Abstract : This paper discusses the role and use of emotion in public policy. Approaching emotions from the standpoint of narrative analysis, it offers a detailed account of the way emotions were storied and enrolled in a specific local policy process: the construction of a memorial to the abolition of slavery between 1998 and 2012 in Nantes, France, a former slave trade port. The article finds evidence that emotions are a powerful instrument for framing problems and solutions and making sense of a new policy instrument. However, it also argues that the ability of policy actors to enroll emotions in meaning-making operations is structured by dominant policy beliefs and constrained by power relations
Renaud Hourcade. Emotions, narratives, and the art of making meanings: Nantes' memorial to the abolition of slavery. Critical Policy Studies, Routledge, 2020, ⟨10.1080/19460171.2020.1818110⟩. ⟨hal-02958669⟩