Feeling and Protest

Detractors of social movements deploy critiques of irrationality—as signs of unchecked emotions leading to violence—to undercut their credibility. They promote the suspicion that grassroots protests are incompatible with reason. As a result, social movements bear the burden of countering this narrative to establish a credible voice. Rather than an unconscious symptom, many social movements have historically engaged with feelings to organize political action. Beyond indigitation, disgust, desire, fatigue, solidarity, and sensory modalities like sound, visuality, and smell are used to advance their message. In this seminar we will study various social movements from the 20th and 21st centuries global Hispanophone to understand how affect mediates these struggles.