Victims, "Closure," and the Sociology of Emotion.

Even as psychologists, sociologists, neuroscientists and others who study emotions have come to see them as dynamic process whose operation and definition are dependent on context, in common discourse we exhibit a hardy preference for viewing emotions like "fear," "shame," or "compassion," as stable essences. Emotion terms describe functional categories, and are helpful and descriptive only to the extent we clarify their meanings, attributes and functions in particular contexts. To illustrate my argument, I consider certain emotion terms, taken from the therapeutic context, that are increasingly pervasive in the capital system—for example "healing" and "closure." I explore the consequences of the conflation of contexts--the therapeutic and the legal, the individual and the collective, the private and the governmental--both to our understanding of the emotions involved and to the operation of the capital system. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]