The project focuses on the transformation of emotions as one potential pathway to societal change. It explores how emotions are shaped in the context of the “refugee crisis”: Anti-immigration activists recur to fear (of crime or loss of identity) as a legitimation of their activism. The pro-asylum movements, in turn, rely on the emotion of compassion. Both groups not only refer to these emotions, but also try to arouse them in others, e.g. through rhetoric, public art or documentaries. The project takes stock of these attempts of sentimental education (R. Rorty) and, in a second step, assesses their normative desirability.
Keywords Refugee crisis; moral revolutions; sentimental education; emotions
Publications
Unrau, Christine (forthcoming): The “True Utopia”? Riace, Wim Wenders’s Il Volo and the Prefigurative Politics of Immigration, in: Freistein, Katja; Mahlert, Bettina; Quack, Sigrid and Unrau, Christine (eds.): Imagining Pathways to Global Cooperation.
Unrau, Christine (2019): "Your position?" – Zeigen, Erzählen und Geben in Fuocoammare, in: WestEnd. Neue Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung 16 (1): 113–122.
Unrau, Christine (2018): Judith Shklars Sinn für Veränderung. Quellen und Voraussetzungen politischen Wandels im Denken Judith Shklars, in: Zeitschrift für Politische Theorie 9 (2): 239–251