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Assignment #13

In Sara Ahmed’s article, “Affective Economics,” she discusses how emotions such as love and hate play a role in defining the person that we become and how society perceives us. These emotions often take us to new boundaries and make us do things that we wouldn’t do if we thought it through, but these feelings often make us act out of emotions instead of rational thinking. She explores how love and hate are correlated, more so than we know of. When people act in situations based off of hate, they usual do for a particular reason. When Ahmed, talks about people acting out of hate such as child molesters and rapists she talks about them acting out due to threat of loss. People often see hatred as an emotion that is a psychological nature, but it is important to see how they work and how they develop. There are certain economies of hate that she discusses, such as how emotions reside in objects and subjects, rather than how another person makes you feel. She also discusses how capitalism plays an important role in our emotions, how people strive for success and money often makes us think about ourselves only. Certain emotions are motivated by other feelings. The feeling of fear often makes a person act off of instinct. Fear is strong emotion, because it is what you are afraid of what is coming, but not what is actually going to happen. Fear can often take over your whole body both physically and mentally. It is not necessarily about overcoming the fear because often times even when you face that fear, it still never leaves your mind. The discussion of how a white boy was scared by a black man, shows how fear does not reside in the subject. The white boy begins to shiver and recognizes his shiver as a fear, while the black man himself feels fear, because his existence is threatened. People are not scared by others because they are fearsome, but rather fear is contained in the body. This leads to people acting involuntary due to the fact that the brain sends signs that the body is afraid. It is often that people’s emotions are based off of a related subject and for that reason together we feel and these emotions are what bring us together.