Parliamentarians’ accounts of emotion and rationality can best be understood through the concept of ‘passionate rationality’. I propose this concept informed by James’ (1956) essay on ‘The sentiment of rationality’. I hold that ‘reason’ and ‘emotion’ are, as James argues in regard to ‘intellect’, phenomena that require an understanding that takes account of their mutual constitution through language. James argues that rationality is itself a feeling, identified as a state in which there is a lack of a sense of irrationality (James, 1956, p. 64).
I use the concept of passionate rationality to enjoin both intellect and emotion by understanding rationality as just one of a number of available emotional states. Indeed, the artificial presupposition that a ‘rational’ versus ‘emotional’ argument or a ‘rational’ versus ‘emotional’ actor can be ‘identified’ or understood in any way without at the same time considering the way this understanding takes place through the linguistic resources available leads to difficulties. Such an approach overlooks the methodological dilemmas in researching ‘emotion’. This is not to say that I disregard the physiological aspects of emotional experience. As I explained in Chapter Three, a constructionist perspective does not deny the physical existence of ‘things’ but casts our research interests towards the ways in which the meaning of phenomena is socially located, and constituted in and through social negotiation. In the same way, my analysis here does not deny that social actors understand their emotional experiences as experiences that hold inherent meaning. However, I am interested in how that meaning around emotion is produced.
In parliamentarians’ accounts, informed by a cultural dichotomisation of the terms reason and emotion, parliamentarians emphasise the dual importance of both emotion and rationality for the performance of occupational identity. Lacking the linguistic resources to talk about rationality and emotion together in anything but the falsely dichotomous manner provided by Western culture produces a tension. If to be understood as rational is to be understood as not emotional, or indeed, if to be understood as emotional is to be understood as not rational, then the parliamentarian faces a dilemma. In order to ‘be’ the ‘ideal’ worker in the parliamentary workplace, parliamentarians need to be understood as both rational and emotional, not just at different times but at the same time. Indeed, in a context where there is scepticism
surrounding the parliamentary occupation, passionate rationality is an important means for parliamentarians to counter scepticism and to assert claims to authenticity.
Passionate rationality is a quality of practice belonging to the model of the ideal parliamentarian worker. As workers, they need to perform through the repertoires and the subject positions they make available. Parliamentarians may successfully accomplish some aspects of identity without passionate rationality, but they can never ‘be’ the ‘ideal’ worker without it. Passionate rationality is practiced through The Crusade repertoire and its authentication of emotional experience. It involves the parliamentarian successfully negotiating an understanding of their arguments and actions as ones that are initiated by both ‘heart’ and ‘mind’. Passionate rationality is action that enjoins emotion and reason to achieve an outcome understood as morally ‘just’ as well as instrumentally achievable.
Understanding oneself as the ‘right’ kind of person is necessary for success in the workplace of parliament. Proving one’s sincerity is an impossible task, but the parliamentarian who ‘experiences’ their workplace emotions as a ‘genuine’ display of personal, internal, ‘authentic’ feeling moves toward an understanding of occupational identity as an authentic aspect of self. Understanding their experience of emotion as ‘genuine’ allows them to ‘experience’ their workplace performances as authentic ones and that understanding in turn produces a confident performance. Emotion’s association with the self enables passionate rationality to be recognised as a reflection of vocational authenticity and conversely the parliamentarian who positions themselves through The Crusade repertoire is also understood as the vocationally authentic worker.
Conclusion
Parliamentarians’ flexible deployment of the three interpretative repertoires of The Game, The Performance and The Crusade allows them to make sense of their workplace as one that calls for different ways of understanding and managing emotion at work. Through their use of The Game repertoire, they understand personal attack as simply a part of the game and of little or no personal consequence. The Performance repertoire allows for an understanding of emotion as a necessary communicative aspect of their work. On the other hand, deployment of The Crusade allows the parliamentarian to understand their workplace emotions as extensions of an authentic, inner self and
therefore through this repertoire they can claim emotional commitment to the job and the vocational authenticity of their occupational identity.
The repertoires’ ability to influence institutional knowledge and practice is significant because of the way they constitute knowledge as ‘commonsense’ and organisational practices as the ‘right’ way for things to be done. They produce an understanding of knowledge and practice as incontrovertible forces rather than as shared cultural meanings open to negotiation and change. Likewise, the repertoires constitute the parliamentarian’s ‘ideal’ occupational identity as the means through which workplace success is achieved.
The constitution of the ‘ideal’ parliamentarian calls for the ability to deploy the repertoires in a way that positions the worker as passionately rational. The ideal parliamentarian understands and presents their arguments, and indeed themselves, as emotional ‘and’ rational.
In the following chapter, I examine the importance of the interpretative repertoires in relation to parliamentarians’ accounts of one particular piece of legislation. Using the Civil Union Bill as a case study, I argue that the bill is one opportunity for parliamentarians’ demonstration of passionate rationality and hence as an important bill for positioning as the vocationally ‘authentic’ parliamentarian.