Emotional Economic Man: Power and Emotion in the Corporate World

Abstract

This article maps out the genealogy of the anthropological concept of emotional economic man, which emerged in the 1990s tied to the concept of emotional capital. Analysis of the discourse about emotional capital in management and neoliberal economics explains how economic man is linked to emotions and how the management of emotional capital creates an emotional power (or ‘pathospower’) that is manifested in three main corporate dispositifs: emotional intelligence, organizational culture and the commercialization of experiences. These power dispositifs have led to unprecedented cohesiveness in the construction of workers’ and consumers’ emotional lives, introducing the management logos as rationality over emotions. Emotions are converted into a vehicle through which power penetrates bodies and subjectivities, sustains active economic conducts, imposes corporate goals for life and disseminates the logic of capital. This emotional power is part of the history of the ways that people feel in contemporary societies.