Theorizing the emotional: anthropology and emotion at the intersection of violence and politics

Abstract

The history of the constitution of emotions as an object of Social Sciences is permeated by a challenge: its association in Western common sense with the excluded extremity of their founding oppositions. This challenge can be recognized in the connections between emotions and the individual (versus society) and emotions and nature (versus culture). This association has also impacted the initial choice of objects, which was marked by a tendency to the formulation of objects related to “private life” – the body, sexuality, health/sickness. In the last decades the Anthropology of Emotions has presented a set of new issues devoted to understanding feelings’, sensibilities’ and emotions’ place in the so-called “public life”. This dossier approaches debates on emotions as an analytical tool in field research connected to it, such as activism, public policies on environmental, humanitarian and health problems and legal burocracies. It pursues this intent through focusing on these thematic issues and devoting then special attention to the role played by emotions in phenomena which are situated at the intersection between violence(s) and politics. Its aim is to analyze the emotional dimension’s potential in the managing of identities, memories, meanings and relations which are both political and institutional in several groups and research areas’ contexts.