Notes on:
Zembylas, M. (2002) '"Structures of feeling" in
curriculum and teaching: theorizing the
emotional rules'. Educational Theory 52(2): 187-208.
Dave
Harris
[V good
early piece on emotions as regulation etc]
Lots of
work has criticized the usual convention that
the
emotions are irrational, insisting that they
have a cognitive dimension 'and
thus are not opposed to reason' (187).There is a history of emotions, and a
cultural dimension:
anthropological research often focuses on
specific emotions including 'shame,
anger, and depression'.There
is a new
interest in the emotions of teaching and the
emotional politics of educational
reform with implications for teacher education.Most of this develops a 'social
constructionist position' focused on
interpersonal
relations.A different perspective might
involve looking at 'discursive structures and
normative practices 'which affect
teaching and its practice.This
article
looks at emotional rules, using Raymond
Williams's conception of structures of
feeling.This
is compared with Foucault
as a poststructuralist.Williams
is a
Marxist, and thought and culture are seen as
hegemony which penetrates into the
self.Cultures
arise from the dialectic
within overall hegemony, involving the usual
social categories, including age
and locality.We can use his framework
as an heuristic. Emotions as cultural formations
are clearly important in the
formation of teacher identity and in power
relations.Teacher subjectivity is constituted by
power
relations and governs their conduct.The
discourses that constitute emotions and how they
might function can be analyzed
[and divided according to whether they assist
domination or resistance].
Williams
developed cultural studies as an
interdisciplinary
field, and saw culture as a material and
productive process, entering lived
experience.Elite literature and culture
could be understood in the same way, produced by
a social process with 'complex
relations among authorial ideology,
institutional process, and aesthetic form'
(189).The
term ‘structures of feeling’
is 'notoriously slippery and deliberately
flexible' and used differently at
different times.The term itself seems
contradictory.It appeared first in an
attempt to link dramatic conventions and written
notations in drama, isolating
the conventions involved.The
structure
of feeling was something residual, governing
'total or common experience of the
period' [so relatively autonomous].It
was used originally to analyse actual literary
works.The
later work [Culture and Society] offers three
different sets of meanings:
something that can be apprehended directly which
gifted people can operate; the
specific attribute of novels in the 1840s; as a
kind of ideology or false
consciousness.There is no theoretical elaboration,
but there are assertions that a structure
feeling is 'neither universal nor
class specific'[weasel] (190), and not formally
learned.
The Long
Revolution
has a more theoretical account, as some
underlying structure, implicit,
something that affects the general culture but
never in a tightly deterministic
way, operating at the aesthetic and the
individual level.The problem was to explain actual
experience
and its link with general culture or 'social
character' (191) [and he was not a
sociologist but a luvvie marxist, so of course
he struggled].We can try to understand it by looking at
past examples and seeing how they are connected,
but even then, it is hard to
fully grasp 'the quality of life', ways of
thinking and living.In the
present it is more promising, because
experiences are immediately available, although
early critics in New Left
Review suggest that the present
is too interactive, too transitional.Williams's reply agrees that we must look
behind the flux of immediate
experiences to establish and grasp the
structure.He refers to some 'deep community' as
producing potential social relations which have
not yet come to
consciousness—feeling rather than world view or
ideology.Again,
the NLR critics were skeptical about
whether this could be uncovered by
working with the texts—texts were too
autonomous, structures of feeling on the
other hand were not autonomous.
Williams
replied, in Marxism
and Literature, saying that reality was
indeed mediated, although not all
experience is ideological and nor is the classic
humanist subject.The structure of feeling lay somewhere
between ideology and immediate experience.Again critics have argued that these
points arise from the discipline of
English, so that the subject takes on a
political role as agent, while
experience does address the idea of life
processes, which may indeed be
contaminated by ideology, but which still have a
creative role in making
culture.W
recognizes that 'structures
of experience' gets close as the term he wants,
but sees this as risking being
defined as something past: structures of feeling
helps us get at lived
experience in the present, from the point of
view of the participant.
This text
also offers the most explicit theorizing.Structures
of feeling now are not just
emergent but 'preemergent', something active but
not yet articulated, something
available to immediate experience and yet
generational he specific when it
comes to artistic processes.Something
that
exceeds the usual social norms, and that bridges
practical consciousness
and official consciousness or formal culture
[too rigorously separated in
Marxism for him].Oppositions to
official consciousness can be experienced as
something embryonic, before it
becomes articulated and expressed in conscious
thought.This
feeling can contradict consciously-held
ideologies, at the level of practical
consciousness and the subjective [gets
close to a sociology of the everyday here?Like de
Certeau?].Feelings are expressed in characteristic
ways, '"elements of impulse, restraint, and
tone...thought as
felt"'(193).These terms express
emotions.
