ABSTRACT
There has been substantial reflection within feminist scholarship on the role that emotion plays when considering the subordination of women within patriarchal structures and power relations. In fact, in recent decades, an “affective turn” has taken place in feminist philosophy (Clough and Halley 2007), where considering how social, political and institutional forces impact on the affective and emotional lives of embodied subjects has become a central focus of scholarship (e.g., Ahmed 2004; Brennan 2004; Gorton 2007). In an era where gender equality is ostensibly guaranteed through legislation along with equality and diversity initiatives in many liberal democracies, it is argued that certain gendered inequalities persist as a result of affective, rather than material, conditions. 1 Examining how negative and positive affects are embedded and operationalized within social, political and institutional structures is a means to demonstrate not only how the personal is political, but also how the political registers within the personal (Gorton 2007, 336).
