Political Feelings Research Articles

The Russian factor: emotions, narratives and reshaping China's norms in international conflicts

Abstract How did Russia, despite being in a weaker position, exercise a continuous and resilient influence on China's normative approach to international conflicts from Syria to Ukraine? This article proposes a theoretical framework that connects the affective turn and norm studies in International Relations. It conceptualizes emotions as the affective infrastructure of norm scripts: shared political feelings create resonance, based on which persuasive narratives work to maintain solidarity and institutionalize normative changes. Drawing on primary Russian and Chinese resources and using process tracing to identify critical junctures in the partnership and institutional channels for Russian campaigns, this article demonstrates how China's alignment with Russia is not solely based on geopolitical interests or constructed identities but rather a result of feelings of isolation and marginalization that firstly resonated with and then exploited by Russian actors. Furthermore, this article identifies three types of persuasive narratives used to construct continuity, analogy and identification in consolidating emotional resonance around the threat of a homogenous West and inducing normative convergence. This drives China to adopt policies in conflict with national interests and norms on sovereignty and territorial integrity that trigger a reflective assessment of the Russian influence, while underlining the growing importance of emotion diplomacy.

Articulating Political Feelings

This article introduces two local cases of political activism where performative methods were used: the 1987 demonstration by the feminist antimilitarists Women for Peace, and a campaign by Extinction Rebellion’s queer environmentalists in 2021, both in Helsinki, Finland. The article argues that through diversity and complexity, collectives become fluid and adaptive and thus stay ahead of party politics while advancing social change in an effective manner. This requires aesthetic strategies explored in this text: how ambivalent feelings are formed into an aesthetics to communicate political feelings and demands. The artistic methods used in these actions are considered through Jacques Rancière’s and Judith Butler’s theorising on the relational and the communal, while José Esteban Muñoz’s notions of queer temporality and the ephemeral apply to the acts as well. Through the framework of social aesthetics, as well as feminist and queer philosophy, I argue for the significance of aesthetics in collective agency building and social change.

On Implicatedness as a Political Feeling

On Implicatedness as a Political Feeling

“Making the wound bleed”: Nostalgia, Mourning, and Morality among Turkish Revolutionaries in Istanbul

:This article investigates nostalgia and mourning among former Turkish revolutionary militants, the main victims of state violence in the wake of the Turkish 1980 military coup. It understands these emotions as ethically imbued moods that are both conscious and unconscious and permeate both public discourses and the innermost spheres of former fighters. These moods pervade the everydayness of former revolutionaries, their discourses on the past and the present as well as ritualized occasions, such as anniversaries, gatherings, and commemorations. Based on fieldwork research conducted in Istanbul, this article conceptualizes these moods as inter-subjective emotional practices with a certain degree of agency that work as political and moral modes of engaging with the world. Although former revolutionaries intend these moods as practices of resistance against the ongoing state repression, this article argues that their active perpetuation does not lie in their political success in the public battle for memory and recognition, but in their ability to shape former militants’ subjectivity, invigorate their generational bond, keep alive the moral economy of revolutionary fighter, and create a community of loss. Likewise, this contribution demonstrates how revolutionary feelings of nostalgia and mourning shape a social poetics that reduces possibilities for acting in new ways on history and contributes to the creation of a community as cohesive as isolated from the rest of society. Notwithstanding the endurance of state oppression over time, this contribution warns against restraining our analysis to an unmasking of asymmetrical violence and unequal power relationships in the public sphere. It instead argues that, even in repressive contexts, it is important to investigate the symbolic codes and the political feelings that shape social actors’ subjectivities, their moral horizon and their possibilities of actions.

I am cringe, but I am free: кринж на пути от самотождественности к освобождению

The article proposes an aesthetic and political understanding of the phenomenon of cringe as a particular form of feeling. The thesis posits that cringe can be defined as an aesthetic regime that changes the coordinates of habitual affects — primarily shame. The article refers to the ideas of Jacques Rancière presented in The Aesthetic Unconscious. It helps to analyse cringe through the problem of overcoming hierarchies and self-identity and also to see cringe as an affect that arises at the boundaries of personal and collective experience, linked to the altered figure of the Other. As an aesthetic regime, cringe allows for the expansion of the field of questions and touches on epistemological issues. In this regard, the article refers to Donna Haraway’s concepts of “god trick” and “situatedness.” Based on the latter, the author defines the cringe state as a lack of situatedness, associated with a refusal of reflection and a reluctance to discover the limits of the foundations of thought. To understand the political dimension of cringe, particular attention is focused on the ambivalence of the processes involved in the correlation of cringe and power relations. The author provides characteristics of two trajectories — alienation and liberation. This conceptual move allows cringe to be inserted into the tradition of counterculture and expands the understanding of the totality of its presence. The latter makes it possible to argue that the art of life and the art of the self is an art of being cringe, which enables seeing the cringe in a space of equality that cannot be normalised. It is concluded that cringe moves from a marginal affect to a mode of political feeling that involves psychoanalytic discourse and various bodily and emancipatory practices.

