The Bonds of Freedom: Heidegger and Hochschild on Affective Life and Affective Labour

The purpose of this paper is three-fold: first, to argue that Martin Heidegger’s account of Dasein’s state-of-mind has implications for a Heideggarian understanding of social atmosphere or “mood,” itself understood as the domain in which we realize our meaningful attachment to the world; second, to link Heidegger’s account of Dasein to sociologist Arlie Hochschild’s analysis of affective labour in order to underscore Hochschild’s critique of affective labour by showing it to occur at the very site of our free and meaningful involvement in the world; third, to demonstrate the relevance of Heidegger’s analysis to concrete sociological analysis. I begin by arguing that Heidegger’s existential account of affective life reveals affective life as: an accomplished attachment to worldly specificities, grounded on socially constituted significance, and our responsibility. Second, showing Hochschild’s account of emotions to be compatible with Heidegger’s work, I consider Hochschild’s analysis of airline stewardesses, clarifying how the affective lives of individuals and the shared, public dimension of affective life are both undermined by affective labour, specifically in terms of the way that communicative interactions are manipulated in commercial settings. Resulting from the manipulation of affective life by companies are various challenges to our freedom: an inability to find meaningful projects; a lack of substantial measures in terms of which to choose our projects; and the inability to recognize such choices as constitutive of affective life and as our responsibility. Connecting these consequences to the three aspects of affective life noted above, it is concluded that affective labour threatens the inherently social character of freedom and also suppresses and inhibits the existential involvement in the world through which we realize meaningfully our freedom.