The ethnographers’ fear to feel: manoeuvring through an affective community of no-feeling within the academe

Abstract

This article explores the ‘fear to feel’ of ethnographers within German-speaking academic cultures based on qualitative ethnographic material from the author’s ethnographic fieldwork (2019–22). It gives a discussion on the fieldwork context, reflects on the author’s position(ality), and methodology, next to the presentation of various ‘fear types’ within academia evolving from the data set. They rank between the absolute silencing of emotions in the professional academic context, self-optimisation in which the suppression of emotion is styled as professional behaviour, and finally communalisation in a governing emotion regime. The different forms of (not) acting out fear are analysed using this empirical material as ‘affective communities of no-feeling’ that shape communities, build solidarities and reinforce models of domination. Within these fragile and constantly reconstructing communities, which assign a particular connotation to emotions, researchers act and subordinate in equal measure using their ability of emotion regulation as capital.