William M. Reddy

Against Constructionism: The Historical Ethnography of Emotions

A coherent account of emotional change must find a dynamic, a vector of alteration, outside the discursive structures and normative practices that have monopolized ethnographic attention in research on affect. But this dynamic can be found in the very character of emotional expression. Emotion talk and emotional gestures are not well characterized by the notion of “discourse” derived from the poststructuralist theories of Foucault or by that of “practice” derived from the theoretical writings of Bourdieu, Giddens, and others. These concepts do not capture the two‐way character of emotional utterances and acts, their unique capacity to alter what they “refer” to or what they “represent”–‐a capacity which makes them neither “constative” nor “performative” utterances but a third type of communicative utterance entirely, one that has never received adequate theoretical formulation. An attempt is made to formulate a framework for emotional utterances, and the framework is applied to a number of examples.

Money and liberty in modern Europe : a critique of historical understanding

Preface 1. The crisis of the class concept in historical research 2. Meaning and its material base 3. Growth of the liberal illusion 4. Money and the rights of man in 1789 5. Challenging ones master in the nineteenth century: from Silesia to Lancashire 6. Conclusion: the poor and their partisans Notes Index.

Sentimentalism and Its Erasure: The Role of Emotions in the Era of the French Revolution*

In the course of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a remarkable change in the understanding and expression of emotions occurred in France, and in elite circles all over Europe. Recent research has focused attention on this change; but understanding it will require that historians marshal a theory capable of accounting for historical change in emotions. The change in question was a dramatic one, and it was followed by an equally dramatic change of course after 1794. Molière’s Dom Juan (1665), for example, says little about the charms that the infamous aristocrat used to seduce women; their attraction to him is a given. Their emotions about him are depicted as intense, but these are left unexplored. The plot turns solely on the struggles to which this attraction gives rise. Even in Lafayette’s pathbreaking La princesse de Clèves (1678), the main characters fall in love at once, with little explanation or understanding. A hundred years later, Choderlos de Laclos’s Les liaisons dangereuses (1782) could not be more different; this lengthy novel devotes hundreds of pages to exploring the means of seduction, means that are emotional in character. The hypocritical Valmont arranges for his prey, the beautiful and devout Mme de Tourvel, to witness his benevolent gestures toward the poor; he seeks to convince her of his sensibilité—that is, his emotional sensitivity, his capacity to love, and his capacity to be reformed by her. Before 1700, the role that emotions played in politics was as secondary as it was muted in relations between men and women. The duc de Saint-Simon, for example, reported the following incident of 1692. Louis XIV had demanded that his nephew, the duc de Chartres, marry one of his illegitimate daughters, Mlle de Blois—a severe blow to the young man and his parents. On the day the engagement was to be announced, the duc de Chartres’s mother

Historical Research on the Self and Emotions

Research on this topic in Europe and North America has reached a new stage. Prior to 1970, historians told a story of progress in which modern individuals gradually gained mastery of emotions. After 1970 this older approach was put into doubt. Since 1990 research into the history of emotions has increasingly relied on a new methodology, based on the assumption that emotion is a domain of effort, and that it is possible to document variance between emotional standards, on the one hand, and the greater or lesser success of individuals in conforming to them, on the other. Emotional standards are now assumed to display a history that is not progressive, but reflects distinctive features of each period.

The Logic of Action: Indeterminacy, Emotion, and Historical Narrative

Modern social theory, by and large, has aimed at reducing the complexity of action situations to a set of manageable abstractions. But these abstractions, whether functionalist or linguistic, fail to grasp the indeterminacy of action situations. Action proceeds by discovery and combination. The logic of action is serendipitous and combinative. From these characteristics, a number of consequences flow: The whole field of our intentions is engaged in each action situation, and cannot really be understood apart from the situation itself. In action situations we remain aware of the problems of categorization, including the dangers of infinite regress and the difficulties of specifying borders and ranges of categories. In action situations, attention is in permanent danger of being overwhelmed. We must deal with many features of action situations outside of attention; in doing so, we must entertain simultaneously numerous possibilities of action. Emotional expression is a way of talking about the kinds of possibilities we entertain. Expression and action have a rebound effect on attention. “Effort” is required to find appropriate expressions and actions, and rebound effects play a role in such effort, making it either easier or more difficult. Recent theoretical trends have failed to capture these irreducible characteristics of action situations, and have slipped into a number of errors. Language is not rich in meanings or multivocal, except as put to use in action situations. The role of “convention” in action situations is problematic, and therefore one ought not to talk of “culture.” Contrary to the assertions of certain theorists, actors do not follow strategies, except when they decide to do so. Actors do not “communicate,” in the sense of exchanging information, except in specially arranged situations. More frequently, they intervene in the effortful management of attention of their interlocutors. Dialogue, that is, very commonly becomes a form of cooperative emotional effort. From these considerations, it follows that the proper method for gaining social knowledge is to examine the history of action and of emotional effort, and to report findings in the form of narrative.