Understanding the Cohesion and Stability Issues of Pakistan: Appraisal & Solution

The Islamic Republic of Pakistan is becoming important in the international safety calculus. Cohesion and stability issues in Pakistan are a matter of concern and debate in academic and non-academic circles, on national and international forums. This article presents an appraisal with recommendations for a practical solution, in the light of religious, social, economic, and political feelings of its citizens. A different viewpoint on the cohesion and stability issues of Pakistan is being propagated in national and international media. The article does not criticize the opinions of others, but on the contrary, conceives a secure outlook for Pakistan. It conveys Qur’ān and Sunnah as two key resources synchronized with certain supplementary texts. The article claims that the pessimistic view about Pakistan can be improved by the elimination of internal chaos and resentments in the lifespan of its public; by the removal of difficulties, and insecurities, triggered by the warfare of terror, fear and distresses. The article claims that Pakistan was established on the tenets of Islamic Ideology. Therefore, the only feasible way to triumph over this alarming situation rests in the observance of those modest fundamentals, for which this land was envisioned and achieved by the Indian Muslims of the sub-continent.

“SAME GURL”: Political Feeling in LGBTQ+ Digital Composing

Through a study of digital composing in LGBTQ+ YouTube reaction video channels, I explore the role of emotion in shaping how writers in virtual communities collectively feel about injustice and write for social change. In the reaction videos, vloggers circulate funny, emotional reactions to anti-LGBTQ+ media undergirded by oppressive ideologies and norms. To guide the analysis, I draw on queer and Black feminist theories to conceptualize political feeling as cultural formations of emotions that shape how a community feels toward injustice and open or foreclose possibilities for movement toward social change. By constructing and analyzing composing events situated in a virtual ethnography, I find reaction videos construct and circulate the political feeling of radical joy, or willful and resistant happiness in the face of oppression. Radical joy, then, mediates the satirical critiques of interlocking structures of power and the development of belonging in struggles for liberation in the comment section.

The Civil War Letters of Dr. Daniel Garrison Brinton, Surgeon in Charge at the US Army General Hospital in Quincy

The Civil War Letters of Dr. Daniel Garrison Brinton, Surgeon in Charge at the US Army General Hospital in Quincy

Ottoman Messages in Kind

The article brings the theory into question that emotions in the Ottoman realm centred on love and investigates whether and if, how, emotions played a role in the empire’s diplomatic gift traffic. The gift exchange with the Mamluks and Iran was largely influenced by specific political situations and feelings were mainly acted out in the domestic sphere. There were, however, several items, which as gifts signalled intimate friendship. Yet, the Ottomans utilised only by way of exception as diplomatic gifts. On the diplomatic stage the main function of presents was to convey messages, be it a thread, or be it an exhortation.

Malaysia in crisis: political instability and feelings of hopelessness

Malaysia in crisis: political instability and feelings of hopelessness

Feeling the 2019 Hong Kong anti-ELAB movement: emotion and affect on the Lennon Walls

In this study, I discuss the affective dynamics in Hong Kong’s anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill movement through examining the emotion and affect surrounding four Lennon Walls in various parts of the city. The Lennon Walls—public spaces decorated with numerous colorful sticky notes—became a hallmark of the 2019 protests. Most of the notes were hand-written spontaneously by passers-by, who used words, phrases, emojis, sketches, and cartoons to communicate information about the protest, frame issues, stir emotions, and charge the movement with affective intensities. I argue that the walls galvanize the population to sense, feel, experience, and act in ways that foster political feelings. Combining textual analysis and ethnographic observations, I show that the walls mediate discursive emotional expressions and non-discursive affective intensities, illustrating the affective dynamics of the movement in terms of its temporality, visibility, and operationality—the concentrated formations of emotion and affect. Together, these orient and move us in social movements by allowing us to feel through our bodily reactions and affective responses and act upon these felt experiences. The walls are able to marshal the resources of the minds and bodies of those who created and sustained them and give rise to political passions and movement actions.

