Fear, Loathing, and the History of Emotions

On the podcast I discuss how the history of emotions might offer a framework to think mindfully about the past of the last three crazy years of the pandemic and its impact on democracy.

People have compared this history to metaphors of mental illness in social psychology or histories of democratic breakdown in Germany, but I think the history of emotions might create a more nuanced perspective

In essence the history of emotions shows how our emotions are shaped by our history. Feelings and their expressions are shaped by culture and learnt/acquired in social contexts. What somebody can and may feel, and how they show it, in a given situation, towards certain people or things, depends on social norms and rules. It is thus historically variable and open to change.

And the pandemic was an extraordinary example of how emotional regimes, codes, and lexicons can shape our action and be changed by events and conditions. People bonded with emotional communities when they clapped for the NHS. People conformed with emotional regimes, set by governments and other actors that exploited fears and hatreds. People adopted emotional styles with the new presentation of self on zoom and videos, new forms of greeting, new patterns of social distancing.

It was all a lot more complex than ,mass psychosis’ or science vs misinformation or ‘authoritarianism’. It involved all of us as indidviuals and collectives, not just elites, nut-jobs or sheeple. It was all a lot more embodied and visceral than ideas and systems, democracy and totalitarianism.

I think it provide a better framework for understanding our experience. And I think it is a better framework for recovering from the experience. Martha Nussbaum, political philosopher who has drawn on the history of emotions, has shown how ‘tragic spectatorship’ can provide for the compassionate and cathartic use of emotions within democratic government. Her book The Monarchy of Fear (2018), was a response to the ‘populist backlash’ of 2016, and was concerned about the problems too much fear causes for democratic government. Five years later, we suffer from a lot more fear and loathing.

You can watch Martha Nussbaum on The Monarchy of Fear here.

You can find out more about the history of emotions at the Max Planck Institute here or at Queen Mary University here or the Australian Centre for the History of Emotions here.

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