Emotional Self‐Alienation

What is it like to feel alienated from one’s own emotions, or emotional self-alienation (ESA)? Drawing on work from critical sociology on emotional capitalism and the commodification of emotions as well as on analytic and phenomenological philosophy of emotions, here, I propose a multi-dimensional account of ESA. I begin by sketching a relational account of alienation, according to which alienation is a deficient relation to oneself, others and the world. Next, I show that ESA is not reducible to cognate but different phenomena such as feelings of being manipulated, coercion or self-deception. I then distinguish between three dimensions of emotions that are deficient in ESA: their experiential, self-disclosing and normative dimension. I argue that ESA involves, first, a certain cleavage between the affective and the intentional dimension of emotions. This results in the loss of personal import of one’s emotions and a failure to integrate a given emotion into one’s overall evaluative outlook. Secondly, I show that this goes hand in hand with a deficiency in the self-disclosing dimension of emotions. I suggest that in ESA emotions are not revelatory of what matters to oneself. Consequently, ESA hampers an essential function of emotions, namely the elaboration of one’s overall personal evaluative outlook. Finally, I argue that ESA also negatively affects the normative dimension of emotions: it disrupts the balance between what I ought to feel and what I actually feel. I conclude by addressing potential misunderstandings of what emotional reappropriation is, and outline how a ‘critical theory of emotions’ might reply to them. 1. Setting the Stage: Emotional Capitalism and ‘Emotion-Invasion’ Imagine you have worked for the communal unemployment agency for some years. You have professional training as a social worker; your friends consider you the most empathetic person they know. Though you don’t see yourself in such a positive light, attending to people in need was indeed always what mattered most to you. Accordingly, solidarity, sympathy and compassion were always built into the heart of your self-image. You not only cognitively and morally appraise these values, but they impact you in a way that the feelings attached to those values