Chapter 9 of Byung-Chul Han's Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power is titled "Emotional Capitalism" and initiates a crucial inquiry into the contemporary proliferation of discourse and research surrounding feelings and emotions.

The chapter directly confronts the question of where this sudden interest in emotions originates, contending that many academic disciplines researching emotion erroneously overlook its fundamental driver: a profound economic process. This oversight, Han argues, leads to considerable conceptual confusion, where terms such as "emotion," "feeling," and "affect" are frequently used interchangeably by researchers.

To address this conceptual ambiguity, the chapter meticulously differentiates these terms.

Feelings are presented as constative and possessing a narrative length and duration, often carrying an objective quality, such as a "feeling for language" or the experience of mourning, and they can even be non-intentional, like anxiety without a specific object.

In contrast, emotions are characterized as performative, intrinsically linked to actions and deeds, intentional, and goal-oriented, while also being significantly more fleeting, dynamic, and situative than feelings.

Han particularly emphasizes that emotional capitalism specifically exploits these performative qualities of emotions. Affects, distinct from both, are described as eruptive and lacking performative directionality, typically confined to a single moment.

The digital medium is identified as an "affect-medium" that facilitates their immediate release, with phenomena like "shitstorms" serving as prime examples of digital communication driven by affect.

Furthermore, atmosphere or mood (Stimmung) is introduced as being even more objective than feeling, representing a static "way-it-is" rather than a dynamic or intentional expression.

Han argues that this pervasive "boom" of emotion in the present era is ultimately a direct product of neoliberalism. He posits that the neoliberal regime strategically deploys emotions as valuable resources to achieve heightened productivity and performance, especially as traditional rationality, the medium of disciplinary society, encounters its limits as a constraint in production and becomes rigid and inflexible.

In this context, emotionality is deceptively presented as an expression of liberty and "unbridled subjectivity," which neoliberal technologies then mercilessly exploit.

This new capitalist model, branded "emotional capitalism," operates by leveraging "Emotional Design" to generate an ever-increasing array of desires and needs, effectively shifting consumption from finite material goods to potentially boundless emotions. It further integrates the "integral person" into the production process, demanding not only cognitive but also emotional competence from individuals.

Consequently, rational management techniques are progressively yielding to emotional management, with managers increasingly adopting the role of motivation coaches who cultivate positive emotions to boost performance.

Operating on a pre-reflexive, half-conscious level, emotions thus become an incredibly efficient medium for the psychopolitical steering of individuals, a stark departure from the disciplinary society which sought to eliminate emotions for rational, efficient functioning.

The chapter therefore lays the groundwork for understanding how the digital age harnesses and capitalizes on our inner lives for systemic economic benefit, turning subjectivity itself into a resource for exploitation.