Emotions in Aotearoa New Zealand: Reflexive emotionalisation in a colonised context

Abstract

Reflexive emotionalisation means increased thinking about and acting on emotional experiences in response to major changes to social life, such as those accompanying colonisation. This article explains and develops this novel concept, assessing its usefulness through an exploratory assessment of reflexive emotionalisation in the formation of Aotearoa New Zealand as a colonised settler state. It is argued that as cultures met and sought to coexist, emotions were vital. Focusing on reflexive emotionalisation in Aotearoa reveals how differences in feeling rules were navigated, sometimes in violent ways, as power shifted towards the colonisers. Feelings of belonging are important in that ongoing process of reflexive emotionalisation, the elucidation of which provides a new understanding of social change and settler state formation that avoids casting colonised peoples as passive objects of ‘progress’ brought by colonisers.

Affective Ruptures: A Pragmatist Approach

“…Emotional reflexivity is “the capacity to interpret and act on one's own and others’ feelings” (Holmes, 2014, p. 34) and the way in which “emotion colors reflexivity and infuses our perception of others, the world around us and our own selves” (Burkitt, 2012, p. 458). Emotional reflexivity increases in times of rapid social change (Holmes, 2021), in the face of the emergence of unknown situations and unfamiliar cultures in which feeling rules can no longer be taken for granted (Holmes, 2021, p. 3) and need to be reinterpreted. People are oriented by unreflective affective habits that do not need to be the object of reflexivity or modified until the opportunity arises for their rupture.…”