From the ashes, a fertile opportunity for historicism – Review Symposium on Leys’s The ascent of affect

Ruth Leys’s book is a thorough survey of the unmanaged forest and scrubland of emotion research: a hodgepodge of paradigmatic ideas that amounts to so much kindling. To most of this, Leys holds a match and allows us to stand in awe at the conflagration. In an ideal world, the psychologists would be watching too. Emotion research in psychological bowers is the heir to an epistemological inertia born of force of personality. Leys’s book is a genealogy of ideas, yes, but it is also, and principally, a genealogy of academic clientelism, and of men (mostly) whose convictions, assumptions, arrogance, politics, and outright scientism have permitted, imposed, and policed two generations of faulty thinking. The jig is up

Beastly pleasures : blood sports in England, c. 1776-1876

This thesis explores the history of 'blood sports', specifically those involving animals, from 1776-1876. Its aims are to account for the nineteenth-century legal innovation that made certain sports unlawful; to explain the increasing prevalence of a notion of 'cruelty' to animals; and to contribute to the history of masculinities. Drawing on recent work which has synthesised multi-disciplinary approaches to moral reform, I examine blood sports and cruelty to animals as a microcosm of this theme, suggesting some new possibilities for interpreting the nature and implementation of these moral reform initiatives. I assert that manly virtue was a more prominent issue than animal welfare for those concerned with reforming the morals of a society perceived to be ridden with animal cruelty. Sociological and anthropological research has stressed the importance of plural masculinities in gender analysis and the power dynamics involved in contests for hegemony. Blood sports provided a setting for such a contest. The anti-cruelty movement, especially the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, essentially was the purveyor of a manly ideal type. Its reforming efforts, while superficially about animal protection, were more deeply concerned with civilising men. Manliness, in its various forms, was central in defining notions of national and local identities, constructions of propriety and fair play and competing ideas of 'civilised' behaviour. In contesting the meaning of manliness, these related issues also came under scrutiny. Ever since Keith Thomas's Man and the Naturat World historians have understood the importance of animals to human history. This study suggests that the relationship between man and animals had to be renegotiated in order to realise a 'civilising process' in the morals of men. Ways of 'seeing' animals had to change if men were to be persuaded to behave according to new ideals of manliness and national character

The History of Emotions

This article briefly appraises the state of the art in the history of emotions, looking to its theoretical and methodological underpinnings and some of the notable scholarship in the contemporary field. The predominant focus, however, lies on the future direction of the history of emotions, based on a convergence of the humanities and neurosciences, and according to important observations about the biocultural status of human beings. While the article stops short of exhorting historians to become competent neuroscientists themselves, it does demand that historians of emotions take note of the implications of social neuroscientific research in particular, with a view to capturing the potential of the emotions to unlock the history of experience, and with a mind to unlocking the political importance of work in this area, namely, the shifting ground of what it means —how it feels— to be human.Este artículo evalúa el estado del arte en la historia de las emociones, considerando tanto sus fundamentos teóricos como metodológicos y algunos de los estudios contemporáneos más notables en este campo. Sin embargo, el enfoque predominante reside en la dirección que tomará la historia de las emociones en el futuro, con base en la convergencia de las humanidades y las neurociencias, y de acuerdo con importantes observaciones acerca del estatus biocultural de los seres humanos. Aunque este artículo no llega a exhortar a los historiadores a convertirse en neurocientíficos competentes, sí exige que los historiadores de la emociones tomen nota de las implicaciones de la investigación neurocientífica social en particular, con miras a captar el potencial de las emociones para decifrar la historia de la experiencia, y con el propósito de entender la importancia política del trabajo en esta área, a saber, el terreno cambiante de lo que significa —de lo que se siente— ser humano.Este artigo avalia o estado da arte na história das emoções considerando tanto seus fundamentos teóricos quanto metodológicos, e alguns dos estudos contemporâneos mais notáveis nesse campo. Entretanto, o enfoque predominante reside na direção que tomará a história das emoções no futuro, com base na convergência das humanidades e das neurociências, e de acordo com as observações sobre o estado biocultural dos seres humanos. Este artigo não pretende convencer os historiadores a converter-se em neurocientistas, mas pede que os historiadores das emoções atentem para as implicações da pesquisa neurocientífica, a social em especial, com o objetivo de captar o potencial das emoções para decifrar a história da experiência, e com o propósito de entender a importância política do trabalho nessa área, especialmente o terreno cambiante do que significa —do que se sente— ser humano

Fashionable Diseases in Georgian Britain: Medical Theory, Cultural Meanings and Lived Experience

The whole idea of a ‘fashionable disease’ may seem perverse. After all, what is so enviable or fun about being ill? Nevertheless, there have been many examples of medical conditions being associated with the glamour of wealth, status, poetic sensitivity or genius. In particular, eighteenth-century Britain offers countless clichés of modish medical conditions, from gentlemen with gout and ladies with the vapours or weak nerves to consumptive poets, all reflecting what an anonymous author in The Female Encyclopaedia (1830) called ‘the ridiculous mania of being fashionably ill’.[1] There was a range of complaints with strong connotations of elite standing, just as there were disorders linked to poverty, stigma, shame and exclusion. The period produced a rich medical, satirical and literary debate on fashionable maladies that drew on a perceived connection between beau-monde complaints and luxury, providing the basis for a medical-moral critique of the vices and excesses of modern urban life that proved enormously influential. At the same time, there was an extensive debate about faddish diagnoses that seemed to come rapidly into vogue before being replaced just as quickly, raising the spectre of ‘imaginary’ diseases, malingering and fakery. These connections with glamour, depravity and inauthenticity help illuminate the relationship between medical theory, cultural and social framings and the lived experience of illness.[2] For in each of these one finds a complicated discourse 216about the paradoxical supposed positive side of illness and disease. Medical theory provided models of causation, combining long-standing theories with more recent ideas about nervous stimulation and novel diagnoses and terminology. These then were adapted for cultural use in endless forms, according to the moralizing, satirical, celebratory or ironical aims of commentators of many kinds. In turn, it is clear that medical theory and cultural framing mediated patient experience itself. Patients sometimes understood their own diagnoses as well as their symptoms and dis-ease in this context, as the price of luxury, whether associated with glamour or self-reproach. By avoiding a simplistic opposition between the ‘real’ somatic experiences of patients and cultural understandings of sickness, this chapter considers their dialectical relationship, showing the ways that sufferers’ own subjective encounters with such maladies were themselves framed by medical thinking and broader cultural attitudes. The discourse among patients and physicians reflected shifting diagnoses as well as conceptions of physicians’ authority, gender conventions and social hierarchies that arguably give it considerable relevance to wider methodological debates about the affective experience of patients, medical theory and the cultural meaning of disease

The History of Emotions: Past, Present, Future

This article briefly appraises the state of the art in the history of emotions, looking to its theoretical and methodological underpinnings and some of the notable scholarship in the contemporary field. The predominant focus, however, lies on the future direction of the history of emotions, based on a convergence of the humanities and neurosciences, and according to important observations about the biocultural status of human beings. While the article stops short of exhorting historians to become competent neuroscientists themselves, it does demand that historians of emotions take note of the implications of social neuroscientific research in particular, with a view to capturing the potential of the emotions to unlock the history of experience, and with a mind to unlocking the political importance of work in this area, namely, the shifting ground of what it means —how it feels— to be human