"The emotion of hate works to animate the ordinary subject, to bring fantasy to life, precisely by constituting the ordinary as in crisis, and the ordinary person as the real victim" (118).
This idea is a very potent one, especially seen in the epitome of degenerate rhetoric - Hitler. Of course he did have a real crisis to play off of, but I think taking this idea from Ahmed really brings out ingroup/outgroup thinking and scapegoating and projection in a new way.
Ahmed introduces an interesting challenge to the conventional view of emotions. She is expressing that emotions are not things we possess, that we are not sad, but we are only briefly commune with the pre-existing emotion. I think that is a really provocative idea, but it begs the question of where they come from originally. Do these emotions emanate from our unconscious thoughts? How then can we control them? Maybe not control them, but stay in tuned to what is coming in and affecting us. I think I might be taking the idea further than Ahmed intended, but what does this say about the after school specials that we all watched growing up? They say to not let others affect you and make you own decisions, but in light of the affect and these emotions being placed upon us at the unconscious psychological level, is there a way of establishing a filter?
On a separate note entirely, her comparison with Marx made this whole thing make more sense to me. So just as cycling money through commodities increases the surplus, a particular sign that is assigned a certain affect, when widely circulated, grows in effectiveness in distributing affect.
I think what I still do not get is the origin of affect. I can see how it moves and how the grid and the plane and all of those different ideas work, but I am curious about the where the initial feeling comes from. Most of the people we have read discount the role we play in affect, but I think they have to come from us initially, and then are maybe transmitted in an unconscious manner. Of course maybe at the origin of the universe, whatever force formed everything, formed these emotions or affects and sent them about where they could circulate and increase their surplus and create more.
I agree with the concerns you expressed, mainly in your last paragraph, that Ahmed (as well as others we've read) tend to discount the personal nature of affect, the physical reality that it is a physiological phenomenon occurring within the corporeal body. It's important to remember how affect came to be--it is an evolutionary adaptation (The fight or flight reflex, adrenaline, etc originally existed to help us avoid danger).
ReplyDeleteBut in a vast, dynamic and interconnected world, perhaps a conception of affect like Ahmed's (emotions as economies) has more bearing on the majority of affects we experience today than a theory of affects solely as a component on the autonomic nervous system can provide. Certainly, the "dangers" we perceive today are not those who are more easily avoided by being able to conjure up more physical strength. So, in my humble opinion, affects do originate from within a person, but because they get passed around and amplified/diffused, their origin is of less concern than their present location: everywhere.
You address Ahmed's belief "that emotions are not things we possess, that we are not sad, but we are only briefly commune with the pre-existing emotion" and ask where, if that's the case, the emotions came from originally. I was really glad to see someone bring that up; it's something I wondered myself while I was reading. I had similar thoughts while reading Brennan. Brennan spoke of affect in terms of invisible demons floating in the air, waiting to possess people... which I thought was *quite* weird. Weirdness aside, though, I didn't quite understand where the affect-demons originated. Whether or not we are self-contained, it seems that the feelings would have to have rooted from within us at some point or another. I don't recall her addressing their source, but perhaps I just missed it.
ReplyDeleteYou're last paragraph is, in my opinion, extraordinary. Your point that "the 'dangers' we perceive today" don't tend to demand physical strength. Instead, we worry about exams, abandonment, gaining weight, getting cancer, "terrorists", etc. They are things that take more of a psychological toll on our bodies than a physical one, and accordingly seem well-suited to be amplified and diffused by our interactions in social or inter-personal arenas.