***Virtual Event for Graduate Students ***

“Outlaw Emotions, Protest Movements, and the Radical Imagination

Jose Medina

(Northwestern University)

Friday, September 24

4:00pm – 5:30pm

Abstract:  This talk elucidates the role that emotions play in political communication and especially in protest acts and protest movements. Following Alison Jaggar, I distinguish between conventional and outlaw emotions depending on whether or not the emotions in question fit the normative expectations of dominant sensibilities, political horizons and social imaginaries. I argue that outlaw emotions have a special role to play in collective moral learning about injustice because they prompt the exercise of a radical imagination that can expand existing social imaginaries and regenerate public sensibilities.