that continue to expand the boundaries of the humanities–sometimesindia-
logue with the life sciences.Aspart of the critical terrain marked by poststruc-
turalism and postcommunism, the emotional turn can in part be interpreted
as aresponsetothe inherent limitations of textualism and the overdetermined
status of languageinculturalcritique.With specialrelevancetothis study, the
growinginterest in emotions furthermore reflectsafundamental shift from the
universalist claims buttressingmostclass analysesto the particularist categories
that have made identityakey site of social mobilizations–with all the problem-
atic implications.Tohomo laboransandhomo economicus,two figures thathere-
toforedefined the human condition in relation to labor and capital, can now be
added the neologismhomo emotionalis.As acritical tool, emotions have allowed
scholars to rethink key categoriesofhistoricalinquiry and use the differences
among passions, sentiments, feelings,and affects to studythe complicated rela-
tionship between culturalpracticesand social formations.¹⁶The growinginterest
in therole of emotionsinsocial movements, just like the scholarlydiscovery of
working-class culturealmostfiftyyears ago, is closelyconnected to the theoret-
ical debates on culture as ideologythat started duringthe 1970sand todaycon-
tinue in contemporary discourses of class,race,ethnicity,gender, and sexuality.
Within the evolving field called history of emotions,ashared consensus has
formedaround threemain points: that emotions have ahistory and are part of
history;that emotions are sociallyand culturallyconstructed; and that emotions
in history areavailableto analysis onlyinthe form of symbolic practices–that
is, as texts in the broadest sense.Appliedtothe subject of this book, this means
that the historical workers’shared sense of injusticeand refusal of suffering, to
referenceanearlystudybyBarrington Moore, cannot be examined without rec-
ognition of the social constructions and aesthetic manifestations that defined
such emotions as political ones in the first place.¹⁷By the same token, under-
Recent monographs on emotionsinliterary studies and intellectual history include Philip
Fisher,TheVehementPassions(Princeton, NJ:PrincetonUniversity Press,2002); Charles Altieri,
TheParticulars of Rapture: AnAesthetics of theAffects(Ithaca, NY:CornellUniversity Press,
2003); and Thomas Dixon,FromPassions to Emotions:The Creation ofaSecularPsychological
Category(Cambridge:Cambridge University Press,2006).Fortwo contributions from the German
perspective,see Katrin Pahl,Tropes of Transport:Hegel and Emotion(Evanston, IL: Northwest-
ernUniversity Press,2011) andRüdiger Campe andJulia Weber,eds.,Rethinking Emotion: Inte-
riority and Exteriority in Premodern, Modern, and ContemporaryThought(Berlin: De Gruyter,
2014). Fortwo anthologies that deal with specific emotions,see JanPlamper andBenjaminLa-
zier,eds.,Fear:Across the Disciplines(Pittsburgh:University of PittsburghPress, 2012)and Mi-
chael Ureand MervynFrost, eds.,ThePolitics of Compassion(London: Routledge,2014).
SeeBarringtonMooreJr.,Injustice:TheSocial Bases of Obedience and Revolt(WhitePlains,
NY:M.E.Sharpe, 1978), especiallyPart II.
22 Introduction