Feeling Politics: Rethinking Elections as Affective Economies (for readers from the academic world)

(for readers from the academic world)

What if your political choices begin before your thoughts? Not in debates. Not in manifestos. But in a smile, a colour, a feeling.  From Sara Ahmed to campaign posters —this blog explores how emotions circulate, stick, and shape political belonging in Kerala’s electoral culture.

Beyond “Political Science”: Feeling, Affect, and the Hidden Life of Elections in Kerala

In academia, we often encounter the term Political Science—a label that carries with it an aura of rigour, method, and intellectual discipline. The word science lends authority, suggesting measurement, objectivity, and systematic inquiry.

But what if this very word — science — quietly limits how we understand politics?

According to the Cambridge Dictionary, science is:

“the careful study of the structure and behaviour of the physical world… by watching, measuring, and doing experiments.” (Cambridge Dictionary)

This definition is valuable. It foregrounds method, evidence, and analysis.
Yet, it also reveals a silence.

Where, in this framework, do we place emotion?

The Missing Variable: Emotion in Political Life

Political life is not lived in laboratories. It unfolds in:

• Conversations over tea

• WhatsApp forwards

• Street debates

• Silent, personal reflections before voting

As Jennifer Wolak and Anand Sokhey observe:

“People’s day-to-day experiences with politics come mostly through the news they consume as well as the political conversations they take part in.”

Voting, for most, is a singular act.
But feeling politics is a daily experience.

Similarly, T. M. Shah reminds us:

“Politics is inherently intertwined with human emotions.”

And yet, much of what we call Political Science continues to privilege:

• Rational choice

• Institutional analysis

• Policy evaluation

while affect — the emotional charge of politics — remains under-theorised or sidelined.

Politics as Felt Experience

To say this plainly:

Politics without emotion is a myth.

Every political formation — whether protest, resistance, or electoral mobilisation — is sustained by:

• Anger

• Hope

• Fear

• Pride

• Belonging

These are not secondary to politics.
They are its very condition of possibility.

As Sara Ahmed writes:

In such affective economies, emotions do things, and they align individuals with communities—or bodily space with social space—through the very intensity of their attachments. Rather than seeing emotions as psychological dispositions, we need to consider how they work, in concrete and particular ways, to mediate the relationship between the psychic and the social, and between the individual and the collective.

Emotion is not noise in the system.
It is the system through which alignment happens.

Elections as Affective Economies

If we take emotion seriously, elections begin to look different.

They are no longer just contests of:

• Manifestos

• Policies

• Ideologies

They become affective economies — spaces where emotions circulate, accumulate, and acquire value.

Ahmed again offers a powerful insight:

Emotions work as a form of capital…. I am using “the economic” to suggest that emotions circulate and are distributed across a social as well as psychic field. I am borrowing from the Marxian critique of the logic of capital. I am identifying a similar logic: the movement between signs converts into affect.

The marxist concept of ‘commodity fetishism’ adds to our understanding of the use of rhetorics to add value to a political system:

Another way to theorize this process would be to describe “feelings” via an analogy with “commodity fetishism”: feelings appear in objects, or indeed as objects with a life of their own, only by the concealment of how they are shaped by histories, including histories of production (labor and labor time), as well as circulation or exchange.

In Kerala’s vibrant political culture, this circulation is particularly visible—not only in speeches and debates, but in something more subtle:

IMAGES

When Politics Feels: Enter the Image

Scroll through an election season — on hoardings, WhatsApp, or Instagram — and something curious happens.

Before we think, we feel.

A face smiles. Colours glow. A slogan repeats.
And almost imperceptibly, we are already inside a mood.

These are not just images.

They are what we might call affective machines — visual forms that organise emotion, memory, and identification.

Colour, Warmth, and Affective Stickiness

Consider the familiar palette in many Kerala campaign visuals:

• Reds

• Oranges

• Yellows

• Soft glowing gradients

These colours do more than signal ideological traditions.
They produce atmosphere.

• Warmth

• Familiarity

• Optimism

Ahmed’s concept of affective stickiness becomes useful here:

“Emotions stick to objects… shaping the surfaces of bodies and worlds.”

Colour becomes a surface where feeling accumulates.
The image doesn’t argue — it warms.

From Collective Politics to the Face

Older political imagery often centred:

• Workers

• Movements

• Crowds

Now, the frame narrows.

A single face — composed, smiling, familiar — takes centre stage. Such political figures emerge not just as leaders, but as affective anchors.

This shift resonates with Guy Debord’s observation:

“All that once was directly lived has become mere representation.”

But in today’s media ecology, representation does not remain distant.

It becomes affectively lived.

The face is not just seen.
It is felt.

Two Images, Two Affective Worlds

If we place different campaign visuals side by side, what emerges is not simply a contrast of political messaging — but a contrast of affective architectures.

These images stage distinct emotional worlds — each offering a different way of feeling politics.

Warmth vs Cool Authority

Some visuals radiate warm tones — reds, oranges, yellows — producing:

Comfort

Intimacy

Reassurance

Others rely on cooler palettes — blues and sharp contrasts — producing:

Clarity

Control

Decisiveness

One embraces.

