Rethinking Emotion: Interiority and Exteriority in Premodern, Modern, and Contemporary Thought (Interdisciplinary German Cultural Studies, 15)

What are emotions, where do they originate and how are they brought into being? While from antiquity to early modernity, affects or passions were mostly conceived of as external physiological forces which act upon a passive subject, modern conceptions generally locate emotions within the subject. Drawing on the dichotomy of “interiority / exteriority” as a complex interdependent relationship, they mostly envision emotions as interior processes. Contemporary conceptions of emotion from such different fields as human geography, art history and cognitive sciences recently started to challenge this notion of internal emotions by developing alternative descriptions of externalized emotion. This book reevaluates premodern, modern and contemporary conceptions of affects, passions and emotion by analyzing various historical manifestations of the discourse on emotion. Unlike most previous research, which ‑ especially in the German tradition ‑ often focused exclusively on the rise of the modern (Romantic) interiority without paying attention to the underlying dichotomy of “interiority / exteriority”, this study aims to explore the historical preconditions, the internal logic and the possible shortcomings that inform our thinking on emotion. The series publishes monographs and edited volumes that showcase significant scholarly work at the various intersections that currently motivate interdisciplinary inquiry in German cultural studies. Topics span German-speaking lands and cultures from the 18th to the 21st century, with a special focus on demonstrating how various disciplines and new theoretical and methodological paradigms work across disciplinary boundaries to create knowledge and add to critical understanding in German studies. The series editor is a renowned professor of German studies in the United States who penned one of the foundational texts for understanding what interdisciplinary German cultural studies can be. All works are peer-reviewed and in English. Three new titles will be published annually. About the series Irene Kacandes is the Dartmouth Professor of German Studies and Comparative Literature at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire. She received three degrees from Harvard University and also studied at the Free University of Berlin and Aristotle University in Thessaloniki, Greece. She publishes on a wide range of interdisciplinary topics including secondary orality, rhetoric, aesthetics, trauma, witnessing, family and generational memory, experimental life writing, Holocaust testimony, and narrative theory. She has lectured widely in the United States and Europe and currently serves as President of the International Society for the Study of Narrative and Vice President of the German Studies Association. Contents 5 Rethinking Emotion: Moving beyond Interiority. An Introduction 7 I. Modes of Interiorization: Emotion before the Great Dichotomy 25 From Moving the Soul to Moving into the Soul 27 Presenting the Affect. The Scene of Pathos in Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Its Revision in Descartes’s Passions of the Soul 42 The Art of Prayer. Conversions of Interiority and Exteriority in Medieval Contemplative Practice 64 Contact at a Distance. The Topology of Fascination 78 Chardin: Inwardness – Emotion – Communication 107 II. Interiority/Exteriority: Thinking and Writing Emotion 141 “... that until now, the inner world of man has been given ... such unimaginative treatment”. Constructions of Interiority around 1800 143 Inside/Out. Mediating Interiority in E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Rat Krespel 178 Keller’s Cellar Vaults. Intrusions of the Real in Gottfried Keller’s Realism 193 Toward a Genealogy of the Internalized Human Being. Nietzsche on the Emotion of Guilt 208 “The Real Horizon” (beyond Emotions). What Proust (Wordsworth, Rousseau, Diderot, and Hegel) Had ‘in’ Mind 225 III. Thinking beyond Interiority: Reconceptualizing Emotion after the Great Dichotomy 249 The Role of the Lived-Body in Feeling 251 Artificial Emotions. Melodramatic Practices of Shared Interiority 270 Feelings on Faces. From Physiognomics to Neuroscience 295 Emotions and Other Minds 330 Whereabouts. Locating Emotions between Body, Mind, and World 357 Notes on Contributors 387 This book reevaluates premodern, modern and contemporary conceptions of affects, passions and emotion by analyzing various historical manifestations of the discourse on emotion. Unlike most previous research, which - especially in the German tradition - often focused exclusively on the rise of the modern (Romantic) interiority without paying attention to the underlying dichotomy of "interiority / exteriority", this study explores the historical preconditions, the internal logic and the possible shortcomings that inform our thinking of emotion Biographical note: Rüdiger Campe, Yale University, USA; Julia Weber, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany