About the lecture
Drawing on two decades of interdisciplinary research on emotions and politics, Professor Bilgiç will argue that the former are the key organising mechanisms of the latter.
Rather than irrational forces that distort 'rationality', emotions shape how politics is organised and in whose interest. They redraw the boundaries between the subject of emotion, ‘us’, and its object, ‘them’.. . In doing so, emotions help sustain racialised, gendered, sexualised and classed power hierarchies.
He will focus on disgust, conceptualising it as a historically and politically situated emotion closely tied to the making of white colonial masculinity, which continues to drive contemporary politics.
Disgust has long functioned as a mechanism through which others are constructed as revolting, impure and morally inferior “monsters”. It is, therefore, an especially powerful mechanism of hierarchy between the morally superior subject and the inferior “disgusting” object.
Building on this, he will draw on his current research on contemporary Turkey to examine how LGBTQ+ individuals are politically constructed as “disgusting” and how this process is constitutive to the consolidation of authoritarianism in Turkey.
In conclusion, , and an example of his political research's reliance on arts and culture, he will turn to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to explore how the politics of disgust can be challenged and transgressed.
About the lecturer
Professor Ali Bilgiç’s interdisciplinary research combines international relations, political sociology, feminist and postcolonial thought, cultural studies and the study of emotions.
His distinctive research agenda examines how emotions shape political life, organise relations of power and constitute political identities in relation to issues including migration, the rise of the Global South and status hierarchies in global politics.
He is the author of two books and co-author of a third. His upcoming fourth book examines emotional statecraft in Turkey and Israel in relation to hetero- and homo-nationalism respectively.
Ali completed his PhD in International Politics at Aberystwyth University and MA in European Politics at Lund University.
Prior to joining Loughborough, he was Associate Professor of International Relations at Bilkent University, Turkey. From 2017-19, he held the prestigious Prince Claus Chair in Development and Equity at the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam, where he worked on migration and human security.
He has played a leading role in shaping the field through service to the International Studies Association and the British International Studies Association. He was Associate Editor of International Relations (2019-24) and was the founding editor of Bristol University Press's Gender, Sexuality and Global Politics book series.
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