The political sociology of emotions: essays on trauma and ressentiment

Cover -- Half Title -- Series Page -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Table of Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Chapter 1: The political sociology of emotions: an outline -- Political sociology in search of emotionality -- The sociology of emotions at a crossroads -- Toward a political sociology of emotions -- Synopsis -- Part I: The politics of trauma -- Chapter 2: On trauma and cultural trauma -- The semantic field and the historical-societal context -- The cultural trauma theory -- Normative and conceptual prospects of cultural trauma. A very short note -- Synopsis -- Chapter 3: The civil war(s) trauma -- Introduction -- The event: historical context and prime political cultural consequences -- The civil war as a collective injury -- Designating the war -- From collective injury to cultural trauma -- Meta-theoretical repercussions -- Synopsis -- Chapter 4: Mediatizing traumatic experience and the emotions -- Introduction -- Emotions and the media -- Media, trauma, and morality -- Trends of the media-moral emotions nexus -- Synopsis -- Chapter 5: Trauma and the politics of forgiveness -- Entering the past -- Reactions to traumas -- Moral acumen in forgiveness -- Synopsis -- Part II: The politics of ressentiment -- Chapter 6: On resentment, ressentiment, and political action -- Introducing the twin emotional terms -- Of resentment -- Of ressentiment -- Towards an appraisal -- Political bearings -- Synopsis -- Chapter 7: Populism and the emotions -- Introduction -- Defining populism -- Emotionally analyzing populism -- Populism: an emotionally charged phenomenon -- The case of Greek populism -- Perspectives for further research -- Synopsis -- Chapter 8: The emotionality of the nation-state -- Introduction -- The emotionally laden thought of nationalists -- The emotions-driven studies of nationalism.

"This book articulates the political sociology of emotions as a sub-field of the emotions sociology in relation to cognate disciplines and sub-disciplines. Far from reducing politics to affectivity, the political sociology of emotions is coterminous with political sociology itself plus the emotive angle added in the investigation of its traditional and more recent areas of research. The worldwide predominance of affective anti-politics (e.g. the securitization of immigration policies, reactionism, terrorism, competitive authoritarianism, nationalism and populism, etc.) makes the political sociology of emotions increasingly needed for making the prospects of democracy and republicanism in the 21st century more intelligible. Through a weak constructionist theoretical perspective, the book shows the utility of this new sub-field by coping with two central themes: trauma and ressentiment. Trauma is considered as a key cultural-political phenomenon of our times evoking both negative and positive emotions; ressentiment is a pertaining individual and collective political emotion allied to insecurities and moral injuries. In tandem, they constitute fundamental experiences of late modern times. The value of the political sociology of emotions is revealed in the analysis of civil wars, cultural traumas, the politics of pity, the suffering of distant others in the media, populism, and national identities in both sides of the Atlantic"--