Civilizing Marriage

This chapter argues that, despite some gaps and omissions, Elias’s arguments in The Civilizing Process provide insights that are very relevant to analyzing the politics of same-sex marriage today. In making this argument, the chapter draws on analyses of the role played by the state and by political discourse in endorsing and recognizing particular forms of emo-tion—a process that not only encourages particular forms of public emotion but also has policy implications. ¹ Emotion is primarily understood here in terms of the analysis of feelings. Some feelings can be precognitive. Nonetheless, there is often an extremely complex interrelationship between body, brain, and mind in which feelings can play an important role in cognitive judgment and are also deeply implicated in discursive meaning-making. ² Consequently, it is also not possible to make a clear distinction between feelings in terms of affect and emotion. In some views, affect is seen as feelings that are more corporeal and less conscious (such as anxiety), while emotion is seen as forms of feelings that are more conscious and more implicated in discourse (such as fear). ³ However, this chapter sees affect and emotion as closely connected; indeed they are often inseparable, and both can be implicated in discourse and cognition. ⁴ In particular, this chapter draws on arguments that emotion influences political decision-making. ⁵ For example, who citizens are encouraged to feel empathy for; who they are encouraged to feel fear, anxiety, or disgust about, and which emotions and emotional attachments are seen as legitimate helps to frame conceptions of citizens’ rights, obligations, and entitlements in areas ranging from immigration and indigenous policy to taxation and welfare policy. ⁶