Narrative, Identity and Emotion: The Debate in the US Congress on the Gaza-War 2014

Recently political science pays more attention to the construction of narratives in (international) politics. Narratives help to construct identities and to provide sense, to order experience, and to frame and structure action. Unfortunately, research on narratives in international relations has largely neglected emotions. But narratives not only structure expectations and interpretations, they also evoke emotions. De Sousa has introduced the concept of paradigm scenarios, which argues that narratives are not only told against the background of shared cultural scripts but also of emotional scripts. The paper discusses the relationship between narratives, identities and emotions, arguing that emotional narratives constitute self-other relations and regulate how we perceive others, feel about them and how we are expected to treat them. The paper will discuss the empirical case of American-Israeli relations during the Gaza-War 2014 and analyze the emotional narratives that legitimized and constrained US foreign policy.