Playing politics digitally: young Chinese people’s political feelings on social media platforms

ABSTRACT Young Chinese people’s reactions on social media platforms after the announcement of the 2016 Taiwan presidential election result have resonated with the Chinese government’s position on cross-strait relations. Given the depoliticized ideological condition in place, the passion in the spontaneous, self-organized posting of comments and political memes and its inconsistency with the general reluctance to be politically involved in everyday life raise questions about political expectations and the underlying factors. While Chinese social media count as one of the few realms accommodating possibilities and elasticity in public discussions and collective actions in the post-Tiananmen era, the commentary and participation one finds involve the pretence and as-if-ness embedded in playfulness – the kind that conveys transgressive messages in milder tones while giving voice to scorns for, disagreements with, and parodies of the existing structure of governance. This paper probes into the approach of digital activism through online commentative spaces by examining the surge of such political comments and memes. It regards digital participation as a distinctive representation of young Chinese people’s political feelings within the everyday dynamics and emphasizes the condition of active participation under the ubiquity of political scrutiny and, hence, the necessity of playfulness. The tactic termed ‘playing politics digitally’ is coined to capture the obedience and twists working within the structural settings, to mark the middle ground between playfulness and seriousness in the digital platform, and to underline the ephemerality and instability of the precarious participation it offers to youth today. While playfully extracting and composing nationalistic/patriotic elements amid the emergence of civic engagement and a sense of empowerment or activeness, the temporal and disposable nature of such digital participation rehearses the possibility of citizenship among young Chinese people.

Model Sosialisasi Pemilihan Presiden 2019 di Komisi Independen Pemilihan Kota Banda Aceh

This research explains how the socialization model carried out by the Banda Aceh KIP in the 2019 Election is an effort to provide an understanding of the election to the public. the implementation of the socialization model in collaboration with various communities / organizations is greatly enhanced. The theory used is the socialization theory, S.N. Eisentadl, with the concepts used in information communication based on two models: the participatory socialization model and the repressive socialization model. This study used a qualitative method with interviews as the main technique of data collection, then the data that had been obtained were analyzed in terms of content. The results of the research on the socialization model carried out by KIP are in the form of cooperation (socialization cooperation) with various organizations / communities, which include: KIP LSM Radar, KIP GPS, KIP to BEM Unsyiah, Socialization to the family base, socialization to KPI. Information communication is carried out by KIP in the context of cooperation with working partners. When the socialization is carried out on the initiative of the organization and is present at the place of socialization voluntarily, the socialization is categorized as a participatory socialization model. Whereas the concept of information communication is tiered from political values and political feelings studied from the material presented by KIP which includes political education material, such as: citizens' rights and obligations, voting procedures, introduction of ballot papers, checking DPT, and procedures for administering Forms. A5. The implication is that the people of Banda Aceh already understand and have a pattern of awareness of the socialization material delivered by KIP

Populism

The concept of populism has generated endless controversy marked by both the contrasting political feelings it conveys and a particular problem of definition. This article—based on political speeches, academic literature, and relevant online sources, such as Google Ngram Viewer, catalogs of great libraries, and digital archives of newspapers—adopts a pragmatic approach to the concept throughout its history, from the moment when the noun appeared in North American political life in the late nineteenth century until the most recent “populist moment” in response to the economic crisis that started in 2008. The study of its changing meanings shows, however, some elements of continuity that make sense of what Margaret Canovan defined as “a notoriously vague term.”

Preparedness of Swiss Citizens for the Future Energy Debate: How Political Predispositions Influence Factual and Perceived Knowledge

A common understanding in public opinion studies is that we, the public, often turn to mental short-cuts to form an opinion on important policy issues: in particular, we reflexively adopt the positions of the political parties with which we identify. The use of political heuristics is prevalent especially when the topic is highly politicized or technical (i.e., cognitively demanding), such as is the case in climate and energy policy. However, recent research on climate beliefs has shown that not only opinions but even our supposedly objective knowledge about the topic correlates with our political ideology. Moreover, research shows that these innocent and natural mental short-cuts may lead us to think we know (subjective knowledge) more than we do. Much of existing research in sustainability transitions has focused on the effect of policy-related information or its framing on public support for a hypothetical policy that is designed to achieve climate and sustainability goals. In reality, however, the amount and type of relevant information people seek is not exogenous as it is assumed in many of these studies. Instead, as marketing research has shown in the context of people's product choice, our objective and subjective knowledge influence how much and what type of information we seek. This is why we argue that the potential effect of political heuristics on our knowledge-building is concerning whether or not our political parties espouse accurate information. In this paper, we investigate whether and under what conditions our perceived or factual knowledge might be influenced by our ideological predispositions.To this end, we rely on two original surveys asking Swiss citizens about energy technologies: deep geothermal energy (domestically nascent and not highly politicized) and hydro power (mature and politicized). Both technologies are currently being considered as clean energy to partially replace nuclear power. We find multiple paths through which political predispositions can affect citizens' knowledge.First, we show evidence that subjective and objective knowledge scores are not highly correlated. That is, respondents typically think they know more (or less) than they do. Second, to our surprise, we found a more prominent effect of political heuristics on knowledge in the case of DGE, a politically nascent and less politicized topic in Switzerland compared to HP. Finally, when we probed objective knowledge more deeply and analyzed each knowledge item, we found that respondents' answers to survey items that included trigger words (i.e., words that might elicit political feelings) exhibited political patterning.

