Antagonistic Political Emotions

Szanto FWF - Stand-Alone Research Project The political arena is deeply stirred by emotions. Indeed, it is antagonistic emotions that figure most prominently among political emotions: envy, fear, anger, resentment, distrust, contempt or hatred. In the face of affectively highly charged political rhetoric and strategies, for example in the course of the last US- elections, the Brexit campaign or the growing right-wing populist movements in the wake of the so-called European refugee crisis, the issue of antagonistic political emotions seems particularly pressing. Yet, emotions are not just some, allegedly irrational, by-products of the political. Rather, the the political, i.e., the realm in which we negotiate our plurality and differences with a view to freedom, autonomy and forms of living-together, is essentially affective. But what makes political emotions political? How and by whom are they felt? Why are, in particular, antagonistic ones little malleable, prone to become habitualized and result in affective enclaves? Why do they typically reinforce ingroup/outgroup demarcations, or boundaries between us and them? When are such emotions structurally (in)appropriate, legitimizing or betraying the own political interests of those who express them? And is antagonism built into the very heart of political emotions qua political? These are still highly controversial and yet hardly understood issues. Drawing on theoretical resources from classical phenomenology and analytic philosophy of collective emotions and informed by state-of-the art social-scientific and empirical research (e.g., on political sophistication, irrational affective biases or self-deceptive behaviour in collective contexts or social media), the project shall pioneer an integrative conceptual framework for explicating the preconditions, phenomenology, normative nature and socio-psychological function of antagonistic political emotions. In particular, it will analyze paradigmatic antagonistic political emotions that seriously challenge critical public discourse and disrupt the democratic processes, such as Ressentiment and hatred, or else help create political protest movements, such as indignation. 1

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