Emotions In Capitalism (and The Rise Of Homo Sentimentalis)
Frozen Intimacies (2007) is the title of the work in which the sociologist Eva Illouz It aims to analyze emotions in the instrumentalization that capitalism has carried out of them during the last century
A student of the impact of psychology on the development of an “emotional capitalism” in which economic relations parasitize and end up transforming the culture of affections, the author composes the aforementioned work through the three conferences that will be reviewed. The first of the conferences is titled The emergence of homo sentimentalis.
Illouz begins by considering emotions as an intersection between “cultural meanings and social relations” that, by simultaneously engaging “cognition, affect, evaluation, motivation and body”, entail a condensation of energy capable of enabling human action.
In addition, The author considers that emotions have a “pre-reflective and often semi-conscious” character given that they are the result of social and cultural elements that escape the conscious decision of the subjects.
A new emotional style
At the beginning of the 20th century, and through the dissemination of the therapeutic discourse promoted by clinical psychology, “a new emotional style” spread consisting of “a new way of thinking about the relationship of the self with others.” The main elements to consider for this “new interpersonal imagination” of a psychoanalytic type were:
The crucial role played by the nuclear family in the formation of the self.
The importance of everyday life events in the configuration of normality and the pathological.
The centrality of sex sexual pleasure and sexuality in a linguistically structured imagination.
Beginning in the 1920s, this new emotional style spread mainly through what Illouz calls “advice literature.” But although the psychoanalytic style provided “the vocabularies through which the self understands itself” in a manifestly omnipresent vocation, it ended up being especially functional in the business environment, contributing both to the emotional management of the lives of workers , as well as the systematization and rationalization of its activities during the production process.
The role of psychology in business management
The author maintains that “the language of psychology was very successful in shaping the discourse of business individuality” to the extent that contributed to neutralizing the class struggle by displacing labor conflict towards the emotional framework related to the personality of the worker
In any case, the uses of psychology in the business environment should not be understood only as a subtle mechanism of control by management, since they also established “assumptions of equality and cooperation” in the relationships “between workers and managers.” Such contributions would not have been possible without the development of a “linguistic model of communication”, whose foundation is found in the search for empathy on the part of the interlocutors.
Thus, the communicative skill that allows social recognition ended up being a strategy through which to achieve business objectives in such a way that the knowledge of the emotions of the other through communication facilitated the practices of professional competence, while mitigating the uncertainties related to the advent of a flexible mode of production. Illouz summarizes it this way: “emotional capitalism reorganized emotional cultures and made the economic individual become emotional and emotions became more closely linked to instrumental action.”
After “promoting efficiency and social harmony in the company,” psychology penetrated the family sphere in order to extend “the therapeutic services market” toward a middle class that, starting in the second half of the 20th century, increased considerably. in advanced capitalist countries. In addition, Therapeutic psychology was supported by the rise of feminism from the 1970s onwards whose main concerns were around family and sexuality.
Both psychology and feminism contributed to making public, and therefore political, what until then had been experienced as personal and private.
This attitude shared by therapeutic and feminist discourse with respect to the “ideal of intimacy” was based on equality between the members of an emotional relationship, so that “pleasure and sexuality (were based) on the implementation of just conduct and in the affirmation and preservation of the fundamental rights of women.”
The rationalization of emotional relationships
As a consequence of a new egalitarian paradigm in intimate relationships, there was a tendency to methodically and rationally systematize the values and beliefs of the members of the couple Consequently, “intimate life and emotions (became) measurable and calculable objects, which can be expressed in quantitative statements.”
The rationalization of intimate relationships based on the questioning of the emotional bonds on which they are based involved the transformation of such relationships “into cognitive objects that can be compared with each other and be susceptible to a cost-benefit analysis.” Removed from their particularity, depersonalized and subject to a process of commensuration, relationships assumed a condition of indeterminacy and impermanence
