The Cultural Politics of Emotion

Judith Butler, an American gender studies scholar and philosopher whose work centers on ethics, feminism, politics, literature, and queer theory, is a highly regarded academic and author. They have taught at George Washington University, Wesleyan University, and Johns Hopkins University and have served as the Maxine Elliot Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, the Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Visiting Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University, and the Hannah Arendt Chair at the European Graduate School. They have also held the Spinoza Chair of Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam. Their publications include many journal articles and full-length scholarly works that are considered key texts in the development of third-wave feminism, queer theory, and political philosophy. One of Butler’s major contributions to queer and feminist theory is the idea that both gender and sex are socially constructed performances that do not reflect biological reality.

As Ahmed counts Butler among the scholars to whom she is “most indebted” (Location 317 of 6419), she refers repeatedly to Butler’s work throughout The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Ahmed often shows how Butler’s work develops and improves upon earlier work that Ahmed finds inaccurate or incomplete, as when she cites Butler’s critique of the idea that hate resides in signs themselves in “The Organisation of Hate.” Ahmed also relies on Butler’s work as foundational to her own—for instance, it is Butler’s idea that the repetition of norms creates the world’s boundaries and surfaces.

Frantz Fanon, an Afro-Caribbean Marxist humanist philosopher, physician, and psychiatrist, is considered to be one of the most significant anti-colonial thinkers of the early 20th century. During Fanon’s teen years, the Vichy French took over the government of Martinique, his home island. Their oppression of Martinique’s people profoundly influenced Fanon, who enlisted with the Allies as soon as he was able to. Unfortunately, his experiences fighting with the Allied forces exposed him to further racism. When he left Martinique to study psychiatry in France, yet more racism awaited him. In response, he wrote his first full-length book, Black Skin, White Masks. In this text, Fanon analyzes the psychology of the oppressed, the ways in which language is used as a tool of oppression, and the ways in which oppression impacts identity. Ahmed quotes Black Skin, White Masks in her introduction to Chapter 3 and throughout her analysis of fear. Many of Fanon’s other ideas—the internalization of the white gaze and the circulation of stereotypes, for instance—contribute to the structure of Ahmed’s arguments throughout The Cultural Politics of Emotion.

Fanon’s writings, which include three full-length texts—A Dying Colonialism, The Wretched of the Earth, and Black Skin, White Masks—have heavily influenced the development of both critical and postcolonial theory. He is credited with inspiring many of the leaders of liberation movements around the world, among them Malcolm X, Bobby Seale, Stokely Carmichael, and Ernesto Che Guevara.