Nevertheless,
the structures are socially experienced,
leading to a possible connection by social
formations.We might start with structures of feeling
as
'"a cultural hypothesis"' (194), an initial
attempt to sketch out
dimensions of experience, without forgetting
that these are also 'felt and
embodied'.Structures of feeling therefore
bridge language and embodiment.They
explain how ideologies also contain 'emotional
investments' which are often
implicit in our common sense.Experience
itself
features an '"endless comparison...between the
articulated and the
lived"', and this disjunction and mediation is
never fully articulated,
but appears as '"disturbance, tension, blockage,
emotional
trouble"'.
We can
analyse social change in terms of shifts in
cultural
forms which depend on affective processes but
which are also mediated and
structured.This also helps us realise
that the activities even of dominant social
groups are never fully articulated
and never separated from cultural knowledge.Structures of feeling are the dynamic
aspects which permit variation
from the existing social order, the emergence of
new forms of thought and
cultural work.It is not the only factor
in change, but it is something that helps us
understand and articulate change:
it is a solution to changes affecting
experience.It is oppositional.We can
see its effect at specific historical
moments when new cultural work appears as a
moment of recognition of changing
experience, and makes the familiar strange and
vice versa. Williams admitted
that the term still had problems, and said it
was probably better at
understanding literary or dramatic writing than
reconciling theoretical
difficulties: one critic suggested that Williams
opposed systematic theorizing
any way in principle.
We might
use the notion of structures of feeling to
describe
emotional cultures in schools and in teachers
work.It
would help us realise first that school
culture appears in teacher socialisation in
terms of affective elements; that
ideology and immediate experience might be
contradictory; that experience is
social and material, and requires '"emotion
work"' (195); that
structures of feeling are particularly
subversive elements within more general
school culture.The latter emerges more
clearly when we consider Foucault on power and
discourse below.
As an
example of something to be investigated, we
might
consider the demands of professionalism as
requiring teachers to work with
particular sets of emotions rather than
spontaneity, to do 'emotional labour'
and 'emotion management' (196).Freud
has already explained that emotion work involves
'conscious efforts to shape
emotional expression', but there is an issue of
what is appropriate expression,
and this refers to social norms.Emotional work is not just repressing
emotions, as the classic study of
emotional labour by Hochschild [much discussed]
reveals—it involves cognitive
efforts to change ideas and thoughts by changing
emotions, bodily efforts to
control physical symptoms, and expressive
effects related to developing
suitable gestures to change feelings [all these
are the better solution than
just acting, which causes stress].Williams goes further in pointing out the
active elements and a
potential for change and opposition.We
still need to show how these teacher stories are
linked to the wider school
culture.This
will help us see emotions
as 'matters of history, location, and
bodies...elements of relationality
continually shaped and reshaped by language,
embodiments, personal biography,
and interactions with others' (197).
The
context is the school structure and norms, and
how this
affects teacher experience, or something that
must be sometimes confronted or
transformed.Williams's concept does
help us to see how lived experience is
constructed by emotion work.Teachers
can clearly experience themselves as
vulnerable, threatened by the school context,
and this can lead to negotiated
meanings about roles and relations.Recognising our own feelings and their
effect, especially their negative
effects when they become 'anxious, ambivalent,
and aggressive' helps us
critique the school culture and the social
order.However,
we need some Foucault first.
The
suggestion is that Williams's structures of
feeling can
be ‘assimilated’ to French poststructuralism
rather than Marxism.It
might have a critical potential as well,
restoring the anti humanism in Foucault and
opposing his pessimism and
formalism.Conventional bourgeois
humanism is still rejected, but there is always
a potential for 'freedom
development and change' (198) in common human
experience, something that can
see opportunities at the pre-emergent stage.Foucault sees no necessary progress
towards emancipation here, however,
'only difference and rupture, no progress'.His antihumanism deepens in his
genealogical approach to the
constitution of knowledge [eg in the Archaeology
of Knowledge].There
is no underlying human community.
Nevertheless,
both have an interest in deconstructing
emotional roles and in the emergence of fields
of possibility.Both see that 'institutional and
discursive
practices, powers, and knowledges are
inextricably linked' (199).Both
reject economic determinism.Both
stress the role of unspoken norms and
rules or 'regimes of truth', and these include
emotions.Both
find themselves wanting to modify their
own cultural traditions—British humanism or
French structuralism—rejecting
objectivism and 'normativity' [sociologism?].
Borrowing
Foucault helps us develop the third possibility
above, linking teachers self understanding with
a broader politics of emotions,
the personal with the historical and political.We can go on to explain 'modalities of
teacher emotion as social and
political' and as a dynamic force in emotional
culture at school.We see this best with the 'construction
and
deconstruction of emotional rules' (200).
Hochschild
has already referred to rules of feeling, norms
and standards that affect inner experiences in
particular settings.These
define what we should feel, what is
acceptable.We learn these rules from
watching the emotional displays of others.Breaking the rules involves costs.Power relations are necessarily involved,
and these can equally be seen
as disciplinary techniques to regulate humour
and differences.Emotions are classified, for example, and
some become deviant.They
cover
acceptable language, particular ethical and
emotional territory, personal
attributes, goals and pitfalls.They
produce very specific models for teachers, for
example in controlling anger and
expressing empathy and kindness.They
require both verbal and non verbal expression.Teachers have to examine and regulate
themselves, becoming subjects as
in Foucault.
