‘Honey, I shrunk the emotions’: late modernity and the end of emotions

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to specify the character of late modernity in terms of the emotional formations peculiar to it. Different approaches to late modernity are briefly surveyed and the argument is presented in three sections. In the first section late modernity is indicated as a social type that can be identified in terms of its particular emotional formation. The second section outlines the institutional framework of late modernity through which it is distinguished from modernity. This is to indicate the societal source of the emotional patterns of each type of these distinctive social formations. In the final section ego emotions are specified in contrast with those emotions that are not self-directed but outwardly directed.