ÖZP 2010/2  S.171-186

Oliver W. Lembcke, Florian Weber

Emotion and Revolution. Toward a Theory of the Affective Basis of Political Order

Keywords: discourse on revolution, theory of action, performativity, political order, theory of emotions

The role of emotions during the revolutionary making of a new political order is widely neglected in contemporary grand theories of revolution. From a structuralist point of view, the intentions and actions of social actors are of minor importance in fundamental social change. Culturalist approaches do highlight the importance of revolutionary ideologies, but tend to treat actors as puppets that naturally follow a preordained plot; they thus conceptualize emotions as epiphenomena. In political theory, emotions do not take part in the reconstruction of the normative aspects of the revolutionary enactment of order since they come about in a contingent and often violent fashion which seems to taint the validity of normative principles. Hence, the historical phenomenon and the academic concept of revolution are somewhat disconnected in the current discourse on revolution. The article, by contrast, underlines the elementary role that emotions play during the establishment of new political order.