Rules are
often disguised as ethical codes or professional
and pedagogical techniques—for example requiring
an objective and neutral
approach to school problems which is really
explicit, and which is a problem
for new teachers.Such objectivity and
neutrality permits a link with ideology.Not all teachers agree and some value
emotional responses, more personal
ones.Others
learn to be neutral and
objective by focusing on events not individuals.Different
techniques like this require
different sorts of emotional labour, and
different sorts of connection between
discourses and the expression of emotions.Not managing this well enough is often a
reason for teacher burnout,
usually described in terms of 'emotional
exhaustion, depersonalization or a
negative shift in responses to others, and
decreased sense of personal
accomplishment' (202).It is
often seen
as the loss of the real self, but it can be
understood instead as a failure to
understand and construct personal identity
according to disciplinary forces [or
a positive opposition to those forces?].
Are
emotional rules simply imposed?Williams
will help us here by pointing to the
'space between authorized and unauthorized
emotion discourse and expression',
the clash between practical and official
consciousness and the emotions that
this produces.For example, emotions of
anger or excitement are illegitimate except in
private, but lived experience
constantly raises problems.This
can
lead to coded conflicts in classrooms, or
feelings of vulnerability.This
can lead to teacher resistance and
pressure to change the rules to become less
oppressive [what?To permit anger?To
resist management policing?].
Foucault
helps us point to the general role of discipline
and regulation, in the formation of subjectivity
in discursive practices.There
is no true self which escapes such
practices, including no real and emotional
natural self.Instead we need to look at forms of
regulation and their effects, 'a genealogy of
emotions in teaching' (203).We can
focus on the effects of regimes of
truth and whether they lead to self regulation
of teachers.We can see that emotional rules are
historically contingent and arbitrary.We can acknowledge the positive aspects
of power.This
helps us see that teachers often control
themselves through various 'technologies of the
self' (204), but this can be
liberating as well as constraining.
Back to
Williams.Williams and Foucault differ over whether
there is progress or
difference.For Foucault, teachers are
offered a choice between emotional regimes.They differ over the role of experience
and the mechanism of
reification.However, both are
interested in the relation of the social and
individual and the role played by
feelings and emotions.For
Foucault,
there is a possibility of extremely 'detailed
structure of space, time, and
relations among individuals'.We can
also see how emotional roles are expressed and
embodied, even in the design of
school spaces [as in Panopticon
of
course], how teachers are rewarded or punished,
how particular emotions are
maximised while others are constrained, and the
role played by particular
knowledges in psychology and pedagogy.
We can
identify possible tensions between individual
and the
social from Williams, and the ways in which
lived experience can contradict
even the smooth rationalizations of school
managers.It
seems, for example, that as emotion is
managed more and more, 'people are feeling more
and more alienated' (205).There
is a continuing tension between
spontaneity and control of the emotions.This can affect the authenticity of the
individual, and produce
inauthentic compliance to emotional rules, which
Williams noticed.Despite problems with the terms
authenticity,
there is at least the suggestion that
counternarratives of emotion can emerge,
and even be seen as central to the teacher
identity, expressing 'feeling,
resistance, and choice'.
Resistance
is ever present, and teachers can refuse to
conform fully.Sometimes they can change
emotional roles.However, this sometimes
makes them more vulnerable.Anger
may
replace feelings of vulnerability and associated
shame and guilt, as Boler has
argued.There
is an inevitable
turbulence.These matters are not
explicitly argued, but are 'means of acting' in
the present.Teachers should be encouraged to analyse
'the
multiple, heterogeneous and contingent
conditions that have given rise to these
rules' (206).Realizing that emotional
labour is needed to overcome discomfort shows
how historical and contingent
rules are, and where weak points might lie: in
this way, experience can lead to
transformation.
This sort
of work is needed to expand the usual
discussions
of emotion in education and to ask different
questions, to locate the issue in
a larger debate about teacher subjectivity, and
to uncover 'the social and
political character of teacher emotion' (207).This could lead to transformation, as an
example of 'the power of
structures of feeling as a tool to subvert the
existing conditions'.Williams
has raised many of the initial questions,
about experiences and power relations, identity,
links between individuals and
community and political implications.Experience on its own is insufficient,
but 'the politics of experience
are central'.Williams helps us to see
that the personal can become political in
certain circumstances, that
experience can both replicate and challenge
power via the construction of
emotional rules.It can help to avoid
both essentialism in humanism and 'strong social
constructivism' in
poststructuralism: both assume strong
determining structures, but Williams's
analysis show the problems of tapping structures
of feeling because they are
often unconscious, inarticulate, contradictory
and constantly shifting.This
is what makes them ultimately resistant
to codification in emotional rules: they offer
the constant possibility of
remaking meaning.The importance lies in
using Williams as an heuristic, and we need to
see what structures of feeling
can help us to do, to problematize and prompt
action.