Can the European Union feel? When political psychology encounters foreign policy

Abstract

"This public talk focuses on the impact of emotions on the European Union (EU)’s international agency. Conceptually, emotions are not reducible to a product of either simply cognitive or physiological processes. They have a social component and they involve judgements as well as perceptions and feelings. Thus, in this presentation, emotions are understood as performances through which an actor – be it an individual or a collective one – expresses itself to others while constructing its identity, creating its agency, and potentially affecting the social order. Empirically, the speaker explores this impact in relation to the EU’s engagement in the Israel-Palestinian prolonged conflict that has many underlying emotions linked with past traumatic experiences. By doing so her aim is to instigate a discussion between the emotions literature in International Relations and the European Union studies literature to nuance understanding of the politics of emotions that increasingly constrain what kind of a global actor the EU actually is or can become."