Notes on:
Scheer, M. (2012) 'Are Emotions a Kind of
Practice (and is that what makes them have a
history)?. A Bourdieuian Approach to
Understanding Emotion. History and Theory
51: 193-220.
Dave Harris
[Useful for showing the links between the high
aesthetic informing academic work and the emotions
that are likely to be embodied in pedagogic
practice. We know from Distinction
that challenging the popular aesthetic can lead to
hostility and panic, and we know from the earlier work [listed on
my social theory page] that elite students in
particular expressed a more restrained but equally
negative reaction to professorial style in the
form of a resigned acceptance of exclusion,
echolalia, prophylactic relativism and the
rest. Bourdieu suggests a link to the
particular kinds of social classes that he
identified in France, but Scheer says this is not
to be read as sociological determinism, since the
social forces at work can produce contradictory,
even individual results. These include
understanding adverse reactions as practice
proceeds. The habitus then becomes a series
of strategic practices, not a consistent
theoretically or reflectively underpinned fully
rule-governed position. We need to pin down
some definitions of emotions and show that they
have a history. The usual approaches are
reviewed including those that see emotions as
located either mentally or bodily. Bourdieu
on practice, its connection with the habitus, and
practical or strategic logic ends with an argument
that emotions are in fact located in the habitus,
including at the level of bodily hexis, are
practiced pragmatically but not always
consciously, and can be modified by subsequent
social experiences. Bourdieu also helps us
to see how the spontaneous and automatic nature
attributed to emotions can actually arise from the
habitus].
'Emotions also follow this practical logic
embedded in social relations. Like all
practices, they are simultaneously spontaneous and
conventