Making affect safe for democracy? On 'Constitutional Patriotism'

The rediscovery of the distinction between civic and ethnic nationalisms has partly been driven by the new prominence of nationalism in politics. It promises to isolate the type of affect on which liberal democracies can safely depend a a source of citizen motivation. It is argued that this strategy of redirection claims to render affect safe for liberal democracies by redirecting our attachment from one subject of objects to another subset of objects. Habermas's conception of constitutional patriotism is a political affect that has become prominent in recent debates about civic and ethnic nationalisms.