[iDC] The Politics of Perception

[Lucia Sommer]

Dear Anna,

Your insights into the ways in which these kinds of studies themselves *produce* affect are quite interesting. For example, I wonder how what the doctors call "the social  unit" is produced in and through the study: "Maybe its the US," suggests Dr Hibbing -- which of course already assumes a particular form of identification and forecloses upon other possibilities...

In contrast to your insight, the study, and other neo-Spencerian exercises like it, produce a narrative that *disavows* the possibility of its own production of emotion, since according to this narrative, affect can only be the result of "deep-seated" biological reflexes, genetics, or deeply-ingrained childhood experience, all of which are highly resistant to change -- rather than effects of something as ephemeral as discourse, social interaction or current
 experience. 


Best,

Lucia






      
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