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and Emotions
ANDREW A. G. ROSS
University of Oregon, USA
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expression. The stakes of this omission are surely high, since it allows realists
to monopolize the topic of emotions and cast them as basic impulses
insulated from the social world and inhospitable to peaceful coexistence and
moral achievement.6 If constructivism is coming in from the cold, it still
lacks the concepts needed to respond to the realist challenge and to explore
fully the emotional terrain of global politics.
The purpose of this article is to identify and develop some of these
concepts. I do so through a selective critical engagement with one strain of
the constructivist literature in IR. I focus on the soft constructivism
developed by Alexander Wendt in Social Theory of International Politics
(1999), not out of a conviction that Wendts version of constructivism is
either the best or the worst available, but in order to facilitate the deep
explication of conceptual and ontological problems warranted by the
phenomenon of affect. Only by exposing, for example, the relationship
between cognitivity and materiality in the soft constructivist account of
human agency are we in a position to understand how receptive it might be
to the study of emotions. Wendts Social Theory represents the most explicit
and sustained presentation of a constructivist ontology available in IR
theory; as such, it provides an exploratory terrain on which to investigate
problems shared by other constructivists. I suggest that, by appropriating
conventional models of intentionality, Wendt loses purchase on modes of
belief and identity that are inspired and absorbed before being chosen. And,
by separating material and ideational forces, his constructivism is left to
decide whether emotions are biological impulses of the body or cognitive
constructions of the mind a decision that scientific and philosophical
research on emotion has increasingly refused. Exposing these presupposi-
tions in Wendts ontology will also illuminate kindred traces of intellectual-
ism within other species of constructivism. Research emphasizing
representations of identity as meaning-laden expressions, for example, may
not fully capture the role of affect in social life. If constructivists are to see
emotions as vehicles of socialization, these shared assumptions will need
critical modification.
My argument also reflects a selective concern with the specific challenges
posed by nonconscious and corporeal dimensions of emotion.7 Recent work
inspired by Gilles Deleuze has shown how nonreflective habits and moods,
or affects, tinge our intellectual beliefs and judgements and prepare us for
the identities we come to hold (Connolly, 2002; Deleuze and Guattari,
1988; Massumi, 2002). Circulations of affect prefigure, for example, public
enthusiasm for nationalist mobilization or military intervention. Whereas
feelings are subjective ideas, affects cut across individual subjects and forge
collective associations from socially induced habits and memories.8 More-
over, they are experienced by decision-makers and publics alike; as I will
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suggest, the memories and other affects induced by the 9/11 attacks
provoked American voters and elites to converge in their endorsement of
military intervention abroad. The American response has thus been shaped
more by these affective states than by the beliefs about social roles for
example, the role of enmity described by Wendt advocated by elites.
Exploring this affective dimension does not negate the presence of strategic
calculations; on the contrary, the latter were all the more viable where there
were already affective dispositions conducive to military action.
The first three sections of the article address what emotions are, how
nonconscious affects challenge soft constructivist assumptions about inten-
tionality, and how their composite nature demands a revision of Wendts
image of materiality. The final section of the article considers the relationship
between affect and identity. Here, I suggest that assumptions about
intentionality, meaning, and materiality have shielded many constructivists in
IR from investigating the embodied social practices through which social
identities are internalized. I consider briefly the American response to 9/11
in order to illustrate ways in which constructivism might investigate the
affective strata on which collective identities are incipiently forged.
Rethinking Emotions
Since the 1960s and 1970s, the prevailing view in philosophy, psychology,
and cognitive science has been that emotions are a species of belief. An
emotion, in this view, is a cognitive judgement about whether some
experience is rewarding or threatening to the self. Each emotion contributes
to this assessment or appraisal through a distinct cognitive structure
(Lazarus, 1991; Ortony et al., 1988). Martha Nussbaum has recently
suggested, for example, that grief is predicated upon a series of distinct
beliefs that an injury or loss has been experienced by someone, and that
the injured person is significant to the grieving individual (Nussbaum, 2001:
3945).9 Most so-called appraisal theorists see bodily states as derivative of
these cognitive beliefs, although not all regard appraisal as a conscious
process (Griffiths, 2004). Some simply broaden their definition of cognition
to include nonconscious processing (Lazarus, 1984); others argue that
emotions are cognitive but nevertheless nonpropositional and not involved
in higher levels of cognition (Oatley and Johnson-Laird, 1987).10 Most
appraisal theorists, however, have assumed that appraisal is conducted
consciously and that, as such, it is available through the self-reports of
human subjects.11 Constructivist accounts of emotion, it should be said,
have largely accepted these core features of the cognitivist view. Con-
structivists share the idea that emotions are cognitive beliefs rather than
bodily states, adding only that these beliefs are socially or intersubjectively
200
constituted.12 One theorist writes Turning our attention away from the
physiological states of individuals to the unfolding of social practices opens
up the possibility that many emotions can exist only in the reciprocal
exchanges of a social encounter (Harre, 1986: 5). Cognitive theories,
including their constructivist variant, have tended to affirm a strict separa-
tion of the physiological and cognitive dimensions of emotion.
