Political Agency and the Medicalisation of Negative Emotions

ISBN-13: 9781399504393 / Angielski / Twarda / 2022 / 208 str.

Dan Degerman

Opis

This book explores negative emotions like anger, fear and grief as important drivers of political action. It examines how treating these feelings as medical problems affects society. Drawing on the political thought of Hannah Arendt, the book develops an original understanding of political emotions as fragile and vulnerable to attacks disputing their relevance to public life. It presents and analyses four case studies of emotional politics in the UK, ranging from assertions that UKIP supporters were emotionally primitive to diagnoses of anxiety disorder in the Brexit referendum's aftermath. It demonstrates how ideas of emotion and mental disorder might be used to both empower and disempower people politically.

Spis treści

Introduction: The politics of medicalisation; 1. Hannah Arendt, political agency, and negative emotions; 2. The public shape of emotions; 3. Disordered voters: Grieving the Brexit referendum; 4. Mad protesters: Raging with Occupy; 5. Primitive populists: The fear of UKIP 6. Maladjusted patients: The agency of the user/survivor movement; Conclusion: Political agency after COVID-19.