The Cultural Politics of Emotion

Content Warning: Because The Cultural Politics of Emotion is concerned with the connection between emotion and the experiences of marginalized groups, this study guide frequently refers to bigotry and violence against these groups.

A key component of Ahmed’s discussion of what emotions do is her characterization of them as social and relational practices—active forces that circulate between people in ways heavily influenced by social scripts. She establishes the foundation of this characterization—that emotions are active forces—in the book’s Introduction. She concedes that “the everyday language of emotion is based on the presumption of interiority” (Location 237 of 6419). That is, habits of language often portray emotions as originating inside people or entering them from outside and taking up residence. But Ahmed disputes this idea, arguing that “emotions are not simply something ‘I’ or ‘we’ have […]. Emotions are not ‘in’ either the individual or the social […]. The objects of emotion take shape as effects of circulation” (Locations 272-279 of 6419). Emotions are not “things” that can be possessed, at all. Instead, emotions should be considered as forces circulating between people. Throughout the more extended arguments in Chapters 1-8, Ahmed explores how individual emotions like pain, shame, and love all exhibit this behavior of movement between people, circulating in affective economies where emotions become forms of capital, accruing value as they move between objects.