The Rational and Social Foundations of Political Passions
Drawing on Max Weber’s historical sociology, this article seeks 1) to reveal the social conditions of possibility for the expression of human passion ; and 2) to identify the actors, interest, and institutions that shape contemporary political passions and their concomitant modes of violence. In his Sociology of Music, Weber (1921) shows that the expression of musical passion depends on the inherent logic of an entirely impersonal form of reason and that the rationality of western music is the product of the material and ideal interests of a particular social group and of the technical means at its disposal. This Weberian insight guides the article’s attempt to provide a sociological and historical underpinning to the analysis of contemporary political passions. While current biopolitical power shapes the expression of passions and channels them into new forms of violence, these techniques of power cannot alone explain the fate of human passions. The article exposes how contemporary governmentality rests not only on a logically coherent truth regime but on the interests and institutions of a particular group of social actors.