Antagonistic Political Emotions

Szanto FWF - Stand-Alone Research Project The political arena is deeply stirred by emotions. Indeed, it is antagonistic emotions that figure most prominently among political emotions: envy, fear, anger, resentment, distrust, contempt or hatred. In the face of affectively highly charged political rhetoric and strategies, for example in the course of the last US- elections, the Brexit campaign or the growing right-wing populist movements in the wake of the so-called European refugee crisis, the issue of antagonistic political emotions seems particularly pressing. Yet, emotions are not just some, allegedly irrational, by-products of the political. Rather, the the political, i.e., the realm in which we negotiate our plurality and differences with a view to freedom, autonomy and forms of living-together, is essentially affective. But what makes political emotions political? How and by whom are they felt? Why are, in particular, antagonistic ones little malleable, prone to become habitualized and result in affective enclaves? Why do they typically reinforce ingroup/outgroup demarcations, or boundaries between us and them? When are such emotions structurally (in)appropriate, legitimizing or betraying the own political interests of those who express them? And is antagonism built into the very heart of political emotions qua political? These are still highly controversial and yet hardly understood issues. Drawing on theoretical resources from classical phenomenology and analytic philosophy of collective emotions and informed by state-of-the art social-scientific and empirical research (e.g., on political sophistication, irrational affective biases or self-deceptive behaviour in collective contexts or social media), the project shall pioneer an integrative conceptual framework for explicating the preconditions, phenomenology, normative nature and socio-psychological function of antagonistic political emotions. In particular, it will analyze paradigmatic antagonistic political emotions that seriously challenge critical public discourse and disrupt the democratic processes, such as Ressentiment and hatred, or else help create political protest movements, such as indignation. 1

Emotions are not just some, allegedly irrational, by-products of the political. Rather, the political, or the realm in which we negotiate our plurality and differences with a view to freedom, autonomy and forms of living-together, is essentially affective. In contrast to policy-making and real politics, the political is affective because it negotiates what matters to us, what we value, fear or desire, or what concerns us. Moreover, given that emotions are, in turn, modulated by our shared or conflicting values and 'feeling rules', they always involve the negotiation of what we ought to feel. A guiding assumption of the project was that antagonistic political emotions, such as distrust, envy, fear, anger, resentment, indignation, contempt, disgust, or hatred, are not just prevalent in the political arena; moreover-due to their more direct role in ingroup/outgroup demarcations, when compared to prosocial ones-they are particularly useful for understanding the nature and role of emotions in politics generally. Another central hypothesis of the project was that antagonistic political emotions not only involve outgroup hostility; rather, they are dynamically interconnected with prosocial functions and emotions. Communities realizing antagonistic politic emotions exhibit different kinds of ingroup attachment and solidarity (exclusive versus inclusive), depending on whether the community is built around the sharing of aversive emotions as such (e.g., communities of hatred), or around the achievement of prosocial political goals (e.g., shared indignation in the face of moral breaches). By drawing on phenomenology, the philosophy of emotions, and political philosophy, as well as state-of-art research from the social sciences (esp. social and political psychology and sociology), the project corroborated these hypotheses, and addressed the following research questions: What makes emotions political? Is it their public expression, their sharedness or their public recognition as such? How and by whom are they felt? Why are, in particular, antagonistic ones little malleable and prone to result in 'affective enclaves' or reinforce ingroup/outgroup demarcations? What is their political and normative function? When are they appropriate or inappropriate reactions, and what are their standards of fittingness? Is antagonism built into the very heart of political emotions qua political, as some anti-liberal political theorists or post-foundational democracy theories conjecture? Above and beyond these conceptual issues, the project also analysed a roaster of specific instances of antagonistic political emotions and their functions in different contemporary political contexts. Concrete studies were devoted to: resentment and Ressentiment and their role in ethno-nationalism and left- and right-wing populism; feelings of disconnectedness and their manipulation for instance in online groupings such as Incels; exclusive feelings of belonging in the context of migration; negative forms of (ingroup) solidarity; collective and racial hatred; indignation on social media platforms, and finally the affective dimensions of religious zealotry and fanaticism.