Emotional event

Something I received from Dr Thomas Dixon from Queen Mary University, London. It looks pretty interesting... Would that I had a day off to go down.

Towards a Historical Semantics of Emotions
Special Panel at the 12th Annual Conference of the History of Political and Social Concepts Group
London, September 18th 2009
At the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, 16 Taviston Street

Emotions are shaped in multiple ways by different cultures and languages. Rather than innate and universal, they are socially constructed to a large extent, embedded in their political and historical contexts and learnt by the individual. This panel will deal with concepts of emotions as objects of a new direction of study in the History of Concepts to which the conference is dedicated.

Semantic and conceptual history is an approach to the study of key concepts of culture not as fixed and timeless entities, but rather, as molded by the political and social contexts in which they are created and applied, and within which they change. It investigates the ways in which language functions, is employed, transferred and transformed in cultural, political, social, historical and geographic contexts, and the ways that concepts structure and constitute the extra-linguistic experience and reality to which they refer.

The papers in this panel will apply semantic history to concepts of emotions as they are used, appear in, and disappear from, different languages and discourses over time, place, context and cultures.

some thoughts on thinkers thinking about emotion pt2

A few weeks ago I ran a series of interviews with three academics, (Prof Barbara Rosenwein, Prof Keith Oatley, and Dr Thomas Dixon) talking in broad terms about the history of emotions, with a brief commentary here.

Picking up on that commentary, I wanted to consider their other answers and thoughts.

It's both cheering and intimidating that all of them consider that virtually anything can be a useful historical resource when it comes to understanding how emotions were felt and affected the lives of people throughout history. The optimism comes from a potential wealth of sources, the fear from wondering how each will be recognised and sorted appropriately to give useful information. As Dr Dixon suggests, we may suffer from an excess of sources for today...

For example, what can the architecture of the past tell us about the emotional lives of the societies that built it? It may not be directly obvious, but there may be clues there for the skilled mind to uncover. The same goes for any potential source that does not directly reference something we might recognise in the present as an emotion.

It comes as no surprise that Prof Oatley specifically references fictional literature as being particularly useful - this is his field of expertise after all - and it will almost certainly be one of the richest and clearest seams that we can mine for useful information on the emotional lives of our ancestors. However, as Prof Rosenwein points out about the ecstatic writings of mystics, if one relies over heavily on such writings one might have a very skewed picture of life at the time of writing.

There is no suggestion though that Prof Oatley is over relying on the value of fictional literature here though.

All I think would agree though that any documentation from the relevant period may provide useful information, as would any art and music from the period. One could certainly do a good study of the emotional life of various cultures and subcultures through popular music in the last forty years, so the same should stand for earlier periods.

Prof Rosenwein referenced Dr Sarah Tarlow's essay 'Emotion in Archaeology'. As the subject expands, I think that one of the big challenges will be to see how we can cope with non written sources and archaeology will be key. What will a bejewelled corpse, perhaps preserved in a bog, contorted and with a variety of wounds, say about the emotional live of the society that the corpse came from?

I was heartened by Dr Dixon's suggestion of analysing the emotional lives of the cave painters of Lascaux - I look forward to his analysis!

There is one question which i will write further on in another post - that is the thought about a grand narrative, or a big story to our emotional development in history. It's something I've written about here. It's one of the most challenging questions for anyone interested in the History of Emotions and one which drew an interesting range of answers which deserve a post of their own.

some thoughts on thinkers thinking on emotion

Over the last few weeks I've had three experts talking about some of the basic questions that face anyone curious about the History of Emotions. It's been interesting to see the differences and similarities in the answers, and get some learned perspectives in a simplified form.

First some clarity - what is an emotion? As I've spoken about before, I think it's noteable that all three writers agree that whatever an emotion is (as a concept it is extremely vague and laden with cultural association) it does require an element of judgement. It is not some kind of pure instinct that the person emoting has no control over.

I think we in the West fail to recognise this at our peril and allow ourselves to dodge responsibility for our actions by 'blaming' our emotions overwhelming us.

So which ones are more dominant in the West? This again is obviously a question with a massive value judgement -what is the West? At the risk of avoiding an enormous debate on that subject I was meaning largely the English speaking world with an element of Western European thrown in.

The answers are fascinating -
For Dr Dixon, desire and terror.
For Prof. Keith Oatley, contempt and romantic love.
For Prof. Rosenwein, anger and grief.

Prof. Rosenwein also points out something which I may write more about in future - that happiness is a relatively modern concept and does not figure so largely in what we can understand about the emotional lives of our ancestors.

I think this is something we as a society have to consider in very great detail on a range of levels. The American Constitution famously describes the 'pursuit of happiness' as a fundamental right and yet are we in danger of making ourselves unhappy by selling ourselves the illusion of happiness as a right? Our expectation of it as a right and not a fleeting gift to be cherished in its presenceand respected in its departure and absence may make us more unhappy than it will ever make us happy. Not least when that right for happiness is packaged into consumer desire and sold on an industrial level to the ruin of ourselves and our planet.

