The Cultural Politics of Emotion

Ahmed’s Conclusion begins with a brief text about a child injured in a Baghdad bombing, followed by a reiteration of the core argument she has been constructing throughout the text: Emotions are a relational practice operating through stickiness and repeated impressions to shape identity. She proposes to use the book’s conclusion to discuss the relationship between emotions and justice, particularly as manifested in texts.

Ahmed asks what happens when texts insist upon grieving the ungrievable and whether these texts in some way convert injustice to justice. The text about Ali, the injured Iraqi child, draws attention to his wounds and implicitly asks its target audience, the British public, to mourn for his injuries. Through synecdoche, the child stands in for the multitude of other Iraqi injured and dead; Ahmed suggests that the focus on Ali in some way substitutes for and thus erases these others as the face of the innocent child is offered to the British public as an object of charity. Feeling Ali’s pain allows the public to reaffirm its identity as the source of love and compassion for those who “deserve” these emotions and to feel itself “above” the absent, undeserving others.