The emotions least relevant to politics? Queering autonomous activism

Studies of emotion and activism have often attempted to uncover ‘the emotions most relevant to politics’ (Goodwin et al., 2001). This suggests that only certain feelings are productive for activism, while other emotions have less relevance for activist theory and practice. In this paper I ask if the notion of politically ‘relevant’ emotions helps perpetuate a distinction between what is considered political and what is not. This paper builds upon a case study in which I interviewed self-identified queer-activists about their experiences of autonomous activism. These interviews reveal how the everyday emotions surrounding the ‘personal’ politics of sexuality/intimacy are often seen as either less important, a distraction from, or entirely irrelevant to ‘real’ political issues. Ultimately, I want to challenge attempts to neatly separate our intimate lives from the public sphere of activism. I argue that it can never just be a matter of politics and emotion, but also the politics of emotion (Ahmed, 2004). Therefore we should not just assume that emotions matter for resistance without first realizing the importance of resisting these hierarchies of emotion. ! 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Dealing with our own alienation and conditioning is a very hard and unromantic task, which has no room for heroes and martyrs. chucking a brick through a pane of glass or building an incendiary device is piss easy in comparison. (Anonymous and undated, cited in Abramsky 2001, 563) Emotions are not just individual, embodied responses to external factors; emotions are also political and can be utilised to maintain the status quo (Illouz 1997, 2007). Yet concurrently, emotions can also be a powerful force for positive social change and can be nurtured to challenge the status quo. For if ‘emotions are bound up with the securing of social hierarchy’ (Ahmed, 2004: 4) then it follows that emotions must surely also be bound upwith the destabilizing of social hierarchy. Consequently, there has been an ever-increasing body of work that aims to bring emotions into social movement studies (Aminzade and McAdam, 2002; Flam and King 2005; Goodwin et al., 2001). As Eyerman (2005: 42) states, social movements are often involved in ‘transforming as well as articulating values, and in the process, creating new and alternative structures of feeling’. Indeed, social movements often seek to activate emotions, working to re-evaluate emotions such as anger and shame, transforming them into emotions that people canwork with rather than try to eradicate (Gould, 2002; Holmes, 2004). In their book Passionate Politics Goodwin, Jasper and Polletta try to outline ‘the emotions most relevant to politics’ (2001: 13). They believe that the emotions scholars should be focussing on when discussing social movements are ‘the more constructed, cognitive’ emotions, not ‘automatic responses’. They go on to state that: It is for this reason that our analysis of the emotions of protest and politics departs from much work in the sociology of emotions, which has tended to concentrate on intimate settings and long-standing affective relationships. (2001: 13) However, this appears to be a somewhat simplistic strategy; emotions cannot simply be placed into tables and made into clearcut formulas that will help bring about social change. There is danger in positioning some types of emotions as more important than others; specifically, emotions that come out of ‘intimate settings’ may be deemed irrelevant (or certainly less relevant) than other emotions. This assumption seems problematic as it stands at odds with the notion that ‘the personal is political’. In this paper I therefore want to challenge attempts to neatly separate our intimate lives from the public sphere. Instead, I want to ask what roles do our everyday intimacies and long-standing affective relationships have on our emotions within activist spaces? The paper begins with an outline of my theoretical and methodological framework. Firstly I shall give a definition of the varying ways I shall be utilising the term ‘queer’. I then give a brief overview of autonomous politics before moving on to my methodology section. The analysis that then follows is split into two broad strands: firstly, I want to highlight some of the problems in attempting to achieve ‘emotional liberation’ from existing power E-mail address: [email protected]