In Teresa Brennans transmission of Affect she states: "Civil codes are not understood, of course, as means for discerning and resisting the transmission of affect and responding to another affective states in ways that would dissipate negative and disabling affects (putting a person at ease). But this is what they do."
In an earlier post I described Rashard Mendenhall's comments about people celebrating Osama Bin Laden's death, in relation to Ahmed. But I his comment are useful in analyzing this quote from Brennan. Mendenhall merely questioned the ethics of celebrating a death, yet he has been vilified for it as if he was an actual member of Al Qaeda himself. I believe he violated the civil code. His response to others' affective states did not put anyone at ease. It did the opposite. And it was because he did not discern the situation properly. The killing of Osama brought out the emotions as right after the 9/11 attacks, and created a situation which called for American unity. Mendenhall, as a star of the most American of sports (football), issued a statement which the country was not prepared to deal with. He violated what the situation called for and pissed off a lot of people.
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