In Gould’s Moving Politics: Emotion and ACT UP’s Fight Against AIDS, different
emotions privilege different acts of contention. Gould, for example, directly
links anger to ACT UP’s use of nonviolent direct action. In Gould’s account,
members of ACT UP believed that anger would inspire direct action and
explicitly encouraged anger in order to sustain their own and others' participation. Gould argues that members of ACT UP embraced these tactics and
the anger that inspired them because doing so provided a more effective
alternative to less confrontational tactics already in use by other
organizations. This anger, sustained by the emotion-work of ACT UP members,
served to sustain both ACT UP and its cause.
However, as Gould discusses, emotions exist within a set of frames, including political ideology, social-normative assumptions, and identity. Throughout Gould’s account, these frames shape not only which emotions are relevant but the actions that these emotions privilege and the targets of these actions. It is not clear, however, how emotions interact with these frames—whether they reflect them, amplify them, or transform them. Underlying this ambiguity in Gould’s text is an ambiguous account of the indeterminacy of emotions. Focusing on anger and emotions that moderate the effects of anger, I will here suggest a definition of emotion as modular frame that both fits Gould’s evidence and generates a set of testable hypotheses that could render her model applicable to a range of other contentious movements.
In Gould’s account, emotions reflect existing frames and help motivate but do not restrict action. I argue that emotions both create new frames and directly cause action, although they do so in coordination with wider frames. Specifically, emotions frame personal and social goals. Emotions are intimately bound to—and may even be partially constituted by—appraisals of whether a goal can or should be achieved, how much control the actor has over goal achievement, and the actor’s ability to cope with achievement or non-achievement of these goals.
Anger, for example, tends to arise when another individual’s goals are interfering with yours, when you believe that they have control over their actions, and when you believe that you cannot tolerate (cope with) interference. This pattern tends to hold even when individuals are experiencing anger as group members rather than simply as individuals.
Last, anger, like all emotions, can be instantaneous and, to a degree, transferable. If you see an angry person, you form a theory about what they are thinking and feeling that is based on the appraisals described above. If you identify with that person, you can adopt those appraisals as your own even before you have experienced their situation for yourself.
ACT UP deliberately framed events in terms of the core narrative of anger, creating an amplifying resonance between sociopolitical beliefs and instantaneous emotion. ACT UP, for example, shifted blame for the epidemic from the gay community to the government, arguing that the gay community had responded to the virus by developing safe sex practices while government actors had callously refused to act or acted in a way that further threatened the health and safety of the gay community. Further, they made anger normative, encouraging its display and privileging demonstrations of anger over demonstrations of other, potentially frame-threatening, emotions. It was impossible to be a member of ACT UP and not feel anger, impossible to be a member of ACT UP and not see the epidemic, and actors in the epidemic, through the lens of anger.
By choosing to embrace anger (over alternatives) ACT UP members were driven to direct action. Anger involves the appraisal that another person’s actions (or your own past actions, or a group’s actions, or the actions of God or fate) are intolerable. Both nonviolent and violent resistance are possible results of anger, but an emphasis on resistance is almost assured if anger is given free reign.
Hope and anger interact when an individual or group is deciding when, where, and who to resist. Anger establishes threat and the intentionality of the offending actor, but hope provides a sense of the angry person’s agency, their ability to affect change. ACT UP managed hope, framing nonviolent direct action as the most effective action and framing other tactics as hopeless. When hope was lost, some people surrendered anger, finding numbness or renewed compassion. Numbness shifted focus to inaction, leading activists to both leave ACT UP and to resist re-involving themselves in the fight to manage the AIDS crisis. Renewed compassion shifted focus away from political activism and instead emphasized helping others to cope with the epidemic, leading former ACT UP members to volunteer to care for AIDS victims. The loss of hope also brought a redirection of anger, emphasizing the perceived failings of individual ACT UP members. This new anger, expressed as a sense of betrayal, both amplified existing divisions and spurred the emergence of new social identities.
Moralization was evident in both attitudes towards government actors and, later, attitudes toward ACT UP members. By emphasizing the intentional, negative, and intolerable actions of others, anger can, when appropriately framed, create the perception that an individual’s bad behavior reflects essential badness. It is associated with increased stereotyping, both automatic and more deliberate.
