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THE CULTURAL POLITICS OF EMOTION

One must persist because of I his persistence, by keeping feminism alivie in

the present. In fact, some degree of stubbortiness in relation to one's hopes
may be important: one can struggle for one's investments, even if one is open
to the possibility of giving them up. For feminists, a political and stratcgic
qttestion remains: When should we let go? And w hat should we let go of?
Such a question has no immediate resolution: we must decide, always, what
to do, as a decision that must he made again, and again, in each present we
find ourselves in. This decision is not mine, or even yours we have to think
about how decisions can he mate with or fiar others. Making a decision which means refusing to allow 'things' to he already decided might also
mean qttestioning one's investments, although this does not require suspending one's investments. One can be invested and open to those investments being challenged through the contact we have with others.
contact keeps us open; being aftected by others is crucial to the opening up
of feminism to the uncertaint y of the future.
This opening is an inter\ al in time, and that interval is the time tbr action:
it is now, w hen we must do the work of teaching, protesting, naming, feeling,
and connecting with others. The (wellness that gat tiers in the struggle against
`what is' involves the coming together of diftexem boches in this present time.
It is here that the feminist 'we' becomes aitective. For the opening up of that
which is possible does not just take place in time, in that loop between present
and fin tire. The opening up also ia'es time. The time of opening is the time
of collecting together. Une does not hope alune, but for others, whose pain
one does not feel, but w hose pain becomes a thread in the weave of the
present, touched as it is by all that could be. Through the work of listening
to others, o hearing the force of their pain and t he energy of their anger, of
learning to be surprised by all that one feels oneself to be against; through
all o this, a 'we' is fbrined, and an attachment is made. This is a feminist
attachment and an attachment to feminism and it is moving. I am moved by
the `we', as the 'we' is an effect of those who move towards it. It is not an
innocent 'we', or one that stands still. It is affected by that which it is against,
and hence also bv that which it is for, what it enables, shapes, makes possible. I lere, you might say, one moves towards others, others who are attached
to feminism, as a movement away from that which we are against. Such
movements create the suffice of a feminist communit v. In the forming and
deforming of attachments: in the writing, conversations, the doing, the work,
feminism moves, and is moved. It connects and is connected. More than anyt hing, it is in the alignment of the 'we' with the
the feminist subject with
the feminist collective, an alignment which is imperfect and hence generative, that a new grammar of social existence may yet be possible. The 'we' of
feminism is not its foundation ,. it is an effect of the impressions made by
others who take the risk of inhahiting its llame. Of course, this
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FEMINIST ATTACHMENTS 189

rative has another edge: the 'we' of feminism is shaped by some boches, more
Iban others.
It is hence important that we don't instan feminism as the object of hope,
e en if feminism is what gives us hope. Returning to the opening of this
chaptcr, feminists who speak out against forms of social violence are often
dismissed as motivated by negative passion. The risks of foregrounding
the emotions of feminism are clear. Some risks are, of course, worth taking.
Feminists who have spoken out against the war on terrorism have done so
in a way that expresses hope for another kind of world, another kind of way
of inhabiting the world with others. The hope for 'transnational solidaritv',
to use Chandra Talpade \lohanty's (2003) term, might lie in taking a feminist orientation, a way of facing the world, which includes facing what we
might not recognise, w ith others we do not yet know. When teminists
spoke out against the 'war on terror', they claimed such solidarity. In
speaking against the war as a form of terrorism, they spoke for sumething,
in speeches that viere reaching out for another orientation to the world.
What we `speak for' when 'we speak against' is not always available to us,
as an object that can be delineated in the present. Indeed, spcaking for
somet !ling, rather iban someone, often involves living with the uncertainty
of what is possible in the world that we inhabit. Solidarity does not assume
that our struggles are the same struggles, or that our pain is the same pain,
or that our hope is for the same future. Solidarit involves commitment,
and work, as well as the recognition that even if we do not have the
same feelings, or the same lives, or the same bodies, we do live on common
ground.
NOTES
Of course, this image of the angry black woman has a long history. See Lorde (1984),
Moreton-Rohinson (2003), as well as Thobani (2003: 401).
We could rethink, for example, the relation between femininity and feminism. On the
one hand, feminist politics involves the recognition of femininity as a social norm that
is linked tu the subordination of women. Feminism hence rcads the `naturalliess' of
femininit y as an effect of poss-er (13utler 1990). I lowever, this does not mean identifying
as a feminist necessarily means transcending or giving up on femininity. Onc's
investment in femininity as it mere an ideal does not nccessarily dissipate in the
moment of recognising its normative function in policing gendered bodies. We can also
understand investment in tcrms of how value accrues: being 'good' at femininity for
women can gire you value, and to give up on femininity can be to risk losing value that
one has accrued over time, which can be especiall n significan, if one feels under-valucd
in other ways. To be invested in an attribute that is linkcd to one's subordination is an
effect of subordination: onc's value becomes dependent on how one tires up to that
ideal, even if the ideal is what restricts possibilities for gendered subjects. What is
clear here is that even when we consciously recognise something, and disagree with

