Paper short abstract:

Drawing on examples of recent public debates over political emotions, this paper will discuss how emotional performances are strategic and thus should be analyzed not as bodily and/or mental 'states' so much as cultural practices.

Paper long abstract:

Terror attacks, right-wing populism, and the debate over refugee policies in Europe have led to a broad discussion over the role of emotions in politics. This paper will present a few examples and argue that this discussion is happening because emotions are cultural practices used strategically. Drawing on a Bourdieuan paradigm of 'strategy' as well as of 'emotion', this paper is also a contribution to the discussion of the advantages (and drawbacks) of practice theory as an approach for the cultural analysis of emotional practices, contrasting and comparing it with the affect- theory approach. One aspect that is particularly important is that it allows us to investigate the entanglement of theory and practice in the 'doing' of emotion: At the heart of the debate over 'proper' political emotions is, I will argue, a conflict between two emotional ideologies which inform what counts as 'good' emotional practice.