Cognitivists are inspired in part by dissatisfaction with the allegedly
deterministic 19th-century theories of Darwin, Freud and, especially,
William James. James developed a physiological account, which has
remained a key reference point for scientific and philosophical research on
emotion throughout the 20th century. In 1884, James argued that feelings
are responses not to mental recognition of some stimulus but, rather, to
bodily states alone Without the bodily states following on the
perception, the latter would be purely cognitive in form, pale, colourless,
destitute of emotional warmth (James, 1967: 13; 1950: 450). In his widely
cited example, we dont run from a bear because were afraid of it; were
afraid of it because we run (1950: 450). Jamess rigid formulation of this
theory invited equally uncompromising criticism. Beginning in the 1920s,
critics argued that Jamess theory could not withstand new experimental
evidence of the physiological response associated with emotions.13 Walter
Cannon argued, for example, that this evidence disproved Jamess claim that
no emotion could be felt in the absence of visceral stimulus, suggesting that
emotions must somehow be produced in the absence of visceral sensations
(1984: 1446).14 Cannon did not deny that the visceral responses were
involved in emotions, or even that these might be what normally set
emotions apart from other mental states; he did deny that the bodys
response was a necessary element of any emotion and that it was as varied as
James made it out to be (LeDoux, 1996: 46). Early critiques of James thus
inspired cognitivists to explore what they considered the real command
centre of emotions the cognitive machinery giving rise to visceral changes
in the first place.
While many theorists are persuaded by the cognitivist approach to
emotions, others remain dissatisfied by its inability to capture their depth
and intensity. Non-cognitivists have rightly returned to the Jamesian view.15
Notwithstanding the allegedly decisive criticism James provoked, a careful
reading of his psychological and philosophical writings tells a more complex
story. When Cannon and others fault James for missing the similarity of
bodily responses associated with diverse emotions such as anger, fear, and
shame,16 they miss the nature of his concern for the radical diversity of
emotional experience. James complains that descriptive psychology had
retreated into endless classification of emotions as absolutely individual
things (James, 1950: 449) because he rejects the notion that manifold
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Jamess discovery that the body and its visceral processes are fundamentally
involved in emotions but relaxes the claim that these processes might be
directly implicated in all emotional experiences (Damasio, 2004: 7). The
brain, he argues, develops an artificial mechanism for simulating bodily
responses, to stir the mind into action.19 Thus, Jamess hunch about visceral
response was correct, but he missed an important corollary operation
executed by the brain. According to Damasio, the body is not a simple or
closed system; it develops a varied network of enhancements, which are
both partly outside consciousness and subject to education and socialization
through experience.
Understanding emotion as part of an open, adaptable system is what sets
apart this nonreductionist research within neuroscience. For example, a
related and growing body of neuroscientific research has identified two
autonomous systems of affective response one for positive stimuli or
rewards and one for negative stimuli or threats (Cacioppo and Gardner,
1999). Although this research agrees with LeDoux and Damasio that
appraisal is conducted below the level of conscious awareness, it divides all
responses of the brain and body into two distinct systems, each with a
relatively stable function. By contrast, Damasio regards the distinction
between positive and negative affect as less important than the nesting
patterns among levels of emotional response. Lower levels of emotional
response, such as habits and moods, are integrated into higher forms of
emotion, such as anger or joy Each reaction consists of tinkered
rearrangements of bits and parts of the simpler processes below (2003: 38).
Damasio is reluctant to give these processes a determinate form. For him,
education and experience become folded into brain processes in ways that
alter the nested system of emotion (1994: 179).20 Thus cultural influences,
as well as the creative operations of the brain itself, modify nature in ways
that make it difficult to identify stable emotional systems.
