Emotions as Lines: Toward a Processual–Relational Understanding of Social Life

• In Event: Narratives of Emotion: Situational, Temporal, Flexible

Abstract

This paper advances a processual and relational conceptualization of emotions by proposing the metaphor of lines as an analytical device for grasping the temporal, relational, and dynamic nature of emotional life. Moving beyond static and substantialist accounts, emotions are theorized not as internal states or discrete entities, but as unfolding processes that take shape through time, relations, and situated action. The core argument is that emotions are best understood as verbs rather than nouns: trajectories of affective conduct that emerge, intensify, transform, and leave traces as they intersect with other emotional, social, and material processes.
The paper develops this argument by bringing into dialogue two theoretical traditions that are rarely combined in a systematic way: Tim Ingold’s theory of lines, meshwork, and correspondence, and John Dewey’s pragmatist theory of emotions, habit, and aesthetic experience. While Ingold provides a powerful ontology of movement and relational becoming, Dewey contributes a rhythmic theory of emotional life centered on disruption, adjustment, and experiential transformation. Their integration allows for a conceptual framework capable of capturing both the continuity of affective flows and the discontinuities, frictions, and turning points that structure emotional experience.
The extended abstract is organized around three main contributions. First, it reframes emotions within a process ontology, shifting the analytical question from where emotions are located to when and how emotions unfold. Second, it conceptualizes emotions as affective lines, emphasizing their temporal development, narrative structure, and capacity to generate effects across situations. Third, it introduces the notions of affective correspondence and affective meshworks to account for the interdependence of emotions in social life, from intimate interactions to collective and political settings.

Author

• Giacomo Lampredi, University of Milan