Formatted Feelings: Rap as a Pedagogy of Capitalized Emotion

Authors

Guanhua Yao

Abstract

This article examines mainstream rap as a key apparatus through which capital formats emotional life under platform capitalism. Utilizing grounded theory coding for ten Billboard No. 1 rap tracks released between 2005 and 2025, the analysis identifies durable affective templates, commodified desire, spectacularized power, and curated vulnerability, that standardize how emotion becomes legible, repeatable, and marketable. Synthesizing affect theory, media sociology, and social dramaturgy, the article argues that rap teaches listeners how to perform feeling in ways compatible with visibility regimes and datafied attention economies. Rather than treating these songs as expressive artifacts, the study reframes them as pedagogical infrastructures that normalize capital’s governance of affect. The article concludes by outlining possibilities for resistant affective pedagogies that cultivate critical literacy toward the emotional formats naturalized by cultural industries.

Keywords: Teacher self-image, popular culture, teacher archetypes, teacher representation, film, television

Recommended Citation

Yao, Guanhua (2026) "Formatted Feelings: Rap as a Pedagogy of Capitalized Emotion," Impact: A Journal of Community and Cultural Inquiry in Education: Vol. 4: No. 1, pp.19-30.
Available at: https://commons.emich.edu/impact/vol4/iss1/5