Feeling Democracy
Emotional Politics in the New Millennium

Sarah Tobias (Edited by), Arlene Stein (Edited by), Kathryn Abrams (Contributions by), Nermin Allam (Contributions by), Kirin Gupta (Contributions by), Noëlle McAfee (Contributions by), Ileana Nachescu (Contributions by), Ciara Torres-Spelliscy (Contributions by), Sarah Tobias (Contributions by), Arlene Stein (Contributions by)

9781978835450

Paperback / softback, published 14 June 2024

250 pages, 0 images
20.3 x 12.7 x 1.8 cm, 0.254 kg

"'Feeling democracy' sounds like a paradoxical practice as the normative foundation of liberal democracy is rationality. This book gives profound argumentations and examples to disentangle the emotional power dynamics in democracies from a global feminist and intersectional perspective. 'Feeling democracy' is especially important in times of right-wing challenges to liberal democracy and right-wing antagonistic affective mobilization across the globe." - Birgit Sauer (co-author of Governing Affects: Neoliberalism, Neo-Bureaucracies, and Service Work) "The need to think about feelings as being political is more urgent than ever, and this very smart collection of feminist essays deftly tracks past the persistent assumption that emotions undermine democracy. Feeling Democracy instead works with feelings, both good and bad, in order to offer timely insights for the current moment and new conceptions of what democracy looks-and feels-like." - Ann Cvetkovich (author of Depression: A Public Feeling)

Cultural critic Lauren Berlant wrote that “politics is always emotional,” and her words hold especially true for politics in the twenty-first century. From Obama to Trump, from Black Lives Matter to the anti-abortion movement, politicians and activists appeal to hope, fear, anger, and pity, all amplified by social media. 
 
The essays in Feeling Democracy examine how both reactionary and progressive politics are driven largely by emotional appeals to the public. The contributors in this collection cover everything from immigrants’ rights movements to white nationalist rallies to show how solidarities forged around gender, race, and sexuality become catalysts for a passionate democratic politics. Some essays draw parallels between today’s activist strategies and the use of emotion in women-led radical movements from the 1960s and 1970s, while others expand the geographic scope of the collection by considering Asian decolonial politics and Egyptian pro-democracy protests. 
 
Incorporating scholarship from fields as varied as law, political science, philosophy, psychoanalysis, and history, Feeling Democracy considers how emotional rhetoric in politics can be a double-edged sword-often wielded by authoritarian populists who seek to undermine democracy but sometimes helping to bring about a genuine renewal of participatory democracy.  

Introduction - Sarah Tobias and Arlene Stein
Chapter 1: Social Movements and Emotion Cultures: Learning from the Undocumented Immigrants’
Movement - Kathy Abrams            
Chapter 2: “
The Women of Egypt are a Red Line”
: Anger and Women’
s Collective Action - Nermin Allam
Chapter 3: Our Paranoid Politics - NoË
lle McAfee
Chapter 4: The Political Branding of COVID-19 - Ciara Torres-Spelliscy             
Chapter 5: Towards a Decolonial Democracy: Rageful Hope in the 1961 and 1972 Afro-Asian Women’
s Conferences - Kirin Gupta    
Chapter 6: “
The Kind of World We Wanted to Be In”
: “
Protocol Feminism”
and Participatory Democracy in Intersectional Consciousness-Raising Groups - Ileana Nachescu                                 
Acknowledgments  
Notes on Contributors
Index