The Politics of Emotions

            I want to write about the emotions that exist in political issues and about the politics of my emotions.

            Can I be an artist committed to social justice? Not in a socialist realist sense, of course: Ben Shahn, painted, photographer, and muralist, once criticized Diego Rivera for depicting workers stereotypically, “with heavy wrists.” I’m looking for art that doesn’t eschew the complexity of human experience in order to make a political point, because life always exceeds any depictions of right and wrong.

            This being said, all human experience does have a moral dimension—looks like I’m using moral and political interchangeably here. For me, art that doesn’t to a certain extent “make a point”, or even worse, is not aware of the arguments it does make, isn’t good art.

            The politics of emotions: I was nine and my little brother was four and my mother worked until four pm everyday. In exchange for a sum that my mother at times complained about, an elderly neighbor came to our apartment, heated up our lunch for us, and waited while we ate. She lived in the same apartment building, with her daughter and her son-in-law, who in turn had two daughters. I think she must have wanted a son, or at least a grandson, because my little brother could get away with murder in her presence; he was four, but she spoonfed him his lunch, voluntarily. At times, he’d just refuse to eat, and she’d wait patiently until he finished playing with his toys. Once he gave her a card he had made for her birthday: “My sunshine!” she exclaimed with a lot of emotion, then she wiped off a tear from the corner of her eye.

            I could never elicit this kind of response. Months of good behavior, helping out with the dishes etc. could barely receive approval: tanti Eleonora wasn’t actually very expressive emotionally and I never saw her very effusive around her own granddaughters. But there were more than actions at play there: there were emotions, and hers gravitated toward the young male.

            The politics of emotions (2): once my friend Cristina asked me whether I had noticed that people (back home) loved women only if they were really unhappy—if they could say poor X, she has three small children and her husband deserted her and now she’s about to lose her job, or poor Y, who has cancer and her husband drinks and what’s going to happen to her now… it seemed, according to Cristina, that everyone loved unhappy women in terrible life situations not of their own making. That was one way women could get social approval back home.

            Are things any different here?