On emotionalisation of public domains

While editing this collection of articles exploring the geographies and styles of emotionalisation of public domains, we observed a veritable eruption of emotionalised public discourse in real-time: the COVID-19 pandemic. On some level this was only natural, since the pandemic generates sickness, pain, suffering, the primordial fear of death, and a general sense of existential uncertainty. Without minimising the authentic experiences of suffering and loss, we suggest that the emotionalisation of COVID-19 exemplifies key sociocultural and political processes unfolding in the contemporary world. The pandemic became an emotional event because every event considered significant today is, above all, an emotional one. Every private or collective occurrence is examined through its emotionality -its potential for exciting and moving people. Events are evaluated in terms of the emotional condition of the feeling subject, whether an individual or collective. The emotionality of a memory or experience is the measure of its value, its authenticity, its truth. Accordingly, tracing the discourse of COVID-19 that constitutes the pandemic as an emotional, mental event reveals how the pandemic -like most collective events of our time -has undergone substantial 'emotionalisation'.