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Affective Economies

Sara Ahmed opens her essay by with a quote from the Aryan Nations Website. Many people view them as being hateful with the way they view others, but they perceive their feelings as coming from love. They have a love for their country, people, and culture and they view others as being a threat, even comparing interracial couples to child molesters and rapist. It is the love of preserving themselves that they believe other people confuse for hate. This is an alternative way of viewing their lifestyle and it is accomplished through the use of emotions. This has the power to change they way they are perceived. She talks about the rights of the people and the grounds of the nation in this essay both of which are under attack according to the Aryans. One emotion that was discussed was fear, and how it is something that is felt from the outside and works its way in. There was a white child that saw a shivering black man and interpreted his action as aggression causing him to be scared. His perspective gave him the right or the grounds for feeling scared. Fear creates a divide between people and by expressing his fear the white boy is said to expand while the black man being the one who is feared is said to be contained because he is afraid of the impact of scaring the little boy. Emotional work has the power to bring people together, spread them apart and/or develop places in societies. Ahmed describes what they Aryans say as imaginations and fantasy and through emotional work they can bring them to life. Once people become conditioned to view the other as dangerous, it validates mistreatment. The boy was taught that black men are dangerous so seeing a black man with a natural human reaction produces fear. Once he has that real intense feeling it is hard to dissociate fear from the black race. He will feel he has a right to want to protect his own and his nation.