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Jason Hughes 2010
ISSN: 1832-5203
Foucault Studies, No. 8, pp. 28-52, February 2010
ARTICLE
Emotional Intelligence: Elias, Foucault, and the Reflexive Emotional Self
Jason Hughes, Brunel University
ABSTRACT: Over the last decade and a half there has emerged growing interest in
the concept of ‚emotional intelligence‛ (henceforth EI), particularly within literature
relating to occupational psychology, leadership, human resource management, and
training. This paper considers the rise of EI as a managerial discourse and seeks to
make sense of it, first in relation to existing accounts of emotion at work, and
subsequently through utilising the analytical possibilities presented by the work of
Norbert Elias and Michel Foucault. The case of EI is employed here as a concrete
empirical site within which to explore potential complementarities between the
analyses of Elias and Foucault, in particular around Elias’s arguments concerning
the changing character of the social constraint towards self restraint, and Foucault’s discussion of power/knowledge and governmentality. EI is found to enshrine a more
general move towards greater emotional possibility and discretion both within the
workplace and beyond — an ostensible emancipation of emotions from corporate
attempts to script the management and display of employee feelings. However, it is
argued that rather than offering a simple liberation of our emotional selves, EI
presents demands for a heightened emotional reflexivity concerning what is emotionally appropriate at work and beyond. As such, EI involves both greater emotional
‚freedom‛ plus a proliferation of new modalities of emotional control, albeit based
now on the expression of feelings as much as their repression. Ultimately, these
seemingly paradoxical aspects of EI serve to highlight an important point of intersection in the work of Elias and Foucault around their conceptualisations of power,
selfhood, and the shifting character of social control.
Keywords: Foucault, Elias, Emotion Management, Emotional Labour, Emotional
Intelligence, Emotional Reflexivity.Hughes: Emotional Intelligence
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Emotions at Work: The “Rules” are Changing
Over the last two decades there has been something of a sea change in understandings of, and arguably prevailing orientations towards, emotion in the
workplace. Writing in 1993, Putnam and Mumby observed that:
People regard emotion as a value-laden concept which is often treated as
‘inappropriate’ for organizational life. In particular, emotional reactions are
often seen as ‘disruptive’, ‘illogical’, ‘biased’ and ‘weak’. Emotion, then, becomes
a deviation from what is seen to be sensible or intelligent< linked to the
expressive arenas of life, not to the instrumental goal orientation that drives
organizations.
Elena: It’s interesting that what is expected now of the masses of people protesting the status quo is that they do it with calmness. What is expected is that people who are suffering deeply and that finally manage to protest behave like submissive women, patiently and orderly and begging to be taken into consideration. Ghandi taught us the power of non-violence but there are parts of the world in which non violence is simply an open door for criminals. In Colombia for example, 41 labor leaders were killed last year. They are killed in the doorsteps of their homes, or in the car, or leaving the job. They weren’t even protesting.
The fact that emotional reactions are seen as disruptive, illogical and weak is the formula that has been implanted on macho men for generations. With that they keep men from facing their suffering, weighing its actual value and learning the lesson that it can give. To cry is one of the most liberating emotions that can be expressed. To be able to look at one’s suffering and let it be with all its power is such a freeing experience because there is hardly a suffering more powerful than the being that has to carry it. The ‘problem’ is not that people, that we the people cannot carry our selves and our world but that we’ve been disempowered to do so by the hierarchic status quo that from childhood imposes an alienating condition in which the majority have no means to participate except in the work force. How much more upside down and backwards could we have set this world up?
From that perspective it would be easy to cry but from another perspective that is what we have and we are all equally responsible for it. Somehow it doesn’t help to punish ourselves or others for what IS but not doing so does not mean that we have to keep ourselves from seeing it clearly.
For me, one of the possible steps that need to be taken is to understand that there is a wholeness of which we are all a part. Within that wholeness those who have been participating as work force need to realize that participating only with their physical effort gives them all the right to also participate emotionally, intellectually and ‘sovereignly’. Everyone, every single human being feels and thinks and IS. Every adult has enough experience of life around him and her self to know what is right and what is not, what needs to be changed and where they can put more effort to make things improve. The real tragedy of our times is not that there are not enough people to make life better, it is that people are disempowered to act as if the ‘playing field’ had been declared somebody else’s and the majority had to limit themselves to watch how others play.
