Inappropriate Offendedness and No Alternative to German Angst—Emotion Discourse as Symbolic Boundary Work

• In Event: 236 - Regular Session. Cultural Studies

Abstract

Against the backdrop of a debate that has started paying more tribute to emotions when studying processes of boundary work, this paper asks how emotions become codified, rendered as legitimate (or not), and activated for social and political actions. By studying one of the most emotional debates in Germany during the past decade, that surrounding Thilo Sarrazin’s book Germany Does Itself In, I show that the ways in which the construction of ordinary Germans’ emotions were organized brought leverage to bear on a specific constellation of symbolic boundaries—a process that was notably at odds with the official consensus in public debate on boundaries. Overall, I argue that paying attention to the question of how emotions are discursively constructed allows for valuable insights into the form and shape of specific, maybe not openly articulated but nonetheless highly consequential, boundaries.

Author

• Eunike Piwoni, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen