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Aleksondra Hultquist
The Eighteenth Century, Volume 58, Number 3, Fall 2017, pp. 273-280 (Article)
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Introductory Essay:
Emotion, Affect, and the Eighteenth Century
Aleksondra Hultquist
Stockton University
The Eighteenth Century, vol. 58, no. 3 Copyright © 2017 University of Pennsylvania Press. All rights reserved.
274 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
“joy” center in the brain that always lights up in every joyful human).5 More-
over, because neuropsychological studies have only marginally taken history
and culture into account, historians have argued against Ekman’s display rules
of emotion by documenting how the emotional standards of modern society
are shaped by cultural items such as advice manuals. Carol and Peter Stearns,
for example, argue that facial expressions can mask as well as display an inter-
nal emotion, and that a culture will read that expression within its own con-
texts.6 The latest work in the history of emotion is especially interested in what
emotions mean at a given time, how they are performed and in what context,
how they change over time, and how they shape our contemporary under-
standing and expression of emotion; scholars asking history of emotion ques-
tions are interested in the cultural, psychological, and historical contingencies
of how we feel what we feel.
Affect theory focuses on theorizing pre-discursive emotions, on unconscious
bodily responses rather than on mental awareness of emotion.7 Affect theory is
not necessarily interested in history and emotion, but in embodiments of emo-
tion. Affect denotes that responses are pre-cognitive, or “anti-intentional”; af-
fects are “inherently independent of intentions.”8 For Brian Massumi, “Feelings
are personal and biographical, emotions are social, and affects are prepersonal.”9 In
such a specification (one, by the way, which is not universally accepted), affects
are those aspects of emotion that are biological, pre-cognitive, or, as Melissa
Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth have argued, the “sticky inbetweenness” of
emotional experience.10 Margaret Wetherall explains social scientists’ methodol-
ogy for studying affect as “highlighting difference, process and force.”11 Stepha-
nie Trigg has argued that the difference between “affect” and “emotion” is a
question of ontological, even physiological precedence: “In such contexts, ‘af-
fect’ can signify an unconscious, pre-discursive bodily response in quite precise
terms: the beat of the heart; the rush of blood to the face; the flow of tears from
the eyes. The consciousness of emotion, so often mediated by language, is seen
as secondary.”12 To study the history of the emotions is to examine how we his-
torically and socially read our affects.
Clearly, the meanings of these terms are still contested, and as participants
in the discussion of emotion and affect, we still need to delineate clearly and
thoughtfully their provenance and how we use them. The contributors to this
special issue wrestle with, examine, and specify their language as much as pos-
sible in deference to their authors, subjects, and texts. Stephen Ahern and Jean
Marsden center their arguments on the word “affect” as a way to communicate
the non-textual moment of feeling in the novel of sensibility and in the theater,
two literary forms often derided for their failure to achieve literary value, but
that have an emotional sophistication and value. They require affect to delin-
eate emotional value in the absence of formal “perfection.” For Katie Barclay,
“affection” best describes the loving relationships between family members as
manifested in inheritance law in England and Scotland. M. Wade Mahon and
HULTQUIST—EMOTION, AFFECT, AND THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 275
While each article can stand on its own, the conversation produced by setting
them side by side brings to the forefront some major concerns of both emotion
and the long eighteenth century. Ahern and Barclay tackle large, established
ideas through the lens of affect theory and history of emotion to rewrite our
understanding of the “old standards” of sentimental fiction and patriarchy.
Marsden addresses specific generic issues of emotion in the eighteenth century,
such as the development of drama and emotional authenticity. Her essay is in
conversation with Edson as they both attempt to pin down in textual and histor-
ical experience what is impossible to record; their studies uncover these fleeting
proofs of the conversation of emotion. Mahon, too, examines the hidden aspects
of emotion in text and performance—following elocutionary training in the
eighteenth century allows him to track fleeting emotional commonalities. Mc-
Bain and Phiddian and Temple use the lens of emotion in combination with
other theoretical approaches (history of the book, feminist criticism) to re-view
well-known works by Swift and Wollstonecraft. Their application of emotion
history to what we thought we knew about these canonical figures provides us
with new insights: that Swift’s satires are more than political and personal pro-
tests, but rather a way to channel volatile emotion; that Wollstonecraft’s per-
sonal emotion was absolutely critical to her political personae. Barclay and
Temple think about emotions in terms of law. Temple argues for the need for
feeling to be a legal subject, while Barclay argues for the ways in which feeling
operated on inheritance law. Barclay and McBain and Phiddian think about spe-
cific emotions within the eighteenth century: disgust, happiness, and love.
There are some obvious limitations to this conversation. First, the main
works under consideration are (almost embarrassingly) canonical. There are
few minor writers, women writers, and writers outside of the London metropole.
This is not because there aren’t important conversations to be had about lesser
known, or at least less widely canonical authors, ideas, and works, but because
this particular collection demonstrates how different our view of the eighteenth
century can be when it is seen through the emotional/affect lens. Secondly, it is
Great Britain–centric. There are extraordinary arguments to be made, espe-
cially regarding French philosophy and literature, German opera and music,
and American literature and politics.22 All three areas have been recently
rearticulated through the affective turn in history, musicology, political theory,
philosophy, and literature. The politics and expression of transcontinental
emotion simply couldn’t fit in this particular collection. Finally, all are text-
centered. I have done my best to attend to the major literary genres of the pe-
riod: fiction, drama, poetry, and other prose forms. Unfortunately I did not
have room for music, art, dance, opera, and many other ephemeral forms of
emotion that lie outside of my particular expertise. But I hope that these limita-
tions demonstrate how diverse and dynamic affect theory and history of emo-
tion approaches can be when applied to noncanonical writers, to the continental
eighteenth century, and to all aspects of the humanities, not just written forms.
HULTQUIST—EMOTION, AFFECT, AND THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 279
A final note: this collection would not have been possible without my in-
volvement in the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence in the
History of Emotions in Europe: 1100–1800. Without the C.H.E., I would not
have had the time to immerse myself in this burgeoning field, one which con-
tinues to be profoundly informative to my own work as well as many other
scholars I know. Through the C.H.E., I had access to several established schol-
ars, many new ones, and various personages in between. Phillipa Maddern,
the original director of the Centre wanted very much for “Emotion” to be an
approach in the humanities, much the way that feminist theory is now a cross-
disciplinary approach to the humanities. Her enthusiasm for her own work
and the work of others was an inspiration to me and many other participants at
the Centre. This special issue is dedicated to her memory.
NOTES
1. Influential studies specific to emotion in the long eighteenth century include works
by Thomas Dixon, From Passions to Emotions: The Creation of a Secular Psychological Cate-
gory (Cambridge, 2003); Margaret Doody, A Natural Passion: A Study of the Novels of Sam-
uel Richardson (Oxford, 1974); Jon Elster, Alchemies of the Mind: Rationality and the Emotions
(Cambridge, 1999); Nicole Eustace, Passion Is the Gale: Emotion, Power, and the Coming of
the American Revolution (Williamsburg, 2008); Susan James, Passion and Action: The Emo-
tions in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy (Oxford, 1997); Adrian Johns, The Nature of the Book:
Print and Knowledge in the Making (Chicago, 1998), see esp. chap. 6; and Adela Pinch,
Strange Fits of Passion: Epistemologies of Emotion, Hume to Austen (Stanford, 1996). See also
Laura Mandell, ed., “Histories of Print, Histories of Emotion,” special issue, The Eighteenth-
Century: Theory and Interpretation 50, nos. 2–3 (Summer–Fall 2009), as well as recent collec-
tions on emotion and the early modern period: Passions, Sympathy and Print Culture: Public
Opinion and Emotional Authenticity in Eighteenth-Century Britain, ed. Heather Kerr, David
Lemmings, and Robert Phiddian (New York, 2016); and Spaces for Feeling: Gender, Affect
and Sociability in Britain, 1650–1850, ed. Susan Broomall (New York, 2015).
2. Two studies that examine the importance of passion over reason are Christopher
Tilmouth’s Passion’s Triumph Over Reason (Oxford, 2007), and Earla Wilputte, Passion and
Language in Eighteenth-Century Literature: The Aesthetic Sublime in the Work of Eliza Hay-
wood, Aaron Hill, and Martha Fowke (Basingstoke, 2014).
3. See especially historical studies by Jan Plamper, The History of Emotions: An Intro-
duction, trans. Keith Tribe (Oxford, 2015), William M. Reddy, The Navigation of Feeling: A
Framework for the History of Emotions (Cambridge, 2001); Barbara H. Rosenwein, Emotional
Communities in the Early Middle Ages (Ithaca, 2007); Monique Scheer “Are Emotions a
Kind of Practice (and Is That What Makes Them Have a History)?: A Bourdieuan Ap-
proach to Understanding Emotion,” History and Theory 51, no. 2 (May 2012): 193–220; and
Carol Zisowitz Stearns and Peter N. Stearns, Anger: The Struggle for Emotional Control in
America’s History (Chicago, 1986).