The relative openness of research in neuroscience alters the possibilities for
its historical application. The research cited above on positive and negative
affect has, for example, been appropriated by political psychologists who
underestimate the social complexity and adaptability of affect. George
Marcus argues that the system of positive affect, which generates enthu-
siasm, regulates the everyday habits that govern normal participation in
political life. He contrasts this with negative affect, or anxiety, which surveys
sensory data for disruptions that might demand new ideas, creative
solutions, and other adaptive responses (Marcus, 2002; Marcus et al., 2000).
Marcuss affective intelligence model overstates the distinction between
enthusiasm/habit, which he thinks gives a conservative valence to normal
political behaviour, and anxiety/surveillance, which enters only under
unusual circumstances (2002: 817). His favourable acceptance of dualistic
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above all social and ideational phenomena; contra realism, material forces
determine interests only in exceptional circumstances (Wendt, 1999:
11415). The problem, for Wendt, is that this revised conception of
interests is blocked by prevailing assumptions about the nature of human
agency. Human action is motivated, the conventional view suggests, by two
successive and separate components desire and belief.22 Wendt argues
that, through the continuing influence of Hume, rationalists have been able
to view desire (or passion) and belief (or reason) as essentially distinct
phenomena desires motivate action; beliefs qualify or represent the world
in which action is to take place. Further, although rationalists have been
reluctant to specify of what desire consists (1999: 115), they have
nevertheless insisted on a strict separation of desire from belief. Rightly
dissatisfied with this distinction, Wendt proposes a cognitive theory of
desire (1999: 119; emphasis in original).
Wendts theory effectively pushes cognition further back into the
behavioural terrain hitherto occupied by desire. He recodes most desires as
forms of belief cognitive appraisals of the possibilities and conditions of
action. Wendt appeals to eclectic sources to establish an account of
motivation as a cognitive schema whose terms are defined by social
institutions, according to social norms and ideas (1999: 122). In his
account, desire consists of knowledge about prevailing social standards, for a
desire without belief would be a mere urge without direction (1999: 123).
These arguments are fundamental to Part II of Social Theory, in which
Wendt outlines the prevailing schemas or cultures of anarchy. Each
schema represents a set of beliefs that give meaning to material forces
beliefs about what role or model of state behaviour is most appropriate
(1999: 262). The central contention of Wendts constructivism is that these
schemas have motivational force of their own and explain more of state
behaviour than do conventional accounts of material forces. Constructivism
is thus capable of addressing the influence of beliefs, identities, and norms
on interests effects largely overlooked by realism.
Having established that interests are primarily governed by beliefs about
appropriate goals, Wendt develops an account of state behaviour for which
interaction is regulated specifically by the social meanings associated with
material forces. His analysis of interactionism aims to correct Waltzs
premature removal of interaction from system structure. Rather than
discredit interaction as a unit-level phenomenon, Wendt establishes it as
integral to the international system. And central to interaction for Wendt is
the reciprocal recognition of identities. Identity, for him, is part of the
belief structure involved in motivating action To have an identity is
simply to have certain ideas about who one is in a given situation (1999:
170). Thus, agents act according to ideas about who they are. Consistent
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were, to study the multiple ranges of human agency. In the later chapters of
Social Theory, Wendt gestures toward the importance of these phenomena.
He recognizes, for example, that the form through which cultures of
anarchy are internalized is highly variable a Hobbesian anarchy
internalized to the second degree must rely, Wendt thinks, on tacit norms,
its principles being sufficiently violent and alienated to preclude overt
codification (1999: 272); alternatively, a Hobbesian anarchy internalized to
the third degree may rely upon unconscious forces of aggression. These
ideas lead him to suggest that the role that unconscious processes play in
international politics is something that needs to be considered more
systematically, not dismissed out of hand (1999: 278). While suggestive,
these remarks are nevertheless a weak remedy for the intellectualist bias of
Wendts ontology. To begin with, they seem to reflect the idea that
unconscious internalization constitutes a strictly pathological form of
socialization, characteristic of primitive or Hobbesian forms of anarchy.
Higher cultures of anarchy would, in such a view, be internalized through
the normal, cognitive channels. But, more importantly, these isolated
remarks make no attempt to integrate nonconscious levels of agency into a
constructivist account of what human beings are and how they act.
