The history of emotions: An interview with William Reddy, Barbara Rosenwein, and Peter Stearns

History and Theory

Volumn 49, Issue 2, 2010, Pages 237-265

  Plamper, Jan ^a  

^a MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR HUMAN DEVELOPMENT   (Germany)

Author keywords

Emotion; Feeling; History of emotions; Life science; Neuroscience; Poststructuralism

Indexed keywords

EID: 77951676365     PISSN: 00182656     EISSN: 14682303     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2303.2010.00541.x     Document Type: Note

References (67)

1. William M. Reddy, The Navigation of Feeling: A Framework for the History of Emotions (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001)
2. William M. Reddy, "Against Constructionism: The Historical Ethnography of Emotions," Current Anthropology 38, no. 2 (1997), 327-351
3. In Reddy's response to Jeremy D. Popkin's review of William M. Reddy, The Navigation of Feeling: A Framework for the History of Emotions. H-France Review 2, no. 119 (November 2002)
4. William M. Reddy, "Saying Something New: Practice Theory and Cognitive Neuroscience," Arcadia: International Journal for Literary Studies 44, no. 1 (2009), 8-23
5. See Reddy, The Navigation of Feeling
6. Reddy, idem, "Emotional Styles and Modern Forms of Life," in Sexualized Brains: Scientific Modeling of Emotional Intelligence from a Cultural Perspective, ed. Nicole Karafyllis and Gotlind Ulshöfer (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008), 81-100
7. See, for example, the anthology Social Suffering, ed. Arthur Kleinman, Veena Das, and Margaret Lock (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), as well as Ramu Nagappan, Speaking Havoc: Social Suffering and South Asian Narratives (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005)
8. Reddy, "Emotional Styles and Modern Forms of Life;"
9. Reddy, idem, "Saying Something New: Practice Theory and Cognitive Neuroscience."
10. Barbara H. Rosenwein, review of Reddy, The Navigation of Feeling, American Historical Review 107, no. 4 (October 00 ), 1181
11. Rosenwein, American Historical Review, 1181
12. See Lila Abu-Lughod, Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986)
13. Catherine Lutz, Unnatural Emotions: Everyday Sentiments on a Micronesian Atoll and Their Challenge to Western Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988)
14. See Michelle Z. Rosaldo, Knowledge and Passion: Ilongot Notions of Self and Social Life (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1980)
15. For a related example, cf. Harvey Whitehouse, "Rites of Terror: Emotion, Metaphor and Memory in Melanesian Initiation Cults," Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 2 (1996), 703-715
16. In a similar vein, the anthropologist Signe Howell wrote in a reaction piece to your article "However, as it stands, the argument [of "emotives"-JP] is suggestive rather than convincing. . . . Ultimately, the anthropological contribution to the study of cognition and emotion must be founded in empirical fieldwork." Signe Howell on William M. Reddy, "Against Constructionism: The Historical Ethnography of Emotions," Current Anthropology 38, no. 2 (1997), 342-343
17. Review by Peter N. Stearns, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 33, no. 3 (2003), 474-475
18. Barbara h. Rosenwein, Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006)
19. Nicole Eustace, Passion Is the Gale: Emotion, Power, and the Coming of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008)
20. Barbara H. Rosenwein, "Feudal War and Monastic Peace: Cluniac Liturgy as Ritual Aggression," Viator 2 (1971), 129-157
21. Barbara H. Rosenwein and Lester K. Little, "Social Meaning in the Monastic and Mendicant Spiritualities," Past and Present, no. 63 (1974), 4-32
22. Barbara H. Rosenwein, Rhinoceros Bound: Cluny in the Tenth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982)
23. idem, To Be the Neighbor of St. Peter: The Social Meaning of Cluny's Property, 909-1049 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989)
24. Barbara H. Rosenwein, Negotiating Space: Power, Restraint, and Privileges of Immunity in Early Medieval Europe (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999)
25. See Johan Huizinga, Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen: Studie over levens- en gedachtervormen der veertiende en vijftiende eeuw in Frankrijk en de Nederlanden (Haarlem: Tjeenk Willink, 1919), drawing largely on chroniclers for the Burgundian court, such as Georges Chastellain
26. Anger's Past: The Social Uses of an Emotion in the Middle Ages, ed. Barbara H. Rosenwein (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998)
27. Barbara H. Rosenwein, "Worrying about Emotions in History," American Historical Review 107, no. 3 (2002), 821-845
28. Robert C. Solomon, The Passions (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1976), 139-150
29. See George Lakoff, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), Case Study I
30. See Zoltán Kövecses, Emotion Concepts (New York: Springer, 1990), chap. 5
31. See William James, "What is an Emotion?" Mind 9, no. 34 (1884), 198: "Every perception must lead to some nervous result. If this be the normal emotional expression, it soon expends itself, and in the natural course of things a calm succeeds. But if the normal issue be blocked from any cause, the currents may under certain circumstances invade other tracts, and there work different and worse effects." Here emotions are like rivers; if dammed up, they attempt to chart a new course. Much the same is true of Freud, who, however, seems to prefer a model of energy discharge rather than of flow
32. See Sigmund Freud, "The Unconscious" [1915] in idem, Collected Papers, transl. Joan riviere (New York: Basic Books, 1959), IV, 111: "Affects and emotions correspond with processes of discharge, the final expression of which is perceived as feeling."
