A semiotic analysis on the politics of emotion, exemplified through current case studies. Sara Ahmed does this mostly by studying the articulation and expression of emotions of love and hate in contemporary issues such as the response of Americans to September 11 attacks, the demand of Australians to be ashamed of their history of violence towards Aboriginals, and or how hate organisations such as white supremacist groups justify themselves through a rhetoric of 'love'.

I found so much of her writing to be illuminating and full of the 'wonder' that she describes in the 2nd last chapter; a wonder of realising that this is how the world works, and then asking, why does it work like that? One of my favourite chapters was "The Affective Politics of Fear" where she explains the politics of fear especially when selectively applied to certain bodies (brown, Muslim, South Asian, etc). In order to feel fear against such bodies, those bodies must have first already been coded as 'violent' or 'hateful'; as a body that one would feel fearful of. There is a discussion then of 'stickiness' how certain bodies accumulate signs, how certain negative values 'stick' to such bodies, a semiotic reading of racial prejudice.

I also found interesting how she explains that hate and love are basically impressions that are placed onto bodies, repeatedly, and that's what fear or love is -- how impressions are impressed on bodies -- to be turned against out of fear, to move towards someone who is 'safer', these are all acts of 'impressions'. In this way every act carries emotion, and every gesture communicates something, carries affect. It communicates which bodies are more agreeable & which are not, it communicates which bodies can be given more space and which bodies are given the injunction to shrink. The way these emotions are manipulated for affect thus can result in the justification of things like increased state power, justification for wars, or to 'cover-up' and conceal pain or guilt or shame.

Also great were the chapters "Queer Feelings" and the hopeful "Feminist Attachments" which really explicated the operations of power that through repetition of acts give the impression of what is considered 'natural' and therefore 'unnatural', and how one thus respond as a person who has been considered 'abject' / non-heteronormative. I feel like she has provided the most insightful discussion on the debate of marriage & whether it is good politics to want to be a part of that 'system' /heteronormative order. ( )