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ABSTRACT
We extend Haslanger’s model of the way social meanings shape our beliefs and desires to discuss the ways in which they shape our emotional responses. We argue that emotional regulation is a core mechanism by which we are made fit for participation in unjust social practices, whether as dominants or subordinates. Recognizing this, liberation movements develop strategies for emotional counter-regulation in order to create agents capable of engaging in sustained liberatory praxis and capable of participating fluidly in the new social relations that they try to bring into being. We explore some of the strategies used in emotional regulation and counter-regulation with particular attention to the ways in which naming our affective responses (e.g., as resentment versus indignation at injustice) shapes the ways they unfold and inducts us into locally current evaluative practices, whether for better or for worse.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 We deliberately use the vague phrase ‘responses to’ so as to remain ecumenical about whether they are direct perceptions or representations of values or are responses to values made available through non-emotional pathways. (For skepticism about the perceptual analogy, see Schroeter, Schroeter and Jones [Citation2015].)
2 For an anthropological case study see Lutz [Citation1988].
3 But it cannot make it apt, for it cannot change the evaluative features of the situation to which it is a response.