Divine madness: the dilemma of religious scruples in twentieth-century America and Britain

Religious scruples were a major problem within Roman Catholic circles until the late twentieth century. This article traces the shift from the cure of scruples being seen as the responsibility of religious advisers to them being labled an obsessional-compulsive disorder. Whether penitent or patient, the clash between revelationary truths and scientific ones had a profound impact on sufferers of scrupulosity. There was, however, no clean shift between the Age of Religiosity to the Age of Neurosis: rather, there was an interaction between the two professions, with spiritual advisers proving themselves to be willing to relinquish their grip on the soul while psychiatrists paid their respect to the power of faith

Pain sensitivity: an unnatural history from 1800 to 1965

Who was truly capable of experiencing pain? In this article, I explore ideas about the distribution of bodily sensitivity in patients from the early nineteenth century to 1965 in Anglo-American societies. While certain patients were regarded as “truly hurting,” other patients’ distress could be disparaged or not even registered as being “real pain.” Such judgments had major effects on regimes of pain-alleviation. Indeed, it took until the late twentieth century for the routine underestimation of the sufferings of certain groups of people to be deemed scandalous. Often the categorizations were contradictory. For instance, the humble status of workers and immigrants meant that they were said to be insensitive to noxious stimuli; the profound inferiority of these same patients meant that they were especially likely to respond with “exaggerated” sensitivity. How did physicians hold such positions simultaneously? Pain-assignation claimed to be based on natural hierarchical schemas, but the great Chain of Feeling was more fluid than it seemed

Killing in a posthuman world: the philosophy and practice of critical military history

Book synopsis: The Subject of Rosi Braidotti: Politics and Concepts brings into focus the diverse influence of the work of Rosi Braidotti on academic fields in the humanities and the social sciences such as the study and scholarship in - among others - feminist theory, political theory, continental philosophy, philosophy of science and technology, cultural studies, ethnicity and race studies. Inspired by Braidotti's philosophy of nomadic relations of embodied thought, the volume is a mapping exercise of productive engagements and instructive interactions by a variety of international, outstanding and world-renowned scholars with texts and concepts developed by Braidotti throughout her immense body of work. In Braidotti's work, traversing themes of engagements emerge of politics and philosophy across generations and continents. Therefore, the edited volume invites prominent scholars at different stages of their careers and from around the world to engage with Braidotti's work in terms of concepts and/or political practice

Police surgeons and victims of rape: cultures of harm and care

Between the late 1960s and the late 1980s, police surgeons found themselves under concerted attack for their treatment of victims of rape and sexual assault. This article explores the tensions they faced between the needs of victims and their legal responsibilities. Should they prioritise care or the collection of evidence? How did they respond to criticism and why were reforms inadequate? I show how institutional structures and ideologies help explain the longevity of cultures of harm within the sub-discipline of police doctors. However, to understand the tenacity of these practices, we need to interrogate more fundamental processes associated with bodily interactions, emotion and language

The rise and rise of sexual violence

This article explores Pinker’s analysis of sexual violence in modern history. It argues that his analysis is flawed because of a selective choice of data, a minimization of certain harms, the application of an evolutionary psychology approach, the failure to interrogate new forms of aggression, and a refusal to acknowledge the political underpinnings of his research. By failing to acknowledge and then control for his own ideological bias, Pinker has missed an opportunity to convincingly explain the changing nature of violence in our societies

Bodily Pain, Combat, and the Politics of Memoirs: Between the American Civil War and the War in Vietnam

This article analyses the languages of wartime pain as seen in British and American memoirs from the American Civil War to the present. How did the rhetoric of wounding in these war memoirs change over time? One of the central shifts lies in the way that wounded men presented themselves as stoic in spite of severe wounding. From 1939, and in an even more dramatic fashion by the war in Vietnam, physical suffering remained a test of manliness, but the tone was defiant and aggressive rather than stoic or resigned. The article also looks at the role of individual publishers and the introduction of psychological dimensions of wounding in latter memoirs. Cet article analyse le langage de la douleur des blessures de guerre par le prisme des mémoires britanniques et américains de la guerre de Sécession à nos jours. Comment le discours sur les blessures a-t-il évolué dans ces mémoires de guerre au fil du temps? L’un des changements pivots est la transformation qu’a subie l’image d’êtres stoïques malgré de graves blessures que se donnaient les hommes blessés. La souffrance physique a toujours été un symbole de virilité, mais à compter de 1939, et de façon nettement plus marquée au moment de la guerre du Vietnam, le ton allait cesser d’être stoïque et résigné pour devenir rebelle et agressif. L’article examine également le rôle de certains éditeurs et l’apparition de dimensions psychologiques des blessures dans les mémoires ultérieurs

Radical physics: science, Socialism, and the paranormal at Birkbeck College in the 1970s

The 1970s saw a resurgence of interest in the paranormal. In the mass media, as well as in academic and popular conferences across the world, metal-bending, telepathy, clairvoyance, and remote viewing were avidly debated. In Britain, attention to the paranormal was sparked by visits of Uri Geller. Scientists, and physicists in particular, sought to explain the phenomena. This article explores the social life of paranormal science in Birkbeck College in the 1970s and its links to radical critiques of scientific norms and practices. It traces the scientific and political thinking of physicists as different as John Hasted and David Bohm. Para-physics provided a small group of scientists with a way to reflect on the three crises of politics emerging out of capitalism, the Cold War, and Stalinism

Dairymaids and housewives: the dairy industry in Ireland, 1890-1914

Milking and butter-making were important to the rural Irish economy. In the nineteenth century, dairy work was dominated by women. By World War One, it was dominated by men. The establishment of creameries and male-only agricultural colleges, in addition to legislation limiting female hours of employment, encouraged the substitution of male labour for female labour. Schemes to educate rural women in the new dairying technologies had minimal effect. Although the value of dairy production in Ireland increased, female status in the industry declined as managerial control came to be vested in men. The removal of women from the dairy was justified by reference to the need of increasing female investment of time in housework

Bestiality, Zoophilia, and human-animal sexual interactions

From the earliest human cultures, nonhuman animals have been central to the sexual imaginary of humans. This article traces the modern history of bestiality from the nineteenth century, culminating in ‘zoo’ communities today. It explores the changing ideas about the ‘wrongness’ of such acts. It asks: what do human–animal sexual relations tell us about gender, sexuality, violence, psychiatry and concepts of consent? What are the possibilities for humans and nonhuman animals becoming true ‘companion species’