If those who do play were living truly magnificent lives and had become truly magnificent human beings, we would at least be able to think that the sacrifice of so many was worth it but the tragedy is that they are not ‘magnificent’ enough to justify the sacrifice. Or are they? Did power make England or the English people so much more fulfilled than the Nigerian people? Have the American people become so much more great than the Ecuatorians? Perhaps those in the first world think that the sacrifice of so many was worth it, that their cities are more mature, their museums, filled with the things they took from other people and some of their own, that the technology and science they were able to invest one was worth the sacrifice. For what? Did it really make them better human beings? Or was it all for the sake of 400 families in the Unites States, fifty maybe in Colombia and a few more in other places?
The question of money itself is insignificant. The richest person in the world cannot eat more, speak more, listen more, learn more or act more than anyone else. If he or she eats much more, it’s out of greed. If he or she speaks more and what they say is of little human value, it means nothing. If they cannot listen because they think they don’t need to, their privileges were wasted on them. If they learnt many things but did not learn to love, then they learnt nothing and if all they did was spend their money without ever tasting the pleasure of making efforts, then their life was wasted.
Life is a tricky thing whether one is rich or poor. Even the richest people cannot speak today. SPEAK. That is, communicate with others. They might order many and help a few, give jobs to a thousand and manipulate governments and still, they cannot Speak: communicate with others. No one can SPEAK today because communication does not exist. What have we invented the internet for if we cannot communicate? Perhaps because some day we might learn?
I speak out on this blog and some might hear something some day but we do not have institutionalized channels of communication with POWER. THAT POWER is institutionalized for the very few people holding authority behind the military. That should be enough to tell us why we have not yet ever tasted democracy.
Give me a Nation in which Speech belongs to the people and where it is not the private property of those in power and I’ll show you a democracy in progress. The first thing we should realize is that Speech is Life. Communication is Life. Transparency is Life, within each nation as much as within nations. Who, where, when, what, how and why anything is being done, we all have a right to know.
Those in power paint evil people in other parts of the world and their own, so that they can keep their own people under control. There are extremely hurt people who can harm themselves and others but there is no such a thing as inherent evil in a human being. If by evil we wish to understand that an individual or multiple individuals have incurred in processes of crime, then we can agree that those processes of crime have evil aspects to them but if what we understand by evil is that somewhere inside every human being there is a devil eager to harm, then we cannot agree. There is no inherent evil in any human being. With this I do not mean that evil things don’t happen in our world. Our world sometimes seems like a devil’s party but if we take a serious look at the evil things that happen in our world we would be surprised at how little evil is present in the overall make up of our lives.
For me there is terrible evil in rape, murder, any form of harm to one’s self or others. All forms of torture whether institutionalized or non-institutionalized. Our physical integrity is extremely vulnerable and we are all afraid to be hurt physically but if we were to actually look at the statistics of the people that are hurt physically by non-institutional criminals, it would be a small number in comparison with the way other millions of people are hurt psychologically.
If we look at the wholeness of our selves as an organism, we would probably find that our societies leave out a few people who viciously turn against the whole as much as few people who graciously stand for the whole: like Ghandi and other great leaders.
But what we also observe is that the communication between us is so ridiculously poor that it is amazing that we even manage to eat. Overall, it is fairly amazing that so many have survived for so long amidst so much greed. So, if we don’t communicate, what is communicating in us that manages to get things across? What is the driving force behind our lives? The markets? Does everything that happen to us today that allows for our survival depend on the economy? Does it depend on it precisely because we don’t talk? Communicate? I understand that the market itself exists because we communicate enough to make it happen but the kind of communication that we hold to make the markets move is purely instinctive. Some move goods around for others to buy them. Some become very rich because they have diligently transformed the goods into better goods that they then sell to the people that they took the initial goods from. It was a fair deal in its times wasn’t it? If the initial owners had had a greater sense of their own sovereignty over their own goods, would they have priced them better? Will they now? Will we start killing each other for water now that we’re managing to destabilize the ecosystem? Or will we get ‘sick’ enough to learn through the suffering that we cannot do so much damage to our Earth and each other with impunity?
I realize that I was supposed to speak about Emotions and have wandered freely along different paths. It is all right for me. I enjoy wandering thoughts as much as wandering walks. In that sharing we can participate in each other’s soul. It is one of the rare privileges of our times that we don’t have to communicate with each other when we are already dead.
If this is long and not good enough, that is all right for me. I am learning to think about the things that matter to me as I write. You are welcome to share when you are ready to share. I shall not make corrections today. I’m tired now.
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