On Emotion

I've been thinking about emotion lately, quite a bit, actually, as another form of knowing in this world, albeit one that gets discredited and shunned by the normative powers that be, in this particular society, anyhow. I vaguely recall encountering some idea like this in a Feminist theory class I took, though I naturally have no idea who the author of the piece was at this point. While I have every intention to go back and find the piece again (I keep EVERYTHING from all my classes), I wanted to get down in "print" what my own thoughts on the matter are at the moment, to clarify. Then later, I can refine by re-examining the thoughts of others on the matter. On a journey, it's usually useful to know from whence you are setting out, and my explorations certainly are a journey of sorts!

So on to the meat of the topic. Myself, I've had a love-hate relationship with my own emotional states; I have devalued, discredited, ignored, hidden, and tried to snuff out emotions that seemed problematic for whatever reason, though, indulgently, I have a long track record of trying to enhance, hold on to, promote, and glorify certain emotions for various purposes. All rather "self-serving," on the surface, anyhow, and all rather common fare, I should think. Lately, I've been going through an acute phase of upheaval that has me face to face with the role of emotion in my own life, how I use, abuse, ignore, or whatever each emotional state and why. The first realization I had was that learning how to handle emotion, particularly the intense varieties, is not something that seems to be systematically taught in "American" culture, least it wasn't in my childhood neck of the woods. I'm having to find strategies now, as I deal with all-grown-up life, that allow me to process intense emotional states in healthy, effective, and not overly time consuming ways.

I see in my own life that part of the problem is a construction of emotion as in opposition to intellect, a construction which is clearly aligned with the gender binary and adheres to that power hierarchy as well. Naturally, it's the less intelligent (less capable, less valuable, less discerning, etc.) women who are the "emotional" ones, with all the hassle that comes with it. We are ruled by our emotional states, right? Whatever. I also remembered, in counter to that, the classic logic vs. feeling binary Gene Roddenberry played out in his original Star Trek series: it was Captain Kirk who embraced his feelings, Spock who fought to remain logical always. Kirk declared his emotion was what made him human, and it was glorious; Spock inevitably came up just two inches too short time after time, relying solely on logic. This is the fare I grew up on, yet I kept trying to be Spock.

Why?

Back to my earlier point, there was no immediate model of how to handle those intense emotions (and I'm nothing if not intense), for me, anyhow, and so they were problematic for me. A good deal of what I went through was unpleasant, to say the least. I was the kid that fit nowhere in school, who was chronically teased and whispered about. I looked different, I talked different, and I even thought different than most all of my peers. It was painful, to say the least. One coping method was modeled to me successfully, though I'd hardly call it "managing": depression. I resorted to it perpetually, never going long before descending down into a dull, achy, almost numbness. Nope, no intense emotion to bother me there, not cold pricklies NOR warm fuzzies.

After about twenty years of this, I began to come out of the cycle of chronic depression. That meant I began to feel in ways I hadn't allowed myself in a very long time. Events since then have been an emotional roller coaster, to say the least, as I learned to manage emotion in better ways than trying to shut it off. Which brings us to the present, where I am realizing that my recent upheavals are connected to a reactive move on my part to try and turn things off again. This time, my psyche was trying very hard to be selective about which emotions got turned off, denial rather than depression, but I wasn't satisfied. I've come to take a more Kirkian view: my emotions are what makes me human, alive, and me. Okay, not entirely, not by far, but I am unwilling to target vital parts of myself for ostracism. By whose standards are emotions less worthy of our time and attention? Intellectuals? Crusty, old, patriarchal, white men? My own?

In the far out field of the Law of Attraction and its ilk, emotions are important messages we send to ourselves about our lives. We are to pay attention to what they are trying to tell us and thereby learn what needs adjustment and how. I like that, and that much I can certainly go with. So now my emotions, instead of being pesky things that get in my way, clouding judgment and taking up valuable time, space, and energy, are helpful tools, warning systems, road signs, reassurance, even, that this direction I chose may be more suited to me than some other. Scary stuff for the Spocks of the world, to be sure! But I am open to trying it out; what I had before was not too functional!

I am on the lookout for ideas and information about the role emotion plays in our lives, particularly as another way of knowing, of generating and working with knowledges (yeah, its plural for a reason, think about it). How can we learn and know through emotion? How does that knowledge differ from the traditional logical approach to generating and using knowledge? How might they be similar? How do we bridge these two realms or overcome the binary opposition schemata? And of course, how do I manage emotion effectively on a day-to-day basis?

At the moment, I am exploring by just feeling the emotions that arise in my own life and by examining emotion as expressed in music, both vocal and instrumental. I'm interested in how other culture view, construct, and feel emotion. And I've noticed that the American marketing machine doesn't shy away from emotion at all. Oh no. It embraces emotion as a tool to manipulate the public into thinking and buying what it wants. Marketing has recognized the power of emotion, and the rest of us ought to as well. But we need to go beyond that, and reclaim it for ourselves, those of us who have estranged ourselves from it. How do we understand emotion, protect ourselves from our emotions being manipulated by others (like advertisers), or even learn to manage, to use our emotional states for own own benefit, maximizing their usefulness in our daily lives? Can we construct emotion as a useful compliment to intellect? Different, yet intertwined, and of no lesser value? Can we detach emotion from its gendered associations, freeing it from its position as an oppressive signifier (of difference, of inequality) in the gender wars?

How do you feel about all that?