Abstract This article undertakes a filmic and cultural analysis of representations of migrant domestic work in Lebanon, with reference to Sara Ahmed’s theorization of the sociality of emotions. It focuses on documentaries, TV programs and news bulletins featuring migrant domestic workers (MDWs). These representations bring to bear intensely emotional situations that capitalize on conflict, loss, and attachment. According to Sara Ahmed, emotions are social and cultural practices that shape individual and collective bodies and legitimize political decisions. In this article, we look at the ways in which the mise-en-scène of encounters involving MDWs, their employers, and other agents, provide for viewers emotional scripts that legitimize certain political positions. We suggest that these mise-en-scène encounters shape domestic work as a site of abuse perpetrated by ‘bad’ employers, as a site of horror inhabited by ‘tragic’ victims, and as a site of loving relations performed by ‘good’ employers. In doing so, we argue that they inflate the privatized and sensationalized dimensions of domestic work and depoliticize this field of labor. The exception to this trend is the documentary A Maid for Each that unflinchingly addresses the moral bankruptcy of Lebanon’s migration and labor regimes.

中文翻译：

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黎巴嫩移民家务劳动代表的情感政治

摘要本文参照萨拉·艾哈迈德（Sara Ahmed）对情感社会性的理论化，对黎巴嫩移徙家政工作的表现进行了电影和文化分析。它侧重于纪录片，电视节目和以移民家庭佣工为特色的新闻公告。这些表现使人们充满了激烈的情感局面，他们充分利用了冲突，损失和依恋。萨拉·艾哈迈德（Sara Ahmed）认为，情感是塑造个人和集体机构并使政治决策合法化的社会和文化习俗。在本文中，我们探讨了涉及MDW，其雇主和其他代理商的相遇场景，为观众提供了使某些政治立场合法化的情感脚本。我们建议这些mise-en-scène遇到的家政工作是“坏”雇主施虐的场所，“悲惨”受害者所居住的恐怖场所以及“好”雇主所建立的爱恋关系场所。在这样做时，我们认为，它们夸大了家政工作的私有化和耸人听闻的范围，并使这一劳动领域政治化。这种趋势的例外是纪录片《每个人的少女》，坚定地论述了黎巴嫩移民和劳工制度的道德破产问题。