Anger however, only tends to moralize around justice and fairness, not other markers of “badness” like pollution or weakness. Interestingly, anger may not only have focused the attention of ACT UP members on justice and fairness, but may have focused governmental attention on these issues as well. When medical and scientific officials paid attention, even defensively, to ACT UP’s anger, they may have been more attentive to ACT UP’s justice and fairness frames and it is possible that a combination of anger and hope encouraged frame bridging between these officials and members of ACT UP.
References:
Chapter Two; “New Feelings and an Expanding Political Horizon After Hardwick;” “Individuals and the Social Space for Militancy.”
Gould, Deborah. “Moving Politics.” Chapter Seven; “From Despair to Activism;” “Act Up’s Antidote to Despair”
Gould, Deborah. “Moving Politics.” Introduction. “New Curves in the Emotional Turn;” “Affect, Feelings, and Emotions.”
Kuppens, Peter, Van Mechelen, Iven, Smits, Dirk J. M., and De Boeck, Paul. “The Appraisal Basis of Anger: Specificity, Necessity, and Sufficiency of Components.” Emotion. 2003:3(3). 254-269.
Mackie, Diane M., Devos, Thierry, and Smith, Eliot. “Intergroup Emotions: Explaining Offensive Action Tendencies in an Intergroup Context.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 2000. 79(4):602-616.
Smith, Eliot R., Seger, Charles R., Mackie, Diana M. “Can Emotions Be Truly Group Level? Evidence Regarding Four Conceptual Criteria.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 2007. 93(3):443.
Snow, David, Rochford, E. Burke, Worden, Steven K., Benford, Robert D. “Frame Alignment Processes, Micromobilization, and Movement Participation.” American Sociological Review, 1986. 51(4):477
Gould, Deborah. “Moving Politics.” Chapter 2; “The Affects and Emotions of Framing;” “Aids as Genocide: Linking Fear, Grief, and Anger to Action.”
Gould, Deborah. “Moving Politics.” Chapter 4; “ACT UP and a New Emotional Habitus;” “Grief into Anger.”
Gould, Deborah. “Moving Politics.” Chapter 7; “What Despair Does;” “Forbidding Despair.”
Gould, Deborah. “Moving Politics.” Chapter 6; “Moralism.”
However, as Gould discusses, emotions exist within a set of frames, including political ideology, social-normative assumptions, and identity. Throughout Gould’s account, these frames shape not only which emotions are relevant but the actions that these emotions privilege and the targets of these actions. It is not clear, however, how emotions interact with these frames—whether they reflect them, amplify them, or transform them. Underlying this ambiguity in Gould’s text is an ambiguous account of the indeterminacy of emotions. Focusing on anger and emotions that moderate the effects of anger, I will here suggest a definition of emotion as modular frame that both fits Gould’s evidence and generates a set of testable hypotheses that could render her model applicable to a range of other contentious movements.
In Gould’s account, emotions reflect existing frames and help motivate but do not restrict action. I argue that emotions both create new frames and directly cause action, although they do so in coordination with wider frames. Specifically, emotions frame personal and social goals. Emotions are intimately bound to—and may even be partially constituted by—appraisals of whether a goal can or should be achieved, how much control the actor has over goal achievement, and the actor’s ability to cope with achievement or non-achievement of these goals.
Anger, for example, tends to arise when another individual’s goals are interfering with yours, when you believe that they have control over their actions, and when you believe that you cannot tolerate (cope with) interference. This pattern tends to hold even when individuals are experiencing anger as group members rather than simply as individuals.
Last, anger, like all emotions, can be instantaneous and, to a degree, transferable. If you see an angry person, you form a theory about what they are thinking and feeling that is based on the appraisals described above. If you identify with that person, you can adopt those appraisals as your own even before you have experienced their situation for yourself.
