From Feeling to Selling: The Valuation of Art and Affective Reorganization in Emotional Capitalism

Abstract

This article examines how markets and therapeutic culture shape the valuation of artistic practices according to their emotional effects, with particular attention to music. Through a conceptual discussion, it brings the critique of emotional capitalism into dialogue with the cultural-historical psychology of art. Three dimensions are distinguished: the anticipated emotional effect, the reorganization of experience, and the political implications of that reorganization. The article argues that judging whether a work has delivered the anticipated effect is insufficient to characterize the other two. The article hypothesizes that when expectations of well-being operate as norms of an adequate experience, responses that depart from them may be read as shortcomings of the work or of the person experiencing it; in turn, appropriations of artworks may modify those expectations. Affective regulation, for its part, can involve a reorganization of the relationships among affects, meanings, and the lived situation. An aesthetics of disruption is used as a heuristic tool to examine when affective elaboration calls established ways of feeling and valuing into question. Interview excerpts from independent musicians serve an illustrative purpose. The proposal is conceptual and requires examination through the study of specific artistic practices.