Friend, Stacie & Grzankowski, Alex: Fiction, Emotion, and Recalcitrance

_Rivista di Estetica_ 91:25-38. 2026This paper investigates the normative asymmetry between recalcitrant emotions – emotions that conflict with our judgments – and emotional responses to fiction. While the former generate normative tension, the latter do not, but given their structural similarities, this asymmetry is surprising. We argue that the difference arises from the compartmentalization of emotion within imaginative contexts. Drawing on the concept of a cancellation context, we propose th