Marriage, Honor, and the Public Sphere in Postrevolutionary France: Séparations de Corps, 1815-1848

An examination of marital separation cases from the first half of the nineteenth century in France reveals evidence of a number of unresolved tensions surrounding the institution of marriagetensions passed on by the Old Regime and the Revolution that caused pain and confusion and generated pressure for further change. There was a tension, first of all, between the extreme privacy deemed essential to family life and the public character of the laws and institutions created by the Revolution. The greatly expanded court system of the postrevolutionary era worked to protect married couples from public scrutiny and public dishonor, yet many felt that merely to be subject to the ministrations of this system was deeply shaming. This response was reinforced by the taste of the new, rapidly expanding daily press for the true melodramas of the courtroom. A second tension arose from the fact that courts and newspapers (agents of an expanded public sphere) failed to understand a popular conception of public and private, one appropriate to the crowded conditions of poorer urban neighborhoods. The courts imagined that the poor had no concept of honor, or only an attenuated one, and thus failed to play a significant role in adjudicating disputes among the poor or in protecting the victims of violence and verbal abuse. A third tension that appears in this evidence pitted the very strict standards of conduct enforced by the courts and the corresponding (although noticeably different) practical norms of family honor accepted in society against the diverse needs and inclinations of individuals. Because the standards were so strict, there was a public tendency, evident in the arguments of many lawyers as well as in the definitions of insult enforced by the courts, to presume guilt.

Saying Something New: Practice Theory and Cognitive Neuroscience

We need experimental research in cognitive neuroscience to reconsider interpretive methods. Foucault and his followers objected to empirical research on humans. The present critique of Foucaults Saussure-based conception of language derives from language conceptions supported by the latest experimental explorations of speech and visual recognition by neuroscientists. This critique is compatible with the concept of the “loosely structured actor” of practice theory as developed by Bourdieu, Giddens, Ortner, Sewell, and others. Besides being loosely structured, actors are also sites of emotional responses, as suggested by recent research in affective neuroscience. Interpretive methods that look beyond language to a larger array of phenomena once thought to be elements of “experience,” find substantial support in recent neuroscience research.

THE PARADOX OF MODERNITY: CURRENT DEBATES AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS FOR THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

Talk of modernity is plagued with paradox. A relativist stance towards modernity—the claim, for example, that modernity is just one cultural configuration among others—seems to contradict itself. The concept of “cultural configuration,” and similar notions (such as “language game,” “discourse,” “community,” or “myth”), are themselves the products of modern intellectual research and debate. If the relativist claim is true, it appears to undermine the validity of those very conditions of modern intellectual debate that make the claim thinkable. But to argue for modernitys superiority over other cultural configurations seems equally problematic. If the criteria of superiority are themselves modern, then the argument appears question-begging. But if the criteria are not modern, then these non-modern criteria (by which the superiority of the modern can be discerned) would appear themselves to be superior to modern criteria.

Reply from W. M. Reddy

Paul Brown’s brief description of how effort and will dropped out of the picture for psychologists in the 20th century is illuminating. I agree with his insistence on the importance of these concepts as well. Effort has recently won new interest among experimentalists. A good illustration is a recent study by Bijleveld, Custers, and Aarts (2010) where “effort” is defined as the underlying cause of increased speed and accuracy of subjects’ performances on cognitive tests when they are promised higher rewards. Bijleveld and colleagues discovered that subjects performed with greater speed when offered higher rewards subliminally (17 ms display of a 50 cent coin), but slower and with greater accuracy when offered higher rewards supraliminally (300 ms display of a 50 cent coin). In their discussion, they suggest that “only supraliminal stimuli gain access to a ‘global workspace,’ that is involved in broadcasting information across the brain, so that this information can be used as input for a wide array of cognitive processes and systems.” Subliminal responses influence performance by “preparing the execution of tasks,” they suggest (2010, p. 334). Their study relies for its design on a whole series of previous studies developing similar hypotheses. But I find this kind of cognitive approach to effort and will inadequate for scholars interested in history, just as Paul Brown suggests it is inadequate for clinicians. In my own work (Reddy, 2001, 2008; Plamper, forthcoming), I have treated effort as a response to goal conflict. The long-distance runner, for example, expends “effort” in sustaining the goal of completing the run, even though this goal conflicts with an increasingly-urgent goal of pain avoidance. Goal conflict may only be said to operate in Bijleveld and colleagues’ tests insofar as subjects have a goal of avoiding expenditure of cognitive resources. But experimentalists have tended to assume that subjects have such a goal (for example, in studies of “cognitive load”), rather than investigating how such “expenditure” may be experienced or monitored or how it could come to have an unpleasant valence. Thus, there is still a certain blind spot with reference to will and effort. It is evident in Wegner’s (2002) book which examines evidence that subjects only become aware of a decision after action has been initiated. Wegner is mistaken to suppose that such evidence proves that “conscious will” is an “illusion.” It only demonstrates that consciousness of one’s will occurs across a certain time frame. But Wegner’s eagerness to draw this extreme conclusion is indicative of a widespread preference in the disciplines of the neurosciences for avoiding “moral” issues. We are in need of better bridging concepts between the language of the laboratory and that of interpersonal, and intrapersonal, affairs (see also, in this regard, Leys, 2010.) The notion of “goal conflict” may be one such useful concept, but remains insufficient.