How Does Normality Feel like? the Case for Unmarked Emotions

How do ordinary situations feel like? Which feelings do people have most of the time? What kind of sensations are more recurrent in everyday life? Affective regularity – the intermediate (mild, moderate, subdued) region of our emotional routine – is quite disregarded. Indeed, when we talk about emotions/sensations, we talk about a marked fraction of our emotive/sensorial mindscapes: Emotions with capital E, visceral and “strong feelings.” Although there’s no consensus in defining emotions or affect, sudden discontinuities often cause emotional arousal, and several definitions factor change in. But what emotions are there before (and after) those changes? If change is emotional and emotions are change, some emotions (or at least moods, emotional tones) must be attached to the unchanged. Without usual, “middle” zones, it is impossible to make sense of any intense, noticeable peak. (The exception that proves the rule is boredom, the most marked among unmarked emotions, the only one that keeps getting academic and non-academic attention).

Accordingly, this paper makes three points:

(1) By analyzing the process of re-marking already conspicuous capital-E Emotions, I argue that this analytical blindspot does not influence just our understanding of unmarked emotions, also influencing the evaluation of marked ones too (e.g., neglecting dead times implies misrepresenting the (few) moments of drama and excitement we actually experience).

(2) States of calmness, sort of zero-degree emotional condition, are thus addressed, for both their ontological frequency and social significance. Several cases are parsed: from absentmindedly scrolling to what neuroscientists define as resting states, from daydreaming to what Ifaluk people call Maluwelu, from Simmel blasé attitude to Leibniz petites perceptions.

(3) The counterintuitive/unmarked process of emotional contagion of “calming other people” is finally considered, as the most recurring reaction to other people displaying emotions, accounting for the difference between different mechanisms (e.g., de-escalation, cooling out, etc.).