Feeling “Brexit”: Nationalism and the Affective Politics of Movement

“Brexit” reveals the necessity of understanding the role of affect in political life, in particular in constituting ideas about nationality and in animating the politics of populism. This article discusses what “Brexit” felt like in the year following the UK vote—held on 23 June 2016—to leave the European Union through a performance called “The Populars” created and performed in 2017 by Volcano Theatre, in Swansea (Abertawe). In this paper, I discuss feelings of shame, hostility, and resentment and situate them in relation to the crises of British multiculturalism and rise of populism, before turning to how such feelings were addressed in this performance through movement and dance. The article addresses three specific contributions that engaging affect does in the context of “Brexit”: first, it forms an invitation to address heightened political feelings; second, it suggests an alternative approach to the politics of knowledge to that enabled by a focus on voter interests or identities; third, it opens up other ways of understanding being in common. Overall, I make the case for how an affective approach to the politics of movement suggests ways of thinking and acting politically that defy the closures of nationalist populism.

Ryleev, Pushkin, and the Poeticization of Russian History

The historical poetry of Kondratii Ryleev–in particular, the lyrics he called dumy, or meditations–reveals how central emotion was to the Decembrist worldview. In particular, these poems promote an attitude towards political feeling that I call “civic sentimentalism.” Influenced by thinkers like Rousseau and organizations like the Freemasons, the Decembrists divided emotion into positive sentiments and negative passions: the former fostered virtue and, eventually, improved society, while the latter did just the opposite. Ryleev strove to improve Russian society by using a poeticized version of the nation’s history to inspire patriotic feelings in his readers. In addition, this piece examines how Alexander Pushkin–a writer whose worldview has historically been elided with that of the Decembrists–actually critiqued Ryleev’s historical poetry for the way its civic sentimentalism simplified complex historical issues.

The Politics of Sentiment in Tony Harrison’s The School of Eloquence

Tony Harrison’s filial sonnets, from his major ongoing sonnet sequence The School of Eloquence (1978–), are widely regarded as among the most moving poems in the language, and have conversely been criticized for sentimentality. Blake Morrison observes that the focus upon the sentiment of the filial sonnets has obscured their political concerns. What has not been noticed is the sonnets’ politics of sentiment. Harrison’s merging of filial and political concerns and the way his socialist humanism is refracted in these intimate sonnets is examined in this article in relation particularly to the great elegiac sonnet ‘Marked with D’ and ‘Heredity’, the brilliant, little-discussed verse epigraph to the sonnet sequence. A purpose of this article is to show the extent to which the filial sonnets merge empathy and politics and express powerful personal and political feeling in their own terms.

Mediated habits: images, networked affect and social change

While many people remain hopeful that particular images of injustice will have the power to catalyse progressive transformation, there is also widespread belief in the inevitability of ‘compassion fatigue’. Bringing philosophers of habit into conversation with contemporary scholars of affect, visual culture and digital media, this article argues for a more nuanced understanding of the links between images and change—one in which political feeling and political action are complexly intertwined and repeated sensation does not necessarily lead to disaffection. When affect acts as a ‘binding technique’ compelling us to inhabit our sensorial responses to images, I suggest, we may become better attuned to everyday patterns of seeing, feeling, thinking and interacting—and hence to the possibility of change at the level of habit. This article thus contends that thinking affect and habit together as imbricated may enable us to better understand the dynamics of both individual and socio-political change today.

The Body of Solidarity: Heritage, Memory, and Materiality in Post-Industrial Italy

AbstractThis paper explores the rise of “industrial heritage” and the forms of memorialization proliferating around it. The site is Sesto San Giovanni, Italy's “City of Factories,” which was also a bastion of communist mobilization and which is now bidding to be recognized on UNESCO's world heritage list. Sesto's bid is an attempt not just to recuperate and reinvigorate the landscape of Sesto's ruined factories and its massive, crumbling machinery, but also to capture and render visible and graspable the traces of what this built environment expressed and left behind—the sentiment of solidarity. I thus argue for an understanding of solidarity not just as an emotion or value, but as a structure of feeling mediated by specific material and corporeal forms, in bodies collectively inhabiting a built environment and rhythmically moving within and out of infrastructures and lived landscapes. Such a materialist conception of solidarity must account for bodies and embodiment, rhythm and refrain, as well as for how certain material forms allow for the generation of proximities, coordination, and likeness across difference. It means thinking of solidarity as an arrangement and assembly of bodies in time and space, and of these bodies and their movement as generative of political feeling and action. Based on ethnographic and archival research in Sesto San Giovanni between 2011 and 2013, I tell the story of the afterlife of a twentieth-century sentiment and its fate in an era that has rendered solidarity precarious.