Our terminology - of judgement, discernment, critique - it all connotes the idea of a Cartesian model of rationality. But all of those processes of judgement are still in play, it's just that they've been re-territorialized to an affective, emotional terrain. We're still discerning in our choice of presidential candidate, it's just that we discern along an emotional spectrum, rather than a rational one.

Educator Dierdra Reber explores the ascendant emotional dimension of modern cultural, political and economic action, and explains capitalism's role in the triumph of feeling over reason as the catalyst for global culture and what both Obama's tears and Leviathan's frontispiece tell us about our understanding of the world around, and within, us.

Dierdra is author of the book Coming to Our Senses: Affect and an Order of Things for Global Culture from Columbia University Press.