33. Martha C. Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 25
34. See Rosenwein, Anger's Past, esp. 237- 240
35. See Barbara H. Rosenwein, "The Uses of Biology: A Response to J. Carter Wood's 'The Limits of Culture?'" Cultural and Social History 4, no. 4 (2007), 553-558
36. Cf. Rosenwein, Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages, esp. 20-29
37. Rosenwein, "Worrying about Emotions in History," 35
38. See Benedict R. O'G. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (London: Verso, 1991)
39. See Thomas dixon, From Passions to Emotions: The Creation of a Secular Psychological Category (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003)
40. See also Barbara H. Rosenwein, "Emotion Words," in Le sujet des émotions au moyen âge, ed. Piroska Nagy and Damien Boquet (Paris: Editions Beauchesne, 2008), 93-106
41. Cicero, De Amicitia 6
42. Descartes, Passions de l'âme, art. 81
43. Medievalists seem to be at the forefront of the art-historical study of emotions. See, for instance, the work of Jacqueline E. Jung, "The Wise and Foolish Virgins and the Spectacle of Emotion in Gothic Germany," paper presented at the Center for the History of Emotions, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin (April 1, 2009)
44. idem, "Dynamic Bodies and the Beholder's Share: The Wise and Foolish Virgins of Magdeburg Cathedral," in Bild und Körper im Mittelalter, ed. Kristin Marek, Raphaèle Preisinger, Marius Rimmele, and Katrin Kärcher (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2006), 135-160
45. idem, "Viel Spiel: The Baby Jesus and the Play of Art in a Medieval Swiss Convent" (forthcoming)
46. See also Thomas Raff, "Heulen und Zähneklappern: Gedanken zur Mimik in der mittelalterlichen Kunst," Österreichische Zeitschrift für Volkskunde 56, no. 105 (2002), 375-388
47. Elina Gertsman, "The Facial Gesture: (Mis)Reading Emotion in Later Medieval Art," Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures 36, no. 1-2 (2010), 28-46
48. The classic paper is Paul Ekman and Wallace V. Friesen, "Constants across Cultures in the Face and Emotion," Passions in Context: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 17, no. 2 (1971), 124-139
49. For further discussion, see Barbara H. Rosenwein, "Problems and Methods in the history of emotions," Journal of the History and Philosophy of the Emotions 1 (forthcoming)
50. Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought, chap. 5
51. Susan Boynton, "Emblems of Lament in Latin and Vernacular Song," in The Church and Vernacular Literature in Medieval France, ed. Dorothea Kullmann (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2009), 222-248
52. "Reddy's scheme postulates overarching 'regimes' that are quite clearly tied to state formation and hegemony. He recognizes one set of emotives for the royal court and another set - a very different one - for emotional refuges. . . . But Reddy's refuges leave us with a bipartite society: either one is at court or one is in a sentimental refuge. It is possible, though doubtful, that modern mass society yields just such limited alternatives." Rosenwein, Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages, 23 (emphasis in original)
53. Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages, Ibid., 199
54. See the review by Bonnie effros in H-France Review 8, no. 103 (2008), 410: "While Rosenwein broadly refutes the impact of genre in her discussion, might it not be fair to ask whether some of the shifts in vocabulary are due at least in part to the type of writings from which Rosenwein draws her examples? Could not some of the changes owe less to a climate in which emotion was associated with spiritual weakness - particularly female weakness (pp. 149-50) - and more to differences between the kinds of words and conventions applied to saints' Lives and poems versus those more appropriate to letters?"
55. Keith Oatley, Emotions: A Brief History (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 26
56. Klaus R. Scherer and Paul Ekman, "Preface," in Approaches to Emotion, ed. Scherer and Ekman (Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1984), xi
57. See Peter N. Stearns and Carol Z. Stearns, "Emotionology: Clarifying the History of Emotions and Emotional Standards," American Historical Review 90, no. 4 (1985), 813-836
58. See Ekman and Friesen, "Constants across Cultures in the Face and Emotion."
59. Particularly cogent is James A. Russell, "Is There Universal Recognition of Emotion from Facial Expression? A Review of the Cross-Cultural Studies," Psychological Bulletin 115 (1994), 102-141
60. See Peter N. Stearns, Old Age in European Society: The Case of France (New York: New York University Press, 1976)
61. See Peter N. Stearns, Be a Man! Males in Modern Society (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1979)
62. See Peter N. Stearns and Carol Z. Stearns, Anger: The Struggle for Emotional Control in America's History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986)
63. See "Emotionology: Clarifying the History of Emotions and Emotional Standards," American Historical Review ibid., 825
64. Peter N. Stearns, "History of Emotions: Issues of Change and Impact," in Handbook of Emotions, 3rd ed., ed. Michael Lewis, Jeannette M. Haviland-Jones, and Lisa Feldman Barrett (New York: Guilford Press, 2008), 17-31
65. See Peter N. Stearns, American Fear: The Causes and Consequences of High Anxiety (New York: Routledge,2006)
66. Peter N. Stearns, American Cool: Constructing a Twentieth-Century Emotional Style (New York: New York University Press, 1994)
67. Peter N. Stearns and Timothy Haggerty, "The Role of Fear: Transitions in American Emotional Standards for Children, 1850-1950," American Historical Review 96, no. 1 (1991), 63-94