The other obvious thought from our experts views on the dominant emotions of the West is how negative the choices are. I mean no disrespect to the experts in those choices, indeed I think this is a fair reflection of a society that has triumphed globally through channeling these emotions into conquest within those societies and over others. Prof. Oatley's suggestion of contempt for the 'other' groups is particularly resonant here.

Personally I was a little surprised that Dr Dixon and Prof Rosenwein did not join Prof. Oatley in suggesting Romantic Love. Perhaps this is a reflection of Prof Oatley's professional immersion in literature, perhaps the other two may change their mind and include it another time. I think I would put it up there as a dominant emotion, but then my opinion is much less learned!

I could go on for a lot more though I think this is enough for one post. Some more thoughts on the Q&A's soon...

A Question of Emotion pt3: Dr Thomas Dixon

My thanks this time go to Dr Thomas Dixon, Director of the Queen Mary Centre for the History of the Emotions. I like his description of an emotion as a felt judgement. Despite the potential ambiguity of using the word 'felt' i think it's a good simple way to effectively describe emotions if clear terms that won't terrify a lay reader.

I also very much love the idea of gauging the emotional lives of the ancient cave painters of lascaux, though that sounds like a tough task!

I'll write a piece on the contributions of my three very generous interviewees soon, not least as there's some interesting similarities and contrasts to bring out.

How would you describe an emotion?
An emotion is a felt judgement. It is your body’s way of telling you, quickly, that the world is or is not how you want it to be. Any general description of emotions must capture both feeling and cognition. A cool and detached mental state cannot count as an emotion. There must be a sweaty palm, a lurching stomach, a thumping heart, a tingle, at least a momentary shiver. However there is more to an emotion than mere sensation. Nausea is not an emotion if it is caused by food poisoning, but it can be if it is caused by a sudden conviction of the meaninglessness of life.

Are some emotions more dominant in western culture?
Yes. Western culture is currently dominated by emotions of terror and desire, both verging constantly on hysteria. These emotions are sustained by the mass communication of ideas and images on television and online. If one were looking for a more positive emotion, then romantic love has long been the predominant theme of all forms of popular culture.

Has that changed historically?
Yes. In traditional Christian thought there was a distinction between bodily appetites and worldly passions, which were to be avoided, and higher affections of love and sympathy which were to be cultivated and were shared with God and the angels. Even before Darwin, however, it was quite obvious that most of us are more ape than angel, and western philosophy, art and literature are full of discussions of how to master anger and lust and cultivate joy and affection.

The overarching categories we use have changed historically. The ‘emotions’ are a very recent invention as a psychological category. Before the nineteenth century people thought instead in terms of appetites, passions, affections and sentiments. The ‘feelings’ are also related but distinguishable from the ‘emotions’. Understandings of the relationship of mind and body have changed. The ways we express our feelings through our faces and bodies have changed. And all these things continue to change.

Of particular interest to the historian of emotion are the different social rules governing which emotions should be felt in which circumstances, and how they should be expressed. These rules have changed considerably across time and place. I have recently, for instance, been researching Victorian attitudes to the manifestation of feelings in the courtroom (and on the scaffold). The comments of lawyers, judges and journalists suggest that either excessive emotion or cool indifference could both be interpreted as evidence of guilt.

What are the best resources for understanding this history?
Almost any historical document or artefact can offer evidence of the regimes of feeling and expression that obtained in a particular time and place. The visual arts are very valuable sources for the history of expression. Scientific and medical treatises tell us how the passions were understood theoretically. Novels, poetry and drama provide us with especially good evidence of the emotional tenor of a period.

Other perhaps less obvious sources, such as trial records, news reporting, didactic sermons, conduct manuals, government statistics, or school textbooks can also be immensely revealing of those tacit emotional rules that really define a particular culture.

Keeping in mind that emotions are felt judgements about the world, the history of emotions is always also the history of attitudes. So, resources that might seem only to offer evidence of abstract beliefs can often hold the key to past emotions too. To ask, for example, why the predominant emotional response to homosexuality in Victorian Britain was disgust, is to ask simultaneously about a feeling and about a belief. People felt disgust about homosexuality because they believed it to be something rotten, corrupt and unhealthy.

How far back into the past can the history of emotions reasonably go?
Any period that has left any trace of human activity can reasonably be studied from the point of view of the emotions. For instance, we can imagine trying to reconstruct the emotional lives of the prehistoric inhabitants of Lascaux on the basis of their cave paintings.

For the modern period the problem is generally an excess rather than a dearth of evidence. The challenge then is to resist the temptation to assume that we know what people were feeling. As with our own friends and colleagues, so with the subjects of our historical research, it is probably best not to assume too readily that we know what unseen emotions lie behind their words and actions.

Is there a big story, or grand narrative to our emotional history?
One interest of mine is in the history of resistance to the emotions. Feelings, passions, and emotions have been variously thought of as enemies, rebels, monsters, and demons. Over the centuries, they have been resisted through prayer, persuasion, psychiatry and imprisonment. I think any grand narrative should include an understanding of the historical urge to pathologise and penalise the passions, as well as an explanation of the recent tendency to celebrate such things as ‘emotional intelligence’ and ‘emotional literacy’. Perhaps the whole history of emotions could be conceived of as an eternal cycle of expression and control.