ACT UP deliberately framed events in terms of the core narrative of anger, creating an amplifying resonance between sociopolitical beliefs and instantaneous emotion. ACT UP, for example, shifted blame for the epidemic from the gay community to the government, arguing that the gay community had responded to the virus by developing safe sex practices while government actors had callously refused to act or acted in a way that further threatened the health and safety of the gay community. Further, they made anger normative, encouraging its display and privileging demonstrations of anger over demonstrations of other, potentially frame-threatening, emotions. It was impossible to be a member of ACT UP and not feel anger, impossible to be a member of ACT UP and not see the epidemic, and actors in the epidemic, through the lens of anger.
By choosing to embrace anger (over alternatives) ACT UP members were driven to direct action. Anger involves the appraisal that another person’s actions (or your own past actions, or a group’s actions, or the actions of God or fate) are intolerable. Both nonviolent and violent resistance are possible results of anger, but an emphasis on resistance is almost assured if anger is given free reign.
Hope and anger interact when an individual or group is deciding when, where, and who to resist. Anger establishes threat and the intentionality of the offending actor, but hope provides a sense of the angry person’s agency, their ability to affect change. ACT UP managed hope, framing nonviolent direct action as the most effective action and framing other tactics as hopeless. When hope was lost, some people surrendered anger, finding numbness or renewed compassion. Numbness shifted focus to inaction, leading activists to both leave ACT UP and to resist re-involving themselves in the fight to manage the AIDS crisis. Renewed compassion shifted focus away from political activism and instead emphasized helping others to cope with the epidemic, leading former ACT UP members to volunteer to care for AIDS victims. The loss of hope also brought a redirection of anger, emphasizing the perceived failings of individual ACT UP members. This new anger, expressed as a sense of betrayal, both amplified existing divisions and spurred the emergence of new social identities.
Moralization was evident in both attitudes towards government actors and, later, attitudes toward ACT UP members. By emphasizing the intentional, negative, and intolerable actions of others, anger can, when appropriately framed, create the perception that an individual’s bad behavior reflects essential badness. It is associated with increased stereotyping, both automatic and more deliberate.
Anger however, only tends to moralize around justice and fairness, not other markers of “badness” like pollution or weakness. Interestingly, anger may not only have focused the attention of ACT UP members on justice and fairness, but may have focused governmental attention on these issues as well. When medical and scientific officials paid attention, even defensively, to ACT UP’s anger, they may have been more attentive to ACT UP’s justice and fairness frames and it is possible that a combination of anger and hope encouraged frame bridging between these officials and members of ACT UP.
References:
Chapter Two; “New Feelings and an Expanding Political Horizon After Hardwick;” “Individuals and the Social Space for Militancy.”
Gould, Deborah. “Moving Politics.” Chapter Seven; “From Despair to Activism;” “Act Up’s Antidote to Despair”
Gould, Deborah. “Moving Politics.” Introduction. “New Curves in the Emotional Turn;” “Affect, Feelings, and Emotions.”
Kuppens, Peter, Van Mechelen, Iven, Smits, Dirk J. M., and De Boeck, Paul. “The Appraisal Basis of Anger: Specificity, Necessity, and Sufficiency of Components.” Emotion. 2003:3(3). 254-269.
Mackie, Diane M., Devos, Thierry, and Smith, Eliot. “Intergroup Emotions: Explaining Offensive Action Tendencies in an Intergroup Context.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 2000. 79(4):602-616.
Smith, Eliot R., Seger, Charles R., Mackie, Diana M. “Can Emotions Be Truly Group Level? Evidence Regarding Four Conceptual Criteria.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 2007. 93(3):443.
Snow, David, Rochford, E. Burke, Worden, Steven K., Benford, Robert D. “Frame Alignment Processes, Micromobilization, and Movement Participation.” American Sociological Review, 1986. 51(4):477
Gould, Deborah. “Moving Politics.” Chapter 2; “The Affects and Emotions of Framing;” “Aids as Genocide: Linking Fear, Grief, and Anger to Action.”
Gould, Deborah. “Moving Politics.” Chapter 4; “ACT UP and a New Emotional Habitus;” “Grief into Anger.”
Gould, Deborah. “Moving Politics.” Chapter 7; “What Despair Does;” “Forbidding Despair.”
Gould, Deborah. “Moving Politics.” Chapter 6; “Moralism.”
No comments:
Post a Comment