Nation State: Journal of International Studies

A growing body of literature has emphasized that emotions, memory and exclusion constitute a fundamental element of world politics. Nevertheless, these themes have continued to receive relatively limited attention within mainstream International Relations (IR) scholarship (Crawford, 2000; Bleiker & Hutchison, 2008; Mercer, 2010; Hutchison & Bleiker, 2014; Pace & Bilgiç, 2018). The dominance of rational-institutional and empiricist–positivist approaches in IR has constrained analytical engagement with emotional and affective dimensions, which are often framed as subjective, irrational, and methodologically elusive. Yet, over at least the past two decades, scholarships on emotions, affect, and political memory have expanded significantly. This body of literature demonstrates that emotions operate as social and political practices that play a central role in the formation of collective identities and historically constituted global power relations (Ahmed, 2004; Berenskoetter, 2014; Hutchison, 2016).