Curating Feelings: Emotional Abilities, Psychopathology, and the Affective Making of the World - Philipp Schmidt-Boddy (Universität Heidelberg)

Abstract: Shedding light on the intricate relationship between affective experience and agency, this talk explores whether and how it is possible to act through shaping and performing one’s emotions. To capture and develop the idea of such an emotional agency, I will introduce the notion of curated emotions, i.e., emotions that are actively enacted to co-design the affective worlds shared with others, and that are expressive of and realize the individual’s care for the world. This, I argue, requires an analysis of the entanglement of emotional and regulatory processes as well as the emotional abilities that are needed for someone to be able to curate their emotions in such a way that their emotional experience is reflective of their practical identity. To illustrate the relevance of processes of emotion regulation for the making of our worlds, I draw from perspectives in psychopathology and discuss how emotional abilities—and the characteristic ways in which they are exercised or break down—shape affective experience across different mental health challenges.