This chapter unpacks the complex nature of emotions, highlighting their multifaceted components: activity in affect systems, physiological changes, evaluations, motivations, attention, memory, and expression. The feeling cortex integrates these signals to form emotional percepts, shaping our subjective experiences. The chapter details the four biological components of feelings: affective, somatic, motor, and cognitive. It emphasizes the role of interoception, the perception of bodily states, in emotional awareness and well-being. Additionally, it explores the concept of emotional resonance, where music surpasses language in conveying emotions. Finally, the chapter examines the interplay between emotions and consciousness, explaining how conscious thought can influence and regulate our emotional responses. It underscores that understanding this complex interplay is crucial for harnessing music’s power to enhance emotional balance and well-being.

This chapter explores the intricate ways music evokes emotions, encompassing conscious and unconscious evaluations, emotional resonance, the power of musical memories, and the role of predictions and surprises. It investigates how music can influence thoughts, create specific atmospheres, and fulfil important social functions, fostering connection and well-being. Practical strategies are offered for utilizing music to regulate emotions, promote positive moods, and enhance personal growth. The chapter concludes by emphasizing the importance of understanding and appreciating musical structure, showcasing how music can trigger ’aha’ moments that contribute to both pleasure and cognitive development. Additionally, the chapter examines the social functions of music, including its ability to facilitate cooperation, strengthen social bonds, and promote prosocial behaviour.

The significance of emotions is often implicitly addressed in norm research. Some International Relations (IR) scholars, for example, suggest a regulatory function of emotions when it comes to norm-based behaviour, norm compliance, norm persuasion, and norm contestation. Yet, the literature on norms often takes these affective dynamics for granted without making them explicit. This contribution seeks to address this imbalance by examining the relationship between emotions (as moral value judgements) and norms (as collective expectations about appropriate behaviour). Specifically, we extend the current analytical focus by proposing a framework for the empirical investigation of emotional resonance in norm research. We argue that emotional resonance is crucial to the impact and enforcement of international norms because emotions assign specific value to norms within normative orders. We identify pathways and build bridges between norm research and research on emotions in IR and develop a theoretical model to show how emotional resonance is helpful for explaining failures of norm compliance. The way in which the absence of emotional resonance facilitates non-compliance is illustrated by the example of the Bush administration’s reaction to torture allegations in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

This chapter explores the material temporal work involved in protecting a radical artistic innovation, conceived ahead of its time, from incomprehension and projecting it into the future in search of receptive audiences. Inspired by the trajectory and recent rediscovery of the pioneering abstract artist Hilma af Klint, we suggest that it is temporal agency (i.e. anticipating of and acting upon one’s future significance) and material temporal work (i.e. influencing, sustaining, or redirecting interpretations of time through materiality) that enable the radical artistic innovation to reach receptive audiences, spanning over a century. We distinguish two processes of material temporal work: bifurcating time by working in parallel along established and unknown temporalities, and bridging time by narrative construction, waiting time, and emotional resonance with distant-future artists, museum curators, and critics. Taken together, these two processes power time as the ultimate organizer of a radical artistic innovation’s comprehension and appreciation, i.e. engage time in the politics of meaning.