As futile as new year resolutions are, one of my new year’s resolution is that I will go back to blogging in 2021. I used to do it weekly ten years ago or so when it was kind of a fashion, and almost everyone was also doing it. The one difference this time around is that I will not be focusing on current events, per se, but more on my thesis on negative emotions and giving updates, noting where I am at, that sort of thing. The process of writing and researching is incredibly lonely, so the hope is that another soul (someone, anyone!) will have a similar interest and or know a thing or two about what I am trying to do, and engage, reach out. Suffice it to say that the intent will be to write a weekly blog stating where I am and the general contours of where I should be going if I have any idea where that is, and roadblocks I am positive that there will be.
These days I am working on anger. It seems like we all know what anger is, namely an emotion that is part of the basic emotions as defined by Ekman (1970), and yet the more one reads, the less clear it seems to become. There is a trend grounded on Artificial Intelligence that seems madly interested to prove one way or another that the theory of basic universal emotions is true so that their project will continue to take shape. And yet, the people who questioned the accuracy of such an assumption of universality back then, whose voice was somehow overshadowed by the basic emotions enthusiast, continue to resound. However, whether or not there are universal basic emotions is only tangentially related to my project. Ultimately, my concern about anger in particular and “negative” emotions, in general, is about the possible role that they could have for emancipatory purposes in survivors who feel alienated by the reconciliatory industrial complex.
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