La ‘dominación emocional’ como violencia simbólicauna lectura illouziana de Bourdieu

Resum

Eva Illouz’s concept of ‘emotional domination’ derives from the Bourdieuan notion of ‘symbolic violence’, which alludes to relationships of domination in which the dominated do not have any other instrument to know the real than the one they share with the dominators. In a context of loss of traditional male authority at work and home, men today reaffirm their status through cumulative sexuality and affective detachment, which gives them emotional control of their relationships with women. In contemporary societies, governed by the affective paradigm of ‘negative relationships’ –in which, in a general way, affective-sex ties are deregulated and see their contours increasingly blurred–, heterosexual women suffer from this ‘emotional domination’, which enters in conflict with their greater aspirations for exclusivity and commitment, their greater emotional availability and their social responsibility for the function of reproduction