What is the History of Emotions and how is it defined?

Karina Mora Mendoza
PhD in History

The history of emotions is a new way to analyze how the experiences of human beings have not always "felt" in the same way over time.

Probably, for example, the sensations in the face of death have been a less shocking issue than in contemporary days, given that, in the In the Middle Ages, for example, the average life span was shorter and the chances of dying from suffering from some disease or accident were very high. tall. People were more used to suffering from human losses than we might expect today when someone close to us dies.

Reference authors in the dynamics of the debate

Peter Burke begins a section of his book by wondering if emotions have a history. It seems that the immediate answer is no, or at least it is the most repeated sentence by historians whose ink becomes more "traditional". However, it is the author himself who brings into account some classic works that, linked to a cultural perspective, have taken the subject with greater sensitivity within his research; As immediate examples, he mentions the works of Burckhardt, Huizinga and Lucien Fevbre as works that they contemplated within their thematic repertoires and periods of study the annexation of themes such as anger, envy, love or the characteristics of the soul passionate

More recently, other authors have responded with a yes to the history of emotions by describing fear or tears, as is the case of Jean Delumeau with The peur in the West⁽²⁾, and later Piroska Nagy with her work Le don des larmes au Moyen Age⁽³⁾. Although the existence of a consolidated historiographical tradition around this field of studies may be under discussion, there is undoubtedly substantial and in-depth research that have taken the matter of studying feelings as an important point in their academic agenda, especially since the last decade of the 20th century and the first decade of the century that runs.

Although the theoretical proposals of each of these authors press dissimilar conceptual particularities, it is important to frame them within a broader debate that is linked precisely to the fundamental dilemma of the history of emotions, in the words of Burke This debate arises regarding the choice of the object of study, that is, if they consider the possibility of making historical the emotions. The foregoing can be connected with a reflection that I find complementary and that revolves around considering emotions as social constructions, or, on the other hand, understand them as facts inherent to human nature, that is, pondering more a biological interpretation.

emotionology-Emotionology

There is a proposal based on the emotionology historical, understood as "the study of the rules of expression and concealment of expressions, which, explicitly or implicitly, regulate the daily life of individuals" ⁽⁴⁾. It is focused on detecting and analyzing changes in the emotional "style" within societies. Proposing that such changes take place in different ways; on the one hand, emphasizing emotions in general, then looking at the relative importance of specific feelings and, finally, looking at the control and “management of emotions”.

This proposal could be attached to the maximalist perspective that Burke argues, since this historical "emotionology" is interested in a especially in the changes that can be perceptible through the norms that are institutionalized and that penetrate the culture popular. Thus, the analytical category on emotional management, or emotional practice, becomes the social use that men and women can make a feeling through its control, giving rise to the specific social construction that was alluded to with anteriority.

Linked to the above, emotions can be emotional verbalizations that alter the mood when expressed, that is, they are statements where the nodal point is centered on language: “A declaration of love, for example, is not a mere expression of feelings. It is a strategy to stimulate, intensify or even transform the feelings of the loved one. ⁽⁵⁾.

Finally, they are the means that express sets of normative emotions that allow us to understand what is emotionally allowed or not at a certain time. In such a way that the history of emotions supports the analysis of a specific social use that is internalized in individuals in space time. In accordance with the above, María Tausiet and James Amelang would propose to search for and analyze the emotion really felt from individual spaces, translated into registers that would make it possible to understand everyday aspects of the Modern Age, focusing on the analysis of sources such as letters, which become extremely rich in terms of information on the latter issue ⁽⁶⁾.