Emotional Communities

Resumen

El  pretender comprender la mentalidad del usuario a partir de sus necesidades y deseos, acotando la interacción afectiva del individuo a patrones matemáticos o a psicobiológicos, es una estrategia analítica del enfoque emocional del diseño que frecuentemente subdimensiona la naturaleza cultural de las emociones y de las normas emocionales internalizadas en los individuos. El propósito del presente texto es mostrar que el estudio sobre la naturaleza de lo emotivo –qué es la emoción y, sobre todo, como se aborda socialmente– desde los estudios culturales de las emociones, ofrece al diseño perspectivas y tácticas analíticas distintas que merecen atención. Nos interesa ejemplificar brevemente los distintos niveles societales –control, registro e instrumentación– en los que actúan las normas emocionales internalizadas. Se explora el problema a través del imaginario científico de la película Ex Machina de Alex Garland, la táctica lingüística de la historiadora Barbara Rosenwein y el papel político de las instituciones científicas en la instrumentación tecnológica del conocimiento sobre la conducta humana.

Palabras claves: diseño y emociones, interacción afectiva, comunidades emocionales, poder y conducta humana, cultura y afectos

Abstract

To aim to understand the mind of clients based on their needs and desires, framing the emotional interaction of the individual to mathematical or psychobiological patterns, might be an analytical strategy of experience and emotional design that doesn´t fully recognizes the role of culture in the nature of the emotional –what is and, above all, how it is approached socially. This paper introduces a cultural perspective on emotions and societal nature of its production. It explores the problem through the scientific imaginaries of Alex Garland's film Ex Machina , the linguistic tactic of historian Barbara Rosenwein and the political role of scientific institutions in the technological instrumentation of knowledge about human behavior.

Key words: design and emotions, affective interaction, emotional communities, power and human behavior, , culture and affects

Versified treatises or didactic poems (manẓūmah) were a very popular genre in medieval Cairo and Damascus, although they were never considered proper poetry by theoreticians. Ibn Khaldūn's (d. 808/1406) well-known harsh criticism on this genre focused on the poor language skills of the fuqahāʼ, who, disobeying grammatical conventions, produced lengthy poems of peculiar language. These poems were derogatorily labeled as "the poetry of jurisprudents" (shiʻr al-fuqahāʼ). Nevertheless, the fuqahāʼ treated this genre seriously. As reflected in the biographies of fuqahāʼ, they employed the prosodic conventions of classical Arabic poetry in their own poems, and assessed these conventions in their peers' works.
As was pointed out by one of the very few researches dedicated to this genre (G. J. van Gelder, 1995), didactic poems were written mainly as an aid for teachers. However, the use of poetry in theological debates has not been investigated so far, and researchers have not been able to verify if this poetry was used merely as mnemonics, or whether it played a more important role, such as making a point or establishing an argument.
This paper aims to examine the role of didactic verses in public debates (munāẓarah), through the case-study of a very short poem allegedly written by an anonymous scholar in the 14th c. on the paradox of predetermined heresy. This poem has urged the prominent scholars of Cairo and Damascus, like the Shāfiʻī ʻAlāʼ al-Dīn al-Bājī (d. 714/ 1314) and the Ḥanbalī Ibn Taymīyah (d. 728/1328), to write eloquent and lengthy responses to it. All in all, there are eight lengthy responses, most of which reflect the rationalized argumentations of Ashʻarī kalām.     
An analysis of this case-study leads us towards a better evaluation of these poems as a powerful tool in polemics. The theological arguments, which are usually very hard to grasp, are molded into rhythmic texts with a clear enthusiastic tone. From this and other cases, one may conclude that didactic poems on theology were efficient tools of proliferating theological formulae.

