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/404/ Emotion Sickness: The Politics of Feelings (IV) ft. Catherine Liu
🕑 Added 2024-04-16 17:51:41 +0000 UTCOn melodrama and the bourgeois subject.
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We're back with the next installment of our series on the "emotional turn". Alex talks to Catherine Liu about whether politics is staged in a "melodramatic" fashion today.
What is the bourgeois subject, why was it good, and where did it go?
What is melodrama?
Does public crying make us feel connected? Is it all Oprah's fault?
Why is psychoanalysis the solution to, not the cause of, therapy culture?
How is indignation used today? Is the political scene just villains and victims?
Links:
Oprah Winfrey and the Glamour of Misery, Eva Illouz
Interview with Christine Gledhill, from the book Melodrama After the Tears (pdf attached)
Comments
Tann from the mountains
This is a very interesting critique of what she is doing, but as a good cultural critique, she is not proposing anything more than a critique of the critique. We almost complete the full circle here. First, it was the bourgeoisie subject that was criticized because of its rationality and coldness, and now it is criticized because it’s emotionally open and “historical.” Though it’s hard to see that the revolutionary subject was not emotionless and not melodramatic. The drama of David vs. Goliath is, in the end, the story of almost all revolutions, and is Uber dramatic and romanticising operssion. She is also not proposing anything more than going back to the rational, “republican” subject (funny how this can be linked with a conservative project), praising socialist rationalism. But is this what we really want for the left? It’s also saying, in other words, let’s go back to daddy—maybe he doesn’t talk much and sometimes can hit you, but at least he gives stability. Is that the liberating project?
Daniel L
Great ep. I feel like the donation culture is particularly American (though also internet driven too I think)