190 THE CULTURAL POLITICS OF EMOTION

something, our investments in what embodies that something cannot simply be willed
away. It tales t rine to mace un and to more amay; giren how investments in norms surface
in bodies, then one's bodily relation to the world, and cspecially to those orle lores, is
reorientated if une wishcs not to embody a norte in thc same way.
This argument clearly has implications for thcorics of agency. To deconstruct the
opposition between action and reaction is not to say that agency is impossible. But it is
to relocate agency from the individual to the interface between individuals and worlds;
agency is a matter of what actions are possible giren how we are shaped bv our contact
with others. lo this model, I would not be an agent insolar as I am not enacted opon (the
model). 1 would be an agent insolar as that which affects me does not
IZT1771-TiTreral
cr
determine my action, but learcs room for a decision. Politics is the space lcft between
the surfaces of reaction and the necessity of a decision ahora what to do. This modcl
eontrasts with Lois McNay's argument, which links agency with the creativity of action,
whcrc thc capability for action is dcfined as a prc-disposition and originare (McNay
2000: 3, 18, 22). Whilst my work leaves room for creatire action (to be shaped is not to
have one's course of action be fully determined), it also suggests that there is no original
action, which is not already a forro of reaction, or shaped b n the contact we have with
others. To reart is not always la be reaetionary.
In interpersonal communication, the blocking of an emotion can load to the
intensification of emotions: your inability to `hear' my angcr may make me angrier.
Blockages aren't only effects of defensive hehaviours, but are also effects of emotional
collisions. For example, if I express my anger, and someone returns that anger with
reasonableness, inclifference or oven happiness, thcn the fceling of anger is intensified.
Or the anger could slide loto another emotion: despair, frustration, bitterness. As I
suggested in the Introduction to the book, emotions involve tension and they can be in
tension: the miscommunication nf emotions inrolves a process intenstlieation. Thanks to
Mimi Sheller for helping me forrnulate this point.
I ant very indebted to Lauren 11cHant, whose insightful question, 'When do norms
become firrms?' has provided an inspiration for my work.
Ghassan Hage offers an excellent analysis of the political economy of hope in Against
Paranoid Nationalism (2003). I le suggcsts that hope and hopefulness are distributcd, and
that in paranoid nationalism, there is not enough hope to go around. Subjects hence
don't have anv hope to gire to others (Hage 2003: 9). Whilst I fiad ibis argument
convincing, it is in danger of supporting a modcl of hope as something we must have.
Hage suggests that if suhjects viere at home, 'clidled', felt cared for, tiren they would
be more hospitable to others. This is surprisingl Glose to New I.abour's version of
multicultural Britain: the nation must Cake caro of itself, and have cnough for itself,
belitre it can he generous to others. Our tas might he to challenge the idea that access
to care and hope for some are necessary conditions for being generous towards others.
7. There is a tendency to privilege the futuro in some feminist thcorv, see, for example,
Grosz (1999: 15). For a critique of this tendency and how it can forget the ethical
significance of thc past, sce Ahmed (2002) and Kilby (2002).