on our examination of the LGBTQ+ transnational movement as it relates to supporting the migration of queer refugees to safety.

Pathologizing Victims: a Defense of Structural Resentment: Robert Spadidakis (McGill University), Catherine Lu (McGill University)
Abstract: Resentment is viewed by many as a pathological and destructive emotion. However, defenders of resentment argue that it is a legitimate response to injustice whereby victims assert their worth, rejecting the wrongs they have suffered. While resentment is often discussed in the context of interactional wrongs where there is a clear perpetrator who has directly injured a specific victim, its role in response to structural injustice is undertheorized. I defend the legitimacy of resentment towards unjust social, political, and economic structures. Since structural injustice does not involve identifiable blameworthy agents, resentments in such contexts are especially vulnerable to being pathologized. I argue that the object of structural resentment is not a specific unjust action, but the multitude of social processes that reinforce one’s vulnerability to systemic threats of domination and deprivation. Structural resentment is warranted when it expresses blame to multiple anonymous agents for failing to uphold their shared responsibilities to engage in collective action to dismantle unjust structures. I conclude by addressing arguments that favour the overcoming of resentment through forgiveness and reconciliation. I do this by critically analyzing the politics of reconciliation with Indigenous peoples in Canada. Insofar as Indigenous peoples’ resentment is directed often towards colonialism as an ongoing structure, their resentment tends to be invalidated by Canadians who view colonialism as a historical wrong. I demonstrate that the failure to accept the structural dimensions of colonialism and resentment depoliticizes reconciliation as a process of healing pathological psyches rather than structurally transforming the political order.

Feeling represented and the mobilization of affective experiences of hope: Antonin Lacelle-Webster (Yale University)
Abstract: What moves people into action is constantly negotiated, especially within the less defined and structured spaces of democratic politics. People engage with others and the world around them as they are moved by affective experiences that “stir[s], inhibit[s], intensify[ies], modulate[s], impede[s], and incite[s]” actions (Gould 2009, 439). In asking what moves people, I propose to explore what emotions are doing within democratic ecologies. Affective experiences mobilize groups as people negotiate the uncertainty of everyday life. They play an important yet overlooked role in the coming into being of constituencies and the creative and transformative potential of dynamic processes of representation. Against the uncertainty of politics and the open-endedness of its everyday experience, fear, anger, resentment, joy, love, and hope capture different ways of being with and representing others. In this paper, I propose to focus on what affective dynamics of collective hope do in relation to the making and moving of groups outside formal sites of politics. I argue that the temporal and spatial dimensions of these affective dynamics ground political experiences of hope in ways that contribute to motivating, orientating, and assessing multiple representative claims and acts of representation. Building on constructivist theories of representation and theories of hope, this paper seeks to conceptualize the emotional architecture of practices of representation across time and space. This approach provides a conceptual framework by which we can assess whether the affective language of hope can be mobilized to deepen democracy based on the types of representation it enables.

Hannah Arendt’s Contribution to Theorizing Loneliness: Schuyler Playford (University of Toronto)
Abstract: In this paper, I examine the foundations and the legacy of Arendt’s distinctive conception of loneliness. In the first section, I outline the philosophical concerns that are expressed in Arendt’s discussions of loneliness, focusing on her concern with ‘worldliness’ and its interrelation with thinking, i.e., the activity of inner duality. I situate Arendt’s criticism of anti-worldly philosophical movements in relation to these concerns. In the second section, I look at the intellectual connection between Arendt and the sociologist David Riesman, author of the seminal 1950 work The Lonely Crowd, with whom Arendt was in correspondence about the work’s themes in the years immediately preceding its publication. I take the correspondence between Arendt and Riesman as an opportunity to highlight the continuities between Riesman’s sociological inquiry into 20th century American conformism and Arendt’s view of modern mass society, noting their influence upon one another’s analysis of mid-century loneliness. In the third section of the paper, I consider Arendt’s contribution to the contemporary discourse on loneliness. The ‘epidemic of loneliness’ is a subject of increasing cultural and political relevance in the twenty-first century. Drawing on Arendt’s conception of loneliness, philosophers Adriana Cavarero, Ilaria Possenti, Jennifer Gaffney, and Diane Enns have turned to the recovery of the shared world as an antidote to contemporary mass loneliness and seemingly related political problems. I survey these ‘Arendtian’ interventions into contemporary philosophical and public policy conversations on the problem of loneliness to inform my assessment of Arendt’s theoretical contributions to our understanding of loneliness today.