In the study of emotions, there is a growing interest in their collective and social dimension. This book is the product of a research called “Grassroots Organizations Understood as Emotional Communities” that was undertaken from 2015 to 2017 in Bogotá. It seeks to understand the epistemological horizon that opens up when considering the emotional dimension as a legitimate source of knowledge on collective action. It focuses on the social and political function of corpo-emotional processes – one of our conceptual inputs— in social relations. They give form to the organization’s emotional socio-cultural matrix affected by the context their participants affect. This proximity is creative, they co-form an emotional community. The study is not interested in defining these organizations emotionally. It aims at feeling their particular affective habitus, the production of a shared aesthetics and ethics. Another of our contributions was the methodological strategy, which we call The Performative Triad, to capture the corpo-emotional processes of the people within the organizations. They show us the contrasts and similarities in relation to the hegemonic emotional matrix of the context in which they interact. Among the findings we have identified that the six organizations in the study understand that the subjects in these territories live in painful contexts with material deficiencies, amid hostile atmospheres dominated by “disaffection”. Therefore, they develop actions placing the ethics of recognition and interdependence at the center for social transformation

A través del análisis del informe M.I.E.D.O., publicado en marzo de 2016 por Article 19, en el cual se hace un recuento de las agresiones y los asesinatos de periodistas ocurridos en México durante el 2015,
pretendemos entender por qué y cómo el miedo puede funcionar como una política de control, pero también como una fuerza social capaz de orientar y reconfigurar nuevas reglas del manejo emocional de los grupos sobre los cuales se pretende ejercer ese dominio. Desde el enfoque sociocultural de las emociones, intentamos entender cómo se puede transitar del miedo individual que repliega al miedo colectivo que organiza y despliega acciones sociales. El énfasis analítico está puesto en la dimensión emocional contenida en la noción del trabajo o
regulación emocional de los periodistas, a través de la creación de redes para enfrentar las discrepancias emocionales producidas por el miedo vivido desde lo individual, que ha dado lugar a la formación de comunidades emocionales con objetivos comunes: protección y profesionalización de su labor comunicativa comprometida, para enfrentar la violencia de la cual han sido objeto durante los últimos años en México.

The M.I.E.D.O. report, published by Article 19 in March of 2016, gives an account of the aggression against and murders of journalists in Mexico during 2015. Through an analysis of that report we attempt to understand why and how fear can function not only as a policy for control, but also as a social force capable of guiding and reconfiguring new rules of emotional management among the groups targeted for domination. Using the sociocultural perspective of the emotions, we attempt to understand the transition from individual fear that ends in retreat, to a collective fear that organizes and develops into social actions. The analytical emphasis is placed on the emotional dimension contained in the notion of the work and emotional regulation
of journalists, through the creation of networks to deal with the emotional discrepancies produced by fear experienced at the individual level, which has led to the formation of emotional communities with common goals: the protection and professionalization of their committed communicative work, to confront the violence to which they have been subjected in recent years in Mexico.

The Revista de Estudios Sociales of the Universidad de los Andes (Colombia) invites the academic community to submit articles for Issue 62 (October-December 2017) dedicated to the topic of “Emotional Communities and Social Change.”

Guest Editors: Javier Moscoso (Centro Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Spain) and Juan Manuel Zaragoza (Queen Mary, University of London, United Kingdom)

Articles will be received from the 1st to the 31st of August, 2016

El presente artículo expone una reflexión en torno a dos experiencias de acción colectiva juvenil que en la ciudad de Bogotá (Colombia), han desarrollado diversas iniciativas de construcción de memoria
histórica, de comunicación alternativa y de resistencia cultural. Se argumenta que, por medio de la música, el arte urbano, la poesía y otras prácticas comunicativas, ambas experiencias configuran comunidades emocionales que contribuyen a denunciar el olvido y a confrontar la impunidad.

This article presents a reflection on two experiences of collective action among youth in the city of Bogota (Colombia) that have developed diverse initiatives in the construction of historic memory, alternative
communication and cultural resistance. It is argued that by means of music, urban art, poetry and other communicative practices, both experiences create emotional communities that help to denounce forgetting and confront impunity.

A striking example of the paradoxical relationship between the roles of king and father can be found in the Chronicle of Alfonso X (Crónica de Alfonso X), written by Fernán Sánchez de Valladolid in the 1340s, on behalf of the ruling King Alfonso XI of Castile and León. In the midst of political turmoil and civil war raging because of a succession crisis, Alfonso is reached by false news of the death of his second son, Sancho (later IV), and is struck by grief. His counsellors, upon seeing his reaction, are mortified. In all probability this particular scene is not principally based on written evidence but a product of the chronicler’s imagination, and to understand this scene, we must consider what it was meant to convey to the intended audience of a historical discourse at court.

How are we then to approach the emotions of people in the Middle Ages, when they are so far away in time, and so ephemeral? Certainly we cannot be sure to reach anything more than an assumption of what this or that person may have felt in a particular situation. Nevertheless, the attitudes held towards emotive expressions and the ways in which they were interpreted are accessible to us. The shedding of tears is a constant human gesture, while its signification and cultural relevance are not. The meanings attributed to crying men and women vary according to each historical situation, with each cultural context or emotional community (to use a phrase coined by Barbara Rosenwein). As historians we need to be sensitive to the particular context in which emotional expressions were constructed.

This article examines crying, the emotions connected thereto, and the portrayal of kings as fathers and sons in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Spanish prose, in varying literary genres. The aim is to offer some reflections on the attitudes taken towards lachrymose behaviour, and to reach some insight into the distinction between the public and the private, the political and the emotional life in said context.

The present article investigates two recently published essayistic memoirs, Ellie Harrison's The Glasgow Effect (2019) and Darren McGarvey's Poverty Safari (2017), and the debate between the two writers/artists within the wider framework of the Glasgow discourse, a manneristic imagination of the city shaped by the Glasgow novel in the course of the twentieth century. Focusing on issues of representation of traumatic historical memory, it relies especially on Myriam Jimeno's idea of emotional community and presents the Glasgow novel as an example of such community, originally designed to make the predicament of the working classes visible. The article contends that many contemporary novels posit deviance from the genre's original function of voicing the subaltern, exploiting instead a popular literary cliché. It also argues that both texts, by representing their authors' emotions and life stories as embedded in the city's social and cultural landscape, dis/place the borders of the city's imagination, simultaneously stumbling upon and pushing back the limits of the Glasgow discourse. Keywords. Glasgow novel; emotional communities; contemporary Scottish literature; cities in literature; Scottish national identity.

[es] ¿Más allá del 'discurso de Glasgow'? emociones y afectos en The Glasgow Effect, de Ellie Harrison, y Poverty Safari, de Darren McGarvey Resumen. El presente artículo investiga dos memorias ensayísticas publicadas recientemente, The Glasgow Effect (2019), de Ellie Harrison, y Poverty Safari (2017), de Darren McGarvey, así como el debate entre los dos artistas/escritores en el marco más amplio del discurso de Glasgow, un modo de imaginación manierista de la ciudad que toma forma a través de la novela de Glasgow a lo largo del siglo XX. Se centra en cuestiones relacionadas con la representación de la memoria histórica traumática, especialmente la idea de comunidad emocional desarrollada por Myriam Jimeno (2018), y presenta la novela de Glasgow como ejemplo de este tipo de comunidades, originalmente concebidas para denunciar y hacer visibles las dificultades de las clases trabajadoras. El artículo defiende que muchas novelas contemporáneas se desvían de la función original del género, que era dar voz al subalterno, para explotar en cambio un cliché literario popular. También argumenta que ambos textos, al representar las emociones y las historias vitales de sus autores arraigadas en el paisaje social y cultural de la ciudad, desplazan los límites de la imaginación de la ciudad, al mismo tiempo tropezando con los límites del discurso de Glasgow y ampliándolos. Palabras clave. la novela de Glasgow; comunidades emocionales; literatura escocesa contemporánea; ciudades en la literatura; identidad nacional escocesa.

Drawing on the database put together for the Digital Pilgrim II project, this paper will suggest how everyday familiarity with the iconography of badges, as well as glass, art and sculpture, aligned with geographic and social units in medieval England and France. Following Brian Stock and Barbara Rosenwein, it will proposing using the term 'iconographic community', and argue that the latter, perhaps surprisingly, traversed social boundaries more easily than national ones. By (re)conceiving of badges as objectified cultural capital, in Bourdieu's schema, this 'community' can be understood as constituting overlapping spheres of cultural competence, thus forming some sense of collective identity and group position.

This article combines the history of emotions and court history to analyse emotional displays at the early Georgian court. It argues that beyond the ‘dull’ atmosphere often ascribed to the court lay a multivalent emotional space with a practised grammar of emotional concealment and display. The performance of emotions by monarchs, the Royal Family and courtiers in the State Apartments acted as a powerful draw to court events, as the display of joy or good cheer was granted national significance. Under such scrutiny, the King and his courtiers frequently concealed their true feelings from the gathered circle. The article analyses the royal court as a unique micro-community in order to recreate the emotional character of London’s palaces.

This paper examines conceptions of private and public life and the role of emotional display, primarily through the analysis of historical works in Latin and the vernacular, produced in Castile and León in the period c. 1250 to 1350. The aim of the paper is to discover how emergent notions of private and public related to the regulation of proper emotional display. I will discuss whether specific emotions where indeed deemed appropriate only in certain spheres of life, whether it is possible to be sure which concepts and practices were considered “emotional” in medieval societies, and how communities that disparaged excessive emotional display handled affective responses that routinely went against theoretical understandings and ideals.
I will argue that the virtue of moderation (mesura) came to assume a great deal of sociopolitical significance in this period, partly through the attempts of Alfonso X the Learned (r.1252– 1284) to implement a courtly, aristocratic knighthood, partly by noble responses such as that of Don Juan Manuel (1282–1348), and partly through the historiographical discourse on a larger scale, that staged and represented this virtue in a particular manner that was arguably much more influential than any juridical doctrine or purely didactic work.
Can we consider chronicles then to teach the management of emotions, in the likeness of mirrors of princes? I would argue that the didactic qualities inherent in medieval history writing support such a perspective. Part of the paper will be aimed at examining the significance of the cross-cultural connections between Christian and Islamic societies in medieval Iberia. Contemporary Islamic historiography will be compared to the Castilian examples, in order to discuss whether attitudes to emotions and emotional display were shared between these two cultures that had been physically adjacent during many centuries, but the difference between which – in dogma and in mentality – is often assumed to be great.

The history of pain, approached through phenomenology and the various rhetorics of pain can bring into sharp relief how pain is culturally derived and embedded in a society’s values and norms. This essay explores nineteenth-century Catholic interpretations of pain, utilizing biography to examine how and why corporeal pain functioned as a means of both reinforcing Catholic beliefs in the utility of pain and of coping with pain. It examines unwanted pain in a defined space, the convent, and through a particular source, the biography of Margaret Hallahan (1803–1868), founder of the Dominican Sisters of St Catherine of Siena, written by the future prioress, convert Augusta Theodosia Drane (1823–1894) in 1869. Pain contributed to Hallahan’s identity: her corporeal suffering and its meanings, which were religious, cultural, and political, were embedded in her life story. Pain, as an ‘unpleasant sensory and emotional experience’, is treated in this essay as a subjective event given its meanings by both Hallahan and her biographer. If we look at the performance of pain through this lens of subjectivity, examining the tenor of the emotional experiences derived from Hallahan’s bodily pain, relationships, especially those with her religious sisters, spectators of her pain-full illness, come into high relief pointing to the relevance of community and the place of the convent. This approach lays out Hallahan’s life, as interpreted by Drane but refracted within the life of the religious community, to develop the interplay between these three actors: Hallahan, Drane, and the Dominican sisters. The rhetorics of pain in Hallahan’s life story will unfold through three themes: the hiddenness of pain, the relevance of imitatio Christi, and the issue of consolation. Hallahan’s painful illness was used to affirm her sanctity but also to remind Catholics of the responsibilities and utility of bodily pain. Pain, though represented as private and hidden, became public property with the publication of the Life and became an epistemological tool used to define, reproduce, and reify Catholic ideals of living with pain-filled unwanted somatic suffering.

Using B. Rosenwein’s concept of overlapping emotional communities as its underlying perspective, this research explores the question of attitudes towards authority as it appeared in 1968; specifi cally, the confl ict between the emotional communities based on the agonic and hedonic social interactions. The basic notions of the emotional communities’ concept are briefl y explained in the fi rst part, as is an outline of possibilities of using this model in searching for common features in European social movements. In the second part, a probe of applying of this concept when examining source materials
is presented; particularly the change of ‘feeling rules’, within the emotional community of the “KSČ Central Committee”, is explored. Preliminary results based on the analysis of stenographic records of the CC sessions related to the change of the party leaders in Czechoslovakia are presented in order to incentivize a discussion on the possibilities of emotions-focused approach in historical research of 1968.