The Cultural Politics of Emotion

Ahmed sprinkles personal anecdotes and commentary throughout the text. For what kinds of ideas does she tend to use personal experiences to support or explain? Is her use of the personal within an academic argument effective or distracting?

Ahmed’s language in this text sometimes becomes quite lyrical. What kinds of rhetorical techniques does she tend to use in these passages, and to what effect? What kinds of subject matter does she tend to couch in this musical or poetic language?

Ahmed uses a few key analogies to help clarify her abstract, theoretical arguments. Which of these analogies would you argue is the most effective to the average reader, and why?