Emotional Othering of the Far-Right? Affective Polarization in Research and How to Overcome it

In this paper I propose a critical sociology of affects to avoid emotional othering in researching the far-right and thus to avoid research taking part in the processes of affective polarization itself. Research on the far-right uses emotions, and more especially aversive emotions such as fear, hate and anger as analytical tools to understand and explain the far-right. Yet looking closer into important fields of this research – populism, authoritarianism, hate speech – I show how emotions in the studies stand for illiberal values, irrationality or misanthropy making emotions foremost a weapon to criticize power relations than asking analytically how emotions functions within the far-right movement. This tendency can be explained by normative bias against emotions, as these theories reproduce the prevailing cultural-historical dichotomy between reason and emotions in their analyses. As a result, research itself tends to partake in processes of affective polarization by emotionalizing the far-right and minimizes its capacity to criticize as an important task of academic research. To avoid these pitfalls, I propose a critical sociology of affects and will show its analytical fertility examining the affective politics of cruel civility – an equally important emotional strategy of the far-right to normalize and build political power. Keywords: far-right, emotional othering, critique, affective polarization