8/3/2019 63998225 Capabilities Why Emotions Poster Presentation

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Amy-Elyse Gordon Dominican University College

For a full bibliography, to submit comments and criticisms, to visit an online and interactive version of this poster,or for background research materials and ongoing developments in this project,

please visit: www.amyegordon.blogspot.com

Identification:Identifying central capability deprivation (e.g. apathy, grief, sorrow, pain, etc).Focus on capabilities aims (e.g. desire, envy, emulation, anticipation, curiosity).

MobilizationResist complete adaptation to unjust circumstances (e.g. resentment, envy, contempt.Mobilize efforts towards political transformation (e.g. constructive anger, solidarity,hope, confidence, pleasure, etc)

Maintaining a capabilities-oriented politics

Politics of recognition Education

Deliberative democracy

Political participation and mobilizationInformation base for policy formulation

Image credits: Top image - Véronique Pelletier, starting from left to right, Véronique Pelletier; VéroniquePelletier; Public debate (coe.org.rs); Paul Gooddy (freedigitalphotos.net); Africa (freedigitalphotos.net)

Emotions have a radical role to play in implementing a capabilities approachEmotions have a radical role to play in implementing a capabilities approach

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Emotions are the siteof interactions, collaborations,tensions, resistances and contestbetween individuals, groups,institutions. Exploring the differentmoments of these influencescan help to engage in criticaland in constructive projects.

Capabilities: why emotions?“Woman, why are you crying?

Your tears should become your thoughts.”

motions are one of the most interdisciplinary objects of study today – ranging across sociology, philosophy, cultural studies, education, neuroscience, psychological and pathological

sciences,ethology, economics and other disciplines. Emotions are also fundamental for a capabilities approach; Martha Nussbaum includes them among her list of “centralcapabilities”. Emotions incarnate some of the most important insights of capabilities theory: they are irreducibly linked with individual bodies and individual experiences of benefits,harms, and freedoms. Studies in neuroscience, philosophy and other developments in theories of emotion indicate that a healthy development of the emotions is crucial for functioningin practical reasoning, judgments of value, and other capabilities linked to Nussbaum's list (e.g. affiliation, political agency and control over one's environment, senses, imagination andthought, play). A cultivated emotional life may play an “architectonic” role in supporting the development and functioning of other central capabilities.

A better epistemology and ethology of emotioncould facilitate creative ways of increasing thepolitical agency, participation, and representation

of individuals who are not included under narrowdefinitions of "rationality" (e.g. children, mentallydisabled, other species).

Aim at building and maintainingpolitical and economic structuresthat will support capabilities-basedsocieties via (for example) pragmatic

theories for the moral educationof the emotions.

Indian women's song – cited in Nussbaum

Recent advances in emotionaltheories reveal more about howemotions inform or inhibit human action and theformulation or expression of goals anddesires. These insights can beapplied to form a more nuanced andcomplex theory of “preference”, onewhich integrates and improves uponan Arrovian use of the term“preference” as referring to “values”. 

A political epistemology of emotion can providemore extensive and intensive analysis of whatcounts as rational exposition and valid critique. Anew formulation of "rhetoric" can better support theanalysis of emotion-based claims. For instance,an argument based on disgust may never be justifiable, while in some contexts, argumentsbased on fear may be admissible (e.g. batteredperson syndrome) or inadmissible (e.g. pre-emptive war).