The post-politics of emotional correctness

Wednesday February 25, 2009

2009 got off to a bad start and looks like being a bleak year for freedom of thought, or for any thought at all, argues Dennis Hayes

The power of political correctness (PC) seemed evident last month when the bombing of Gaza was driven out of the headlines because Prince Harry had filmed himself three year’s ago introducing an Asian soldier as “our little Paki friend”. Then we discovered that Harry, William and Charles all call another polo-playing Asian friend “Sooty”. Soon after the ceasefire Carol Thatcher stole the headlines by calling a tennis player “gollywog”. All proof, if any right thinking person needed it, that the British are racist and “Islamophobic”.

The outrage about what one commentator ironically labelled the word of a “ginger tosser” was almost equal to that about the Israeli bombardment and invasion. Harry apologised, he was said to be “out” of touch, but that was not the end. ‘Sorry’s Not Good Enough’ ran a Daily Mail headline. His language was said not to have been out of place at a National Front rally. Everyone from the charity Well Child to the “Taleban and the whole of Pakistan” were said to be incensed.

Powerful

Why is PC so powerful that a major conflict can be sidelined for few days by a response almost as passionate as the opposition to the invasion of Gaza? Wasn’t this a trivial matter of etiquette, of these individuals failing to learn how to speak so as not to cause gratuitous personal offence? It all seemed to be a ridiculous and infuriating side issue, but it was more telling about the state of contemporary politics than any other event. It showed that what was important in any situation was not understanding but feeling strongly about it. This fuss revealed that feelings have become the new content of our post-political time and political correctness has become emotional correctness; PC has become EC.

The transition between PC and EC came about because of the desire to avoid being ‘offensive’. The very term ‘offence’ is so subjective that it allows people to equivocate between dealing with offensive ideas, which is a task for the mind, and dealing with hurt feelings, which is largely a matter of getting tougher or growing up. In the end, because it’s easier than thinking, feelings won out. In fact emotional correctness drives out any politics from events and leave us wallowing in feelings.

Challenged

Feelings have the advantage that you don’t need to study or research before you express yourself on any issue with utter certainty. Our feelings, unlike our thoughts, can’t easily be challenged. Saying “You can’t feel that!” seems odd (although we should do it more often). Feelings are the basis of a new unquestionable authority, an emotional epistemology.

Feelings are also the new democratic leveller. Everyone has feelings and we only need to be made more emotional to have the ‘right’ feelings. We don’t need to reason or argue, just feel. Feelings are the new basis for moral assessments. The more we feel about things the better people we are. But feelings do not discriminate. Someone can be as passionate about a slight as a serious event. It’s just the way they feel. This arbitrariness in gut feelings is what makes the targets of EC arbitrary and therefore serious one moment and silly the next.

Serious

Before anyone claims this is a far cry from serious concern about the invasion and bombardment of Gaza, they should reflect on how much of the discussions about Gaza in meetings, on blogs, and in the press were about language. There were endless wrangles about the meaning and application of terms like ‘holocaust’, ‘Warsaw Ghetto’, ‘ethnic cleansing’, ‘Zionist’ ‘terrorist’, ‘Anti-Semitic’, ‘Islamophobic’, and even ‘Israeli’ and ‘Jew.’

The concern with language expresses the failing of many people to analyse the political situation in the Middle East and to read into that situation British and Western obsessions with people’s personal feelings and the fear of causing them more ‘hurt’.

What is now axiomatic is that the test of post-political acceptability is the personal emotional response of people to words. Being offended, being emotionally hurt, or the possibility that a third person feels you might be hurt, are the tests of truth. The emphasis on these emotional tests is learned at university and college and in professional training but is now ubiquitous. Avoiding hurting anyone’s feelings is the new foundation of all approaches to social relationships, morals, and what was politics. They have all become entirely subjective. If someone feels hurt they are hurt. The more they are hurt the more moral they become through suffering and the more just their ‘cause.’

Worried

From feeling worried about uttering certain words, feeling hurt by them, or feeling anger about what’s happening in the world, is now about our feelings, nothing more. But feelings are free floating. If we feel we may hurt someone’s feelings by talking about ‘black sheep’, how do we show the difference between this feeling and the feelings we have when children are bombed? The only answer is the intensity of the feeling. So the opponents of Israel’s war played up feelings of horror and revulsion with pictures of the dead and stunts with blood stained dolls. The Israelis tried to respond in kind. Both sides and commentators took up positions based around feelings for the victims in the conflict.

There was little analysis and little attempt to understand. On the streets and in the media ‘What do you think?’ was replaced with ‘What do you feel?’. Trying to raise political questions was seen as unfeeling. What we saw in January 2009 was the triumph of the Bob Geldof’s “People are dying NOW!” approach to politics in which expressing your feelings in whatever way you like is all that matters.

An emotional post-politics based on feelings justifies itself by leaving understanding to a later date, when people are no longer ‘Dying NOW!’. The trouble is that date never arrives, as a new wave of emotionality flows through the sensitive and unthinking as a result of the next disaster, whether political or natural.

Empty

On Saturday 17 January over 300 British academics wrote to the Guardian calling for the defeat of Israel. This was an exercise in emotional correctness that was empty of all but we could previously think of as politics. It did not call for any particular solution but highlighted a desire to see the defeat of the more powerful. It was not even fantasy politics. It was just an emotional call for a defeat from academics who could offer analysis and debate but have abandoned thinking because of the strength of their feelings. It was the most worrying start to the new year that people paid to think have chosen to feel first and think later, if at all.

Of course, there was no later. When the bombing stopped apart from a short attempt to whip up more outrage about the BBC refusing to broadcast a humanitarian appeal for Gaza it slipped out of the headlines and people’s understanding of the difficult politics of the Middle East was not improved. Protesters had expressed their feelings and that was the end of the matter. Even in international post-politics the therapeutic expression of feelings has become an end in itself.

It is good to be able to conclude with a mention of a positive element in the new emotional anti-imperialism. On demonstrations and in meetings no one called the Israelis ‘Yids’. That would be too offensive on the scale of emotional offence.

Dennis Hayes is the founder of Academics For Academic Freedom (www.afaf.org.uk), and the author (with Kathryn Ecclestone) of The Dangerous Rise of Therapeutic Education