Hate, loathing and political theory: thinking with and against William Connolly

Refreshingly, William Connolly offers a different take on the connections between emotion and political values, judgments and actions. Specifically, his aim is to demonstrate how affect-imbued ideas (might) help to nurture the ethos of generosity he is seeking to affirm. He is thus concerned with how emotion and affect actively contribute towards the development of a particular normative project, rather than hindering it. As will become clear, Connolly’s point is not, however, that affectivity and emotion serve simply as auxiliaries to a rationally derived ethos, the ‘glue’ binding us to our political values and judgements. They are, rather, constitutive elements in the generation, nurturance and consolidation of that very ethos.