Overview

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.

Full Product Details

9781399504409

Table of Contents

Reviews

It is a commonplace to argue that politics has been disrupted by emotions such as anger, grief, depression and resentment over recent years, often with the implication that these are signs of 'irrationality' or even 'madness'. Dan Degerman offers an original and hopeful reframing of such issues, resisting the dominant urge to diagnose negative emotions, and instead charting new pathways between the political and the psychological. This book will be of great interest to anyone concerned with the affective dimensions of political life, as well as the politics of mental health. --Will Davies, Goldsmiths, University of London The passions unleashed by populism, Covid-related concerns and increased democratic disaffection all focus attention on the politics of emotions and the emotional drivers of political life. But very few scholars have been able to reveal why emotions matter with the skill and sophistication that Dan Degerman brings to the topic. Like all brilliant books Political Agency and the Medicalisation of Negative Emotions raises as many questions as it answers as it skillfully dissects a range of literatures, topics and themes. A quite remarkable book that deserves to be read within and beyond academe. --Matthew Flinders, University of Sheffield This book brings much needed attention to the new age of medicalisation in which the emotional wellsprings of political action - anger, grief and fear - are treated as psychological disorders. It shines a critical light on 'medicalising attacks' that drive citizens onto the couch rather than the streets and shows why negative emotions are indispensable to political agency. --Paul Muldoon, Monash University

Author Information

Dan Degerman is Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Bristol. His research explores issues at the intersection of the philosophy and history of emotions, mental disorder, and political engagement, and I have a special interest in the philosophy of Hannah Arendt.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available