Embodied emotions between constructivism and ontologism : a reflection from the sociology of Alberto Melucci

This article investigates the issue of embodied emotions in social sciences, in a context characterized by increasing theoretical attention to overcoming the nature/ culture dualism, but also by a growing dualism between constructivist and ontological approaches to emotions. We take as pivot of the analysis the way in which this topic has been debated by the Italian sociologist Alberto Melucci. The first section of the article locates the work of Melucci in the current debate on the ‘affective’ and ‘ontological’ turns with their impacts on the conceptualization of body and emotions. The second section focuses on the specificity of Melucci’s constructivist approach in comparison with current combinations of radical constructivism and ontological references at the basis of the ‘affective turn’, and highlights the role that Melucci gives to social movements as collective emotional experiences; the third section historicizes his fieldwork and theoretical approach, while the fourth section analyses how the issue of embodied emotions relates to Melucci’s conceptualization of action and subjectivation. Overall, the aim of this article is not to conduct a thorough cartography of sociological debate on emotions, nor to be a general overview of the sociology of Melucci; rather, it intends to highlight how Melucci’s approach to investigating emotions from collective action can furnish a different perspective on the current affective turn in social sciences.