Overview: As today’s emotional capitalism increasingly carries out its core operation of regulating the psycho-energy of individuals, the need to analyze a variety of methods for emotional production becomes important.

By bringing together the works of Byung-Chul Han, Bernard Stiegler, Emmanuel Levinas, and Judith Butler, this bold analysis offers a fresh perspective on the operation of emotional capitalism today, with various possibilities for evolving a sensitivity to social injustice and the suffering of others through an ethical, affective, and bodily inter-subjective connection.

Verdict: Growing up, I was fully aware that Advanced Capitalism (AC) was a macro-economic and macro-cultural system that exerts profound influence on individual well-being. Indeed, AC has led to great prosperity since the Second World War and has been of substantial benefit to well-being, providing levels of personal and political freedom, as well as infrastructure, health, and social provisions unheard of throughout most of human history.

Nevertheless, growing levels of inequality within AC countries alongside recent economic stagnation and constraints have resulted in diminished opportunities and increasing insecurity for many citizens.

Here in Emotional Capitalism: From Emotional Dictatorship to Emotional Redemption, author Peter Wing-Kai Lok asks how our repressed emotions which have been distorted and regulated by emotional capitalism can be transformed into ethical emotions.

In general, Capitalism feels like being eternally stuck on a hamster wheel, unable to get off unless there is a major crisis that forces you off- like a health issue, a pandemic, a relationship falling apart, extreme burnout, death of a loved one, etc. Then we hop off as we are forced to examine the state of our lives. Except we get back on once we’ve uncovered some band-aid solution to address the symptoms but never the root cause of our pain.

So what kinds of emotional experiences can transform a self-centered entity into an other-centered subject? Reading this enthused book, what is brought forth is a highly innovative set of constructs to the topic of emotional capitalism, all with theoretical courage and critical insight veined throughout.

In what is a genuine pleasure to read, from cover to cover this impassioned, dutifully sculpted prose is as thought provoking, as engaging as you could have ever hoped it would be.

About the Author - Peter Wing-kai Lok is Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies and Creative Industries Program at the College of International Education, Hong Kong Baptist University. He is interested in cultural studies and contemporary French philosophy. He lives in Hong Kong, China.

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