4. See Paul Ekman and Wallace V. Friesen, Unmasking the Face: A Guide to Recognizing
Emotions from Facial Clues (Los Altos, 2003).
5. See Richard J. Davidson and W. Irwin, “Emotion, Plasticity, Context, and Regula-
tion: Perspectives from Affective Neuroscience,” Psychological Bulletin 126 (2000): 890–
909; and Juan F. Dominguez Duque et al., “Neuroanthropology: A Humanistic Science
for the Study of the Culture-Brain Nexus,” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 5
(2010): 138–47.
6. See esp. Stearns and Stearns.
280 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
7. See the essay by Stephen Ahern in this special issue, as well as Sara Ahmed, Cul-
tural Politics of Emotion (New York, 2013); Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth, eds.,
The Affect Theory Reader (Durham, 2010); Brian Massumi, The Politics of Affect (Cambridge,
2015); and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity
(Durham, 2003).
8. Ruth Leys, “The Turn to Affect,” Critical Inquiry 37, no. 3 (2011): 434–72, 465.
9. For an overview of Massumi’s theories, see Eric Shouse, “Feeling, Emotion, Affect,”
M/C Journal 8, no. 6 (2005), available at journal.media-culture.org.au/0512/03-shouse.
php.
10. Gregg and Seigworth, “An Inventory of Shivers,” in The Affect Theory Reader, 1–25.
11. Margaret Wetherell, Affect and Emotion: A New Social Science Understanding (Los
Angeles, 2012), 2.
12. Stephanie Trigg, “Introduction: Emotional Histories—Beyond the Personalization
of the Past and the Abstraction of Affect Theory,” Exemplaria: Medieval, Early Modern, The-
ory 26, no. 1 (2014): 3–15, 5.
13. David Hume, Treatise of Human Nature [1738], ed. David Fate Norton and Mary J.
Norton (Oxford, 2000), Book 2, Part 3, Section 3.
14. Alexander Pope, “An Essay on Man: Epistle 2” [1734], in Alexander Pope: The Major
Works, ed. Pat Rogers (Oxford, 2006), 280–89, line 138.
15. Dixon, From Passions to Emotions, 72.
16. While often used as an analogy for the modern term “emotion,” the eighteenth-
century use of “the passions” is more complex. The term delineates a systemic approach
to feeling in the eighteenth century that explains a variety of responses: medical, intellec-
tual, emotional, public, individual. (We might use the term “psychology” as a more ap-
propriate analogy to answer how and why people react to stimuli.)
17. Elster, 108.
18. See, for example, Eustace; Julie K. Ellison, Cato’s Tears and the Making of Anglo-
American Emotion (Chicago, 1999); Alan T. McKenzie, Certain Lively Episodes: The Articula-
tion of Passion in Eighteenth-Century Prose (Athens, Ga., 1990); Julia A. Stern, The Plight of
Feeling: Sympathy and Dissent in the Early American Novel (Chicago, 1997); and Rebecca
Tierney-Hynes, Novel Minds: Philosophers and Romance Readers (Basingstoke, 2012).
19. William Reddy, quoted in Plamper, “The History of Emotions: An Interview with
William Reddy, Barbara Rosenwein, and Peter Sterns,” History and Theory 49 (2010): 237–
65, 249.
20. See William E. Connolly, A World of Becoming (Durham, 2011); Massumi; Sedgwick;
and Nigel Thrift, Non-Representational Theory: Space, Politics, Affect (London, 2008). See
also Leys, 436.
21. See especially Albert O. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests: Political Argu-
ments for Capitalism Before Its Triumph (Princeton, 1977); James; and Victoria Kahn, Neil
Saccamano, and Daniela Coli, eds., Politics and the Passions, 1500–1850 (Princeton, 2009).
22. For instance, see www.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/en/research/history-of-emotions.
This URL, supported by the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence in the
History of Emotions in Europe: 1100–1800, offers a regularly updated list of the most re-
cent books, articles, blogs, and conference papers on emotion and affect research that
have been produced by scholars from the Centre.