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Conclusion
Constructivists in IR have successfully installed the category of identity into
the lexicon of IR scholarship. Having done so, they are now in a promising
position to examine the manifold channels through which identities are
reproduced in global politics. This research might consider the complex and
volatile emotions that mediate political relations among nations, institutions,
networks, and other global bodies. But careful attention should be paid to
the range of emotional expression. While feelings can perhaps be assimilated
into intentionalist and dualist ontologies, nonconscious dimensions of
emotion present greater challenges. Affects infuse our beliefs and judge-
ments in ways that regularly escape our attention but nevertheless connect
us to collective agencies. Popular responses to a global event such as 9/11,
for example, do not exhibit the cognitive coherence of a role identity such as
Wendts enmity. Nor do these responses consist only of feelings like
revenge, which involve explicit construction of victims and perpetrators
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Notes
1. This article would not have been possible without the generous contributions of
a variety of friends and colleagues. I would like to thank those who commented
on a very early version of the article at the Annual Conference of the Canadian
Political Science Association in 2003, and at a meeting of the graduate student
colloquium in the Department of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University.
For their careful readings of various versions of the article, I am particularly
grateful to: Mark Blyth, Lars Toender, Erin Rowe, and the editors and
anonymous reviewers of the EJIR.
2. Quite rightly, Crawford argues that emotions are a part of IR theory, but an
implicit and undertheorized part (Crawford, 2000: 119).
3. See Massumi (2002: 121) and Latour (2003) for critiques of the aversion
within a variety of constructivist literatures to emotions and other biological
media.
4. Included here is the work cited above on trauma, humiliation, and aesthetic
imagery, which I consider complementary to my own. In the final section of the
article, I discuss in particular recent work by Edkins (2003, 2004), as well
as Campbells deconstructionist treatment of national identity (1998), both
of which make important contributions to a non-intentionalist account of
identity.
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216
16. James argues that each emotion corresponds to a distinct set of bodily responses.
Cannon thinks, on the contrary, that all emotions triggered a singular nervous
response system and that individual differences may be ignored as minor
variations to the rule (1984: 146).
17. Damasio argues that even contemporary scientific methods are unable to capture
the diversity James had identified (2004: 10).
18. LeDoux focuses on the role of the amygdala, a small organ of the brain that
functions outside conscious awareness (LeDoux, 1996: 170).
19. A perception of an emotion-inducing object bypasses the body itself and is
shunted through an alternative neural process what Damasio calls the as if
body loop (1994: 156). This artificial construct of the brain allows emotions to
be felt without visceral responses. Damasio thinks the majority of our emotional
responses operate in this manner.
20. LeDoux offers a comparable account of the brains ability to modify its responses
through learned associations (1996: 265, 303).
21. Damasio argues that, in historical circumstances such as Germany under
National Socialism or Cambodia under Pol Pot, members of a community may
develop an affective tolerance for witnessing or participating in violence (1994:
179). But for him these sick cultures are only pathological aberrations, and he
offers no account of how the events and memories of everyday life induce
specific affects.
22. Wendt uses desire interchangeably with interest and belief with ideas and
expectations (1999: 115).
23. For an interactionist discussion of the affective dimension of roles and
socialization, see Berger and Luckmann (1967: 77, 131, 138).
24. These are personal, type, role, and collective identities (Wendt, 1999:
22430). Critics have argued that Wendt treats personal identities (that which
constitutes a being as a distinct entity) as pre-social formations, constituted prior
to interaction (Zehfuss, 2002: 45).
25. In places, Meads interactionism seems to have a bias toward the cognitive
appraisal of social values and norms as roles (1934: 173).
26. For Wendt, a critique of Waltz on this point seems naturally to demand
consideration of cognitive beliefs. This connection is more clear in an earlier
article, where Wendt writes: Socialization is a cognitive process, not just a
behavioral one (1992: 399). Compare also Wendt (1999: 101, 224, 232, 327,
333).
27. He writes: What makes a theory materialist is that it accounts for the effects of
power, interests, or institutions by reference to brute material forces things
which exist and have certain causal powers independent of ideas (1999: 94).
28. Debates over Wendts soft constructivism have frequently gravitated toward this
image of materiality (Krasner, 2000). While many radical constructivists reject
the very terms of this debate (Campbell, 2001; Doty, 2000), few have explored
the ways in which material forces are involved in social life.
29. For example, Wilmer emphasizes the role of emotions but presumes that
emotional dimensions of identity possess a cognitive content (in this case,
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