Exploring the emotional dynamics of a political discussion

ABSTRACT

In this article, we discuss three ways that emotional content was presented, registered, performed, and communicated in a secondary social studies classroom discussion. In an analysis of a classroom discussion about representative democracy, we focus on the articulated and embodied emotional and affective content that manifested in students’ sharing of views about same-sex marriage. While the discussion was ostensibly about the students’ beliefs and their alignment with those of their elected representatives, we focus on three particular emotional registers circulating within it: aggression, withholding, and reversals. We claim that interpreting and articulating such emotional processes, and considering them as inherent parts of (rather than extra to) political discussions, may help researchers and teachers acknowledge and accommodate the emotional realities of confronting the social and political world of classrooms.

KEYWORDS:

• Affect
• controversy
• discussion
• emotion
• psychoanalysis

Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge Mel Kutner and Joe McAnulty, the other two members of the research team, for their ongoing contributions to the larger project from which this article is drawn. We further wish to acknowledge an anonymous reviewer who directed us toward “feeling” language to bolster our analysis of the emotional contours of the discussion in this article.

Additional information

Funding

Funding for this research project was provided by The Spencer Foundation.