Passion: Journal of the European Philosophical Society for the Study of Emotion

Faces of Affective Injustice Special Issue

Call for Papers

Philosophers of emotion and affectivity have recently begun to explore the idea that there may be distinctive forms of injustice related to affectivity. This has involved coining the term “affective injustice” to investigate how individuals and groups can be harmed as affective agents and the role affectivity may play in different forms of oppression.

As feminist philosophers have emphasised, our affective lives are regulated through emotion regimes and social norms, and are sites of oppression and silencing — but also, potentially, resistance and liberation (e.g., Collins 1993; Hochshild 2019; Lorde 1997). Taking up these insights, recent work on affective injustice has thematized the lack of uptake and silencing of anger (Srinivasan 2018; Whitney 2018, 2023), affective stereotyping (Cherry 2023), the dangers of enforced emotional regulation (Archer & Mills 2019),taxonomies of affective injustice (Pismenny et al, 2024), ecological accounts of its perpetuation (Krueger 2023; Osler et al., 2024), analyses of emotion regimes (von Maur 2021), and critical considerations of the conceptual pay-off (or lack thereof) of the very idea of “affective injustice” (Stockdale 2023; Slaby 2024). 

This growing body of work points towards a potentially fruitful way of understanding various forms of emotional wrongs, and provides a theoretical framework for work in the ethics and politics of emotions. However, little work has so far been done to provide a principled way of understanding what makes something affectively just or unjust (although see Gallegos 2022). In addition, much of the current discussion is focused on one specific emotion (anger), while this concept might also help us understand ethical and political issues related to other emotions such as hope, gratitude and contempt, as well as other affective states such as moods.

This special issue seeks to further our understanding of the multifaceted nature of affective injustice. Possible topics for exploration include:

• Exploring affective injustice in relation to emotional states other than anger, such as gratitude, hope, contempt, and pride
• Affective injustice and moods
• Affective injustice in online environments
• Affective injustice and mental health
• Affective injustice and social-economic class
• Affective injustice and heteronormativity
• Affective injustice and colonialism
• Affective injustice and gaslighting
• The relationship between affective injustice and other forms of injustice, such as distributive injustice, epistemic injustice, and aesthetic injustice
• Critical and historical engagements with the concept of ‘affective injustice’  
• Limitations of the notion of affective injustice 
• Affective justice and affective liberation 

Confirmed contributors: Eleanor Byrne, Myisha Cherry, Francisco Gallegos, Federica Gregoratto, Carme Isern Mas, Imke von Maur, Jan Slaby, Shiloh Whitney, and Michalinos Zembylas

Submissions: 6,000 – 9,000 words in length (excl. references) and submitted via the journal’s submission system here

Deadline for submissions: 30 September 2025

Editors: Alfred Archer, Lucy Osler, and Joel Krueger