CANS 401

Journal 1
Echo Jiang

Emotions are an essential part of the human experience, and they play a crucial role
in shaping our understanding of the world around us. From how we make decisions
to how we interact with others, emotions inform our actions and shape our
perceptions of the world. When it comes to politics, emotions are often seen as
something to be avoided or suppressed. But politics are acted out by humans, and
humans are all about emotions.

As discussed in this week‘s reading, emotion is essential to the human experience.

Emotions play an active role in this process as they help us identify allies, inform our
actions, and justify our rationales. Through the lenses of existentialism, we come to
have our sense of self by positioning ourselves as the object and others as the
subject. Since emotions shape our understanding of the world and help us
understand our place and others’ places, the "othering" process is both emotional
and intellectual.

There is a classical joke in China, where I grew up. A teacher asks the class how many
countries there are in the world. A student raised his hand and said: “There are two countries:
China, and ‘the foreign’ with great pride. The joke is funny because China in Mandarin is “中
国”, which literally means “center country”, and foreign/ aboard is “外国”, which literally
means “outside the borders of the center country”. This generalization of the
“foreign/unknown” comes from a child’s innocence, but also the positionality of self as the
center and the process of alienation.

Politics is inherently emotional. People come together around shared emotions, and
emotions are what give politics its power. Emotions are what make us distinguish
between ourselves and the other, between the inside and the outside, and between
what is “good” and what is “bad”. To take emotions out of politics is to take
personhood out of politics, which would result in the most extreme forms of
segregation and discrimination. It is also important to consider how gender dynamics
play a role in today's so-called advocacy for "emotionless politics." Is it because
emotions are only reserved for the weak, the female, and the Other, that they need
to be “left out of politics”?

Nothing is purely rational or emotional, rather, all interactions in the world can be
considered as an interplay of rationality and emotionality.