ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 focuses on the inquiry into what can motivate individuals and groups to care in a manner that agitates against the oppressive tendencies of value fundamentalism. The author hones her analysis of emotion and its link to the imagination, as they may motivate, shape, and otherwise impact political care. So far the book has discussed an emotionally grounded form of care as contestation that becomes applied in a rational manner through the potential of transnational acts of contestation. The author now considers problematic contexts and applications of emotion in politics, for example, as elucidated by Jason Stanley and Richard J. Bernstein. She also considers positions in favor of emotion in political understandings of citizenship and ethico-political obligation, for example, in the writings of Michael Hardt, who argues against Hannah Arendt’s banishment of emotions from politics. Building on their positions, the author adds important developments from ethics and democratic theory that emphasize the role of imagination and its link to emotional well-being. She concludes by showing the normative force of empathy, based on a recent argument by Remy Debes that eschews extreme sentimentalism and grounds empathy in a normative position for ethics. The author applies these insights to her critique of shortcomings in Martha Nussbaum’s recent theory of political emotions.
