The Power of Language and Emotion in the Women, Peace and Security Agenda
By: Florence Waller-Carr
My article in IFjP's special edition on the 20th Anniversary of Women Peace and Security (WPS) explores the instrumentality and power of emotions in policy spaces and frameworks, linking emotions to language and understanding the impact of affective discourse.
Throughout my career, I have been drawn to understanding how the language used by power holders, policymakers and practitioners impacts the creation and implementation of frameworks such as WPS – and how this language can produce inequality and hierarchy within policy spaces. In my paper, I draw on Foucault, approaching language as part of a social system producing and regulating the social world through managing the way it can be discussed and thus understood. Thinking in this way, it becomes apparent that language itself is not neutral; it is produced in systems of power within historical and cultural contexts. Therefore, we must interrogate the use of language and its implications to understand social realities, which is what my article intends to do. I also approach emotions as social and cultural practices, ones that are created and circulated through discourse. Drawing on affect theory, I argue that emotions allow power to be felt, negotiated, and situated through their circulation within discourse. Therefore, to understand the impact of emotions in discourse, it is necessary to understand their histories and contexts in order to make clear their instrumentality.
The question of emotions and their power is rarely reflected upon within the policy space of the WPS agenda, hence why this analysis is required. My article demonstrates why understanding the influence of emotions is necessary for understanding the dynamics of power in the UNSC and WPS agenda and how this power is communicated and created. It applies the theoretical concept of affect to the pillar of 'protection' in WPS – exploring the role of discourse and emotions in creating the narrative figure of the 'vulnerable and violated other woman'. Through a discursive analysis of speeches made by Hillary Clinton, who was the US Secretary of State and WPS Champion 2009-2013, I argue that the racialised and gendered discourses of vulnerability used by Clinton leading up to the passing of UNSCR 1888 (2009), enacts sympathy and pity and that this affect is produced through a colonial history and continues to reproduce a specific configuration of hierarchy. Through exploring the use of emotions in policy spaces, I argue that emotions are created through discourse and its associations and are enacted and circulated in the discursive terrain of politics. By doing this, I demonstrate that emotions have power in policy and that these emotions must be understood and deconstructed to unpick this power.
My analysis delves into one particular affective narrative in the context of WPS. In order to fully understand the role of emotions within this policy architecture, a much broader mapping is necessary. What my paper does, however, is position the significance of emotion in policy spaces, making practitioners and academics alike acutely aware of its impact. This is important within WPS as I demonstrate that the emotions apparent in Clinton's narrative produce inequality; by understanding this, it is possible to begin countering it. This is significant not just in relation to the particular case study addressed in my paper but also in work taking place across the globe to counter violations and rollbacks of rights, the production and reproduction of inequality and a politics of fear, all of which are created through affective narratives. In the UK, for example, through the emotions embedded in anti-immigration rhetoric, which have contributed to creating a 'hostile environment' for migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers through policy decisions. And, for example, with the use of discourses of emotion in abortion debates to justify anti-abortion stances. These are just two cases of affective narratives in a world in which emotions are embedded in the way policies are created.
Words generate effects through the power of emotion and its associations. It is, however, this concept of words generating effects that can provide the possibility for potential transformation and social change. There is "a need to create new narratives and provide new meanings". By challenging narratives, affects and histories, transformation is possible by creating new narratives that counter inequality and hierarchies and the embedding of these in policy discourses. It is important to acknowledge in this work that through the power that language has, there is the potential to feel differently and thus know differently, which holds great potential.
Read the full article here: Affect and its instrumentality in the discourse of protection
Each blog post gives the views of the individual author(s) based on their published IFJP article. All posts published on ifjpglobal.org remain the intellectual property and copyright of the author or authors.
Florence Waller-Carr is a PhD student at the London School of Economics Gender Department where her research explores the impact of policy discourses on grassroots advocacy and implementation in the Women, Peace and Security Agenda. She also works in policy and advocacy in international development and peace and security spaces where her work focuses on gender, youth and LGBTIQ+ rights. Florence has experience working at the UN, INGOs and in grassroots advocacy as one of the co-founder of Our Generation for Inclusive Peace, a project that aims to make peace and security spaces more inclusive, intersectional and decolonised.