feel your way

all quotes from the cultural politics of emotion by sara ahmed

"hardness is not the absence of emotion, but a different emotional orientation towards others. the hard white body is shaped by its reactions: the rage against others surfaces as a body that stands apart or keeps its distance from others. we shouldn't look for emotions 'in' soft bodies. emotions shape the very surfaces of bodies, which take shape through the repetition of actions over time, as well as through orientations towards and away from others. indeed, attending to emotions might show us how all actions are reactions, in the sense that what we do is shaped by the contact we have with others."

"emotions are intentional in the sense that they are 'about' something: they involve a direction or orientation towards an object. the 'aboutness' of emotions means they involve a stance on the world, or a way of apprehending the world. . . emotions are relational: they involve (re)actions or relations of 'towardness' or 'awayness' in relation to such objects."

"emotions should not be regarded as psychological states, but as social and cultural practices. . . emotion is not what comes from the individual body, but is what holds or binds the social body together."

"feelings become a form of social presence rather than self-presence. in my model of sociality of emotions, i suggest that emotions create the very effect of the surfaces and boundaries that allow us to distinguish an inside and an outside in the first place. . . it is through emotions, or how we respond to objects and others, that surfaces or boundaries are made: the 'i' and the 'we' are shaped by, and even take the shape of, contact with others."

"the model of emotional contagion. . . is useful in its emphasis on how emotions are not simply located in the individual, but move between bodies."

"emotions in their very intensity involve miscommunication, such that even when we feel we have the same feeling, we don't necessarily have the same relationship to that feeling."

"the relationship between movement and attachment is instructive. what moves us, what makes us feel, is also that which holds us in place, or gives us a dwelling place. hence movement does not cut the body off from the 'where' of its inhabitance, but connects bodies to other bodies: attachment takes place through movement, through being moved by the proximity of others."

"the work i am most indebted is the work of feminist and queer scholars who have attended to how emotions can attach us to the very conditions of our subordination. such scholars have shown us how social forms (such as the family, heterosexuality, the nation, even civilisation itself) are effects of repetition. . . my argument about the cultural politics of emotions is developed not only as a critique of the psychologising and privatisation of emotions, but also as a critique of a model of social structure that neglects the emotional intensities, which allow such structures to be reified as forms of being."

"it also follows that we should not look for emotions only where the attribution of 'being emotional' is made. what is posited as 'unemotional' also involves emotions, as ways of responding to objects and others. i will not be equating emotionality with femininity. see campbell (1994) for an important critique of how women are 'dismissed' through being seen or 'judged' as being emotional."

"even feelings that are immediate, and which may involve 'damage' on the skin surface, are not simply feelings that one has, but feelings that open bodies to others. my analysis introduces the concept of 'intensification' to show how pain creates the very impression of a bodily surface. i also consider how pain can shape worlds as bodies, through the ways in which stories of pain circulate in the public domain."

"when we talk about the displacement between objects of emotion, we also need to consider the circulation of words for emotion. . . the word 'mourns' might get linked to other emotion words: anger, hatred, love. the replacement of one word for an emotion with another word produces a narrative. our love might create the condition for our grief, our loss could become the condition for our hate, and so on. the emotion does its work by 'reading' the object: for example, others might get read as the 'reason' for the loss of the object of love, a reading which easily converts feelings of grief into feelings of hate."

"the surfaces of bodies 'surface' as an effect of the impressions left by others. . . the surfaces of collective as well as individual bodies take shape through such impressions."

"i have been overwhelmed by how much 'emotions' have been a 'sticking point' for philosophers, cultural theorists, psychologists, sociologists, as well as scholars from a range of other disciplines. this is not surprising: what is relegated to the margins is often, as we know from deconstruction, right at the centre of thought itself."