Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-42gr6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T06:45:39.494Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

I Feel Your Pain: A Reckoning

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 April 2018

Elisabeth R. Anker*
Affiliation:
The George Washington University

Extract

Hillary Clinton's memoir of the 2016 election and her life in politics, What Happened, is an affective rollercoaster. Wrath, frustration, regret, and sorrow, among other intensified emotions, saturate the book's pages. This range of affect is surprising for a political autobiography. Books in this genre typically present their subject-selves as stalwart and emotionally controlled actors whose range of feeling is limited to the proper amount of righteous irritation or vague empathy necessary to justify a policy proposal. None has the rawness of Clinton's book, a rawness that is, I would argue, made possible by her gender. This is one of the few vectors of political expression that is expanded, not contracted, for Clinton in her role as the first woman to become a major-party presidential candidate.

Type
Critical Perspectives on Gender and Politics
Copyright
Copyright © The Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)