Why do i suffer? Making emotions critical to institutional work within oppressive institutions

What role do affective dynamics play in the reproduction and destabilization of oppressive institutions? Through a qualitative study of the emancipatory journeys of 14 abused Indian women benefiting from the support of a local organization aiming to disrupt institutionalized gendered violence, we found that apathy aggregates over time through the repetition of abuse, the suppression of grief and compassion towards their suffering, the prospect of shame and anger on the part of the familiar and powerful others, and the cultivation of false hope. Systemic power thus seems to operate through the social cultivation of both hopelessness in the powerless and a form of righteous indignation and affective numbness in the privileged, which all participate in normalizing violence against women. Our analysis, however, reveals that the seemingly vicious cycle of oppression, apathy and powerlessness can be disturbed by bottom-up affective intrusions, such as love and fear for one’s children, or the love and courage of a known stranger and familiar others. The organization played an important role in facilitating those mundane affective emancipatory politics, through which these women could regain their right to feel and struggle to develop more life-affirming realities for themselves and their children. In surfacing and unpacking those affective pathways to emancipation from institutionalized gendered violence, we contribute to both scholarship on critical institutional work to disrupt inequalities, which tend to neglect the efforts of the disenfranchised, as well as recent conceptualizations of the role of emotions in the maintenance of oppressive institutions, which has yet to recognize and explore the critical, destabilizing potential of affect in the operations of power."