The Organization of Hate - Sara Ahmed

            Ahmed’s chapter two is very illuminating on the subject of hate; her affective economies are the most interesting part. While I believe I understand how she is using affective economies to unpack and place hate, her Marxian connection was somewhat lost upon me. I understand her connection of emotion working as capital means that the emotion is essentially works as an advantage, giving it more power as it circulates. Her language was somewhat difficult to unpack, but I think I got to the idea she is conveying about affective economies. The link to Marxian capitalism was what convoluted the idea for me; while I understand her intention was for clarification, it served to further confuse me. However, her example for how affective economies functions on the bodies of refugees served as a better clarification point, and brought up some interesting thought processes for me.

            Ahmed’s example of the speeches William Hague gave about asylum seekers was in aiding the understanding of how affective economies function in the everyday. The language Hague uses to talk about refugees and the nation conflate asylum seekers with burglary and the nation with victimization and exploitation. This victimization of the nation allows for despotic invasion over certain bodies because of the conceptualization of this “bogey man” that could be any body within certain groups. Hague’s language is used to talk about asylum seekers in the year 2000 that “swamped” or “overwhelmed” Europe – it’s funny how things change.

            I work at an advertising agency in Birmingham that specializes in health care advertising. They recently wanted to help the influx of Syrian refugees that have been covered in the news recently. The email implores everyone to donate anything because “these poor people need our help!” It echoes the circulation of Hague’s language about asylum seekers in 2000 – note that they are now referred to as refugees, which further places the nation as the good neighbor letting people into their home. When station began covering the emigrants it began by covering what these people were running from, the hardships they’d suffered and how people wanting to help could do something. However, that narrative is all but depleted; it has been replaced with the crisis that Europe is facing because they are “accepting” so many refugees. This kind of language is circulated redundantly in news cycles now, which gives these new immigrants the image of being leeches that are sucking the wealth of the nation. It is interesting how this affective economic works on and through bodies, but the focus is on the “victim” not the bodies absorbing language and being affected by it.

            Ahmed’s need to focus on the bodies affected by hate is unusual in that people do not usually focus on the affected bodies. The current news cycles talk about the immigrants in statistical terms: where they emigrate from, where they settle or gain asylum and how it is affecting that country economically. I found it interesting how this colonialist perpetuation of hatred is ingrained in the media so much so that they absent-mindedly distribute and reproduce hatred almost hourly. Similar to Ahmed, I’m curious how this perception of this group of immigrants is internalized within their bodies. They are the true victims within and around this discourse. How this hatred is absorbed and enacted on these bodies will be interesting to see.