standing emotional practices as culturalpracticesdoes not mean that they can
be studied onlythrough, and in, language, as impliedbyhistorian GarethSted-
manJones in one of the first books to applythe insights of the linguistic turn to
British labor history.¹⁸In fact,the visual, dramatic, literary, and musicalpracti-
ces examined in the following chapters open up new perspectivesbeyond emo-
tional essentialism, constructivism, andtextualism and, by adding the perspec-
tive of the aesthetic, expand the definition of culture towardits unique functions
in symbolic politics and whatFredricJameson calls socially symbolic acts.¹⁹
The emotional turn has broughtcritical attention to the formative role of
emotionsinthe struggle for social and political changes, the definition of nation-
al and ethnic identities, and the invention of group rituals and traditions.Read-
ing emotions as social and culturalpractices always involves awareness of the
choice of terminology–in the registers of theory as well as fiction. Herethe in-
sight that emotionsare discursively and historicallyconstructed has allowed
scholars tomove beyond the universalizingofemotions that, whether in literary
history or intellectual history,tends to reproducegender-and class-based hierar-
chies. Emotions, after all, are historicalnot onlyinrelation to the social practices
that sustain family, community,and society,define groups inreligious,ethnic,
and national terms,and legitimate class divisions andgendered hierarchies.
Since the eighteenth century,theories of the sentiments, passions, feelings,
and affectshavebeen enlistedto distinguish mind from body, and bodyfrom
soul, andto establish the boundaries between public and private, personal
and political,and individual and collective emotions that are so crucial to the
cultureofclass societies and the studyofsocialmovements.
Not surprisingly,the emotional turn has inspired new ways of writing history
in dialogue with social anthropologyand cognitive psychologyand with special
emphasis on periods of historical crisis and change.To mentionafew important
figures,Barbara Rosenwein has introducedthe notion of emotional communi-
ties–thatis, the particularemotional norms, values, and forms of expression
shared by distinct social groups–to map the transition from the medieval to
the modern period. In his work on theFrench Revolution,William Reddyhas
used the termemotionalregimes, which refers to the dominant norms of emo-
tional life, to examine their connection to political regimes and assess their
availabilityto various forms of resistance, including (in his case) sentimental-
ism. Finally, Peter N. and CarolZ. Stearns have identifiedadistinctly American
See Gareth StedmanJones,LanguagesofClass:Studies in EnglishWorking-Class History,
1832 – 1982 (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1984).
Theterm is taken fromFredricJameson,ThePoliticalUnconscious:Narrative asaSocially
SymbolicAct(Ithaca, NY:Cornell University Press,1981).
Introduction 23