The other commands.

Paternal Presence vs Assertive Leadership

In one mode:

Soft smile

Relaxed posture

Familiar presence

Authority becomes care.

In another:

Raised hand

Upright stance

Direct gaze

Authority is performed.

One says: “I am with you.”

The other says: “Follow me.”

Aura vs Structure

Some images diffuse power through light and atmosphere.

Others organise it through hierarchy and structure.

This recalls Louis Althusser:

“Ideology interpellates individuals as subjects.”

The image itself becomes a call to position oneself within power.

Continuity vs Mobilisation

Some visuals stabilise:

Timelessness

Continuity

Legacy

Others activate:

Urgency

Eventfulness

Action

One reassures.

The other mobilises.

Mood vs Interface

Some images function as moods — painterly, immersive.

Others function as interfaces — structured, directive.

One is felt.

The other instructs.

Two Emotional Logics

At their core:

One produces warmth, trust, belonging

The other produces confidence, strength, alignment

This contrast can be read theoretically:

Sara Ahmed → affective stickiness

Guy Debord + Louis Althusser → spectacle and interpellation

Affect in Motion: The Feeling of Progress

Even in still images, there is movement:

• Light streaks

• Radiant flows

• Diagonal compositions

These produce what we might call affective momentum — a sense that things are moving forward.

Here, Gilles Deleuze offers a crucial insight:

But these image affections or ideas form a certain state (constitution) of the affected body and mind, which implies more or less perfection than the preceding state. Therefore, from one state to another, from one image or idea to another, there are transitions, passages that are experienced, durations through which we pass to a greater or a lesser perfection,

The image captures this passage.

To align with it is to feel part of a future already unfolding.

Slogans That Don’t Argue—They Land

Election slogans are often minimal:

• “Again”

• “Forward”

• “With you”

They do not explain policy.
They do not construct arguments.

Instead, they function as affective triggers.

As Roland Barthes notes:

“The images are more imperative than writing, they impose meaning at one stroke, without analysing or diluting it.”

The slogan doesn’t persuade.
It lands—immediately, emotionally.

Intimacy, Power, and the Everyday

The smiling, relaxed posture of leaders produces what we might call curated intimacy:

• Power appears close

• Authority feels familiar

• Governance seems personal

This reflects Michel Foucault’s idea:

“Power is everywhere… because it comes from everywhere.”

In campaign imagery, power circulates not through force, but through affect — through smiles, gestures, and visual proximity.

Hyperreal Politics: The Smooth Surface

Look closely:

• Skin is flawless

• Lighting is perfect

• No trace of tension or contradiction

This is not realism.

It is what Jean Baudrillard calls hyperreality:

“The simulacrum is never what hides the truth—it is truth that hides the fact that there is none.”

The airbrushed image becomes more persuasive than lived reality.

Politics shifts from complexity → perfection.

From Posters to Atmospheres

Political visuality today exceeds the poster.

It extends into:

• Reels

• Videos

• Landscapes

Consider the widely circulated Lakshadweep visuals of the Prime Minister:

• A solitary figure in vast nature

• Slow movement, silence, expanse

Here, politics becomes an environmental affect—a feeling of calm, awe, and timelessness.

As Brian Massumi writes:

“Affect is autonomous… it escapes confinement in the particular.”

The feeling exceeds the frame.
It lingers.

Rethinking Political Science

What does all this mean for Political Science?

It suggests that the discipline must expand:

• Beyond measurement → toward experience

• Beyond rationality → toward affect

• Beyond analysis → toward feeling

Because politics is not only what we know.
It is also what we feel.

Conclusion: What Do Political Images Ask of Us?

Campaign visuals today do not simply communicate messages.
They construct worlds of feeling.

They do not ask:

What do you think?

They ask:

What feels right?

And perhaps the task before us — as scholars, citizens, and viewers—is not to dismiss these images, but to read them differently.

To ask:

• What emotions are being produced?

• What histories are being softened?

• What futures are being made to feel inevitable?

Because in the end, politics is not only debated in parliaments or classrooms.

It is also lived—quietly, persistently—
in the textures of feeling that surround us every day.

References

Ahmed, Sara. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh University Press, 2004.

Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes Towards an Investigation).” In Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, translated by Ben Brewster, Monthly Review Press, 1971.

Barthes, Roland. Image, Music, Text. Trans. Stephen Heath. Fontana Press, 1977.

Baudrillard, Jean. "Simulacra and Simulation." University of Michigan Press, 1994.

Cambridge Dictionary. “Science.” https://dictionary.cambridge.org/

Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. Zone Books, 1994.

Deleuze, Gilles. Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. City Lights Books, 1988.

Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction. Vintage, 1978.

Massumi, Brian. Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. Duke University Press, 2002.

Shah, T. M. "Emotions in Politics: A Review of Contemporary Perspectives and Trends." International Political Science Abstracts, 74(1), 1, 2024. 

Wolak, Jennifer, and Anand E. Sokhey. "Enraged and engaged? Emotions as motives for discussing politics." American Politics Research, 50(2), 186–198.