The recent literature we have outlined in the previous chapter brought emotions back into the discussion. From the heterogeneity of works on emotions at least two main theoretical consequences can be derived. The first one, by some means related to the explicatory goal of political analysis, is that social sciences should consider emotions as part of political reasoning. The second one, more focused on the normative level of political reflections, suggests that emotions play a crucial role in the cognitive and normative construction of politics.
Nonetheless, some criticism of this diverse literature should be addressed.
Firstly, there is still a lack of interdisciplinarity in the study of the political role of emotions. Even though psychology and neurology have broadly influenced political research, most of these works are still resisting about incorporating
broad and cross-disciplinary methods of analysis; rather there is a preference to focus on specific field of knowledge. Secondly, little attention has been paid to the theoretical and historical implications. Although philosophy and political theory are two essential domains of the re-entering of emotions in the political research, few authors are filling the deficient attention to the connection between the history of political thought and the current articulation of political affairs. Specifically, there is a lack of analysis of the role of emotions in the process of conceptualization of political categories. While political philosophers and historians have highlighted how the foundations of our thinking are related to emotions, few contemporary analyses are devoted to the political role of emotions in the construction of modern political ideas and their current version (e.g. Kingston, 2011; Krause, 2008; Nussbaum, 2013;
Solomon, 1993). Thirdly, there is a broad epistemological issue that the study of emotion forces us to deal with, which recent literature – as we have mentioned – point out: the nature of our knowledge. How to deal with emotions and their political role? Although many authors have carried out analyses of concrete emotions – especially in the fields of psychology, sociology and protest movement analysis –, emphasis on the epistemological consequences for political research have been underestimated by political scientists and theorists (Kingston, 2011:99-106; Neuman et al., 2007).
2.1 Emotions, cognition, and the framing of reality
The relationship between the political realm and the emotional dimensions forces us to delve into the epistemological construction of political research.
The theoretical engagement with emotions in the last decades contributed to some innovative epistemological trends. Neuroscience, poststructuralist feminist theory, psychoanalytical theory and critical analysis innovations have, among other perspectives, challenged the conventional oppositions between emotion and reason, and the complex relationship between power,
knowledge and emotion. As well, they have questioned the misunderstood place of emotion within political theorizing – that is, the affective dimension of the normative (Koziak, 2000). Given these heterogeneous perspectives, we need to take into account the epistemology of contemporary social and political research.
In his overview of contemporary literature on emotion, Máiz (2011) mentioned the most relevant arguments advanced by this heterogeneous literature. Briefly, we can state that:
1. The mind/body and reason/emotion dichotomies are to be revisited.
Emotion and reason are both anchored to the body.
2. Reason and emotion are symbiotic in the evaluative mental processes and in the determination of what is crucial and vital for individuals and the collectivity.
3. In that context, emotions have a cognitive dimension. That is, emotion contributes to knowledge and judgment: “there is no cognition without feeling” (Melucci, 1995: 45).
4. Emotions, and their cognitive dimension, are in part socially constructed. Emotions are at least in part determined by cultural and socio-structural factors, by processes of socialization.
5. Moreover, emotions are influenced by and have an influence on judgments, especially with regards to values and beliefs. In this vein, emotions have advanced our understanding of cognitive processes and the mechanisms that influence political judgement, and decision-making.
In all this, emotions are seen to have some essential and intrinsic dimensions:
cognitive; evaluative; sensitive; motivational (Ben- Ze’ev, 2000). Recent scholarship suggests that emotions may help citizens use political heuristics more efficiently. According to the theory of affective intelligence (Marcus et al., 2000), emotions complement reason by signalling to the brain when to rely on
heuristic processes and when to expend greater cognitive effort. Emotions, in other words, play an important role in the elaboration of information about specific circumstances – our knowledge of the world – as well as in the creating a personal and collective disposition to act with respect to this information. Emotions, then, are at work in both our action in the political realm, as well as in our comprehension of it. One might ask, thus, how to understand and to deal with something that contributes to our knowledge. In this context, the return of emotions in political investigation opens up new perspectives on the epistemological front. Objectivity and measurability – the core epistemological traits of current political science’s mainstream – seem to be at the centre of theoretical and methodological disputes. An alternative ontological perspective might be introduced in the analysis of the political role of emotion. Since recent literature on emotions questions modern dichotomies and the rigid separation between the object of analysis and the subject of knowledge – that is the independence of the phenomena studied from its examiner –, one should deal with the ways in which emotional factors frame the way one comes to develop an understanding.
However, although emotions bring to the forefront these broad methodological issues, it is impossible to delve into them here in details. What seems clear is that in recent decades a series of research methods for the analysis of emotions and politics has been developed. Both qualitative and quantitative are currently available: while quantitative analysis is generally oriented to survey data, qualitative investigations rely on a variegated spectrum of methods, such as in-depth interviews, discourse and frame analysis, and participant observation (Polletta and Amenta 2001: 313). What this heterogeneous methods grasp is that emotional dynamics have a strong role in the process of framing the social reality. Emotions are viewed as producers of individual and collective identities and social meanings, through the role they play in the interpretation of the social and political reality.
Within the notion of frame, it is argued, cognition is an important factor in
knowledge and, at the same time, in the construction of the social realm (Lakoff, 2008). Moreover, recent literature has shown the strong link between cognition and emotions: they have a cognitive role that operates in the process of framing, that is the interpretation and construction of reality.
In this vein, this study takes these developments into account and advances its own methodological path in order to approach the object of the study.