Emotional Imaginaries as a Resource in Navigating Social Change

The novel concept of emotional imaginaries adapts Castoriadis’ theories about social imaginaries, to consider the ways in which we imagine past, present and future feelings, drawing on shared cultural meanings. For instance, people draw on songs, films, nightmares and dystopias to make sense of their emotions, especially in the face of change. This paper uses Mass Observation (MO) directive responses to examine how some British people employed emotional imaginaries in navigating past crises: the declaration of war in 1939, the events of 11 September 2001 and the COVID outbreak in 2020. These illustrative findings suggest that emotional imaginaries help them make sense of complex feelings and unknown terrors in troubling times. However, the examples show some MO writers rejecting dominant emotional imaginaries and others turning to relational forms of emotional reflexivity in navigating uncertainty. The concept of emotional imaginaries thus aids our sociological understanding of how making sense of feelings is important in navigating social change.