CORE · Conceptualizing Oppression-Related Emotions

Conceptualizing Oppression-Related Emotions

CORE is a project that brings together Women and Gender studies, Philosophy, and Psychology to respond to a scenario in which women (along with other marginalized groups) suffer acts of violence and oppression that trigger unpleasant emotions to a much greater extent than other subjects. The main idea of the project is that these experiences may have effects in terms of mental and physical health while being an indispensable resource for changing society for the better. CORE proposes the category of Oppression-Related Emotions (ORE) to identify a cluster of aversive emotions related to experiences of oppression, discernible from more universally experienced types (referred to as ‘negative emotions’ or ‘pain-related emotions’ in the scientific and medical literature). The project aims to investigate the relation between ORE, oppression, knowledge, and painful manifestations. The main research hypothesis is that oppression-related emotions are influenced by the axes of oppression: i.e., these emotions may be experienced differently depending on the dimension of gender, class, race, etc. The project focuses on the gender axis, while acknowledging that the other dimensions may be relevant. That is, the project is informed by the awareness that intersectionality is a critical social theory (Hill Collins 2019) that is crucial to understand the phenomena investigated. This research focuses on the women distress (to respond to the data available in relation to pain in women); but the notion of oppression-related emotions may be applied in future to other axis of oppression (provided the availability of relevant data). The research has two branches: the first and main one is related to the epistemic role of oppression related emotions; the second is related to the consequences, in terms of health problems, of frequently experiencing oppression-related emotions. The first research branch, therefore, investigates of the role of oppression-related emotions' in the production of female, feminist, and anti-oppressive subjectivities and knowledge. The core idea explored in this investigation is that oppression-related emotions help to better understand the world, and particularly oppression, ultimately leading to produce anti-oppressive, emancipatory theories. Vice versa, these theories may shed a new light on oppression-related emotions, bringing to a reconsideration of them and a different way of understanding and therefore experiencing them. The research main objective is to establish a comprehensive, robust, and effective philosophical theory, focusing on the role of ORE in the production of subjectivity and knowledge. It aims to answer the questions: What is the relationship between oppression, painful emotions, and anti-oppressive/feminist theory? What role does anti-oppressive theory play in subjects’ relationships with painful emotions on the one hand and with knowledge production on the other? Can feminist theory have a therapeutic role, and how should this role be understood? The second research branch, instead, explores how to connect the physical pathologies more experienced by women rather than men to the emotional experiences of oppression. This part of the research is the most ambitious and difficult, as it needs to be interdisciplinary. The second research objective is therefore to answer the question: What is the relationship between painful manifestations and ORE?

Data: CORDIS, © European Union