ABSTRACT
The postmodern person, says Christopher Lasch, has grown so self-aware of their public persona and exteriorised identity that they long "for the lost innocence of spontaneous feeling". Individuals living in the postmodern "seek the kind of approval that applauds not their actions but their personal attributes". The internalisation of feelings induced in the postmodern market environment—blurring the lines between work and self—is intensified by the commodification of immaterial goods and services, or immaterial labour. Contemporary production still trades off largely material products, but producers are nevertheless forced into the immaterial paradigm because affect, symbols, discourses, and desires directly produce social relations; use-value is life-value. Prior to the sociology of emotions, and before the dominance of positivist science more generally, emotions had long been considered of great importance to social constitutions of justice, equality and a 'good life'.
