ABSTRACT

One of the most thought-provoking contemporary developments in the study of governmentality is the concept of affective governmentality, alluding to how emotions play an important role in the regulation of individuals and populations. This article proposes to examine affective governmentality through the governmental construction and the phenomenological maintenance of gratitude among graduates of a state-run boarding school in Israel that serves disadvantaged students. For the current study, governmental and organizational documents were analyzed along with interviews with the school’s administrators and graduates through several decades. My critical readings indicate that this boarding school has constructed its organizational identity through a relationship of gift and rescue. In-depth interviews with the boarding school’s graduates reveal how they translated this governmental construction into accounts of gratitude. The article discusses the logic of gratitude as a ‘role-taking emotion’ which reinforces a specific emotional reflexivity and asymmetry in the relations between the State and its disadvantaged citizens.

摘要

治理性研究中最发人深省的当代发展之一是情感治理性的概念，暗指情绪如何在个人和群体的调节中发挥重要作用。本文提出通过政府建设和为弱势学生服务的以色列公立寄宿学校毕业生的感恩现象学维持来考察情感治理。对于当前的研究，分析了政府和组织文件以及几十年来对学校管理人员和毕业生的采访。我的批判性阅读表明，这所寄宿学校通过礼物关系构建了它的组织身份和救援。对寄宿学校毕业生的深入采访揭示了他们如何将这种政府建设转化为感激之情。这篇文章讨论了感恩作为一种“角色扮演情感”的逻辑，这种情感强化了国家与其弱势公民之间关系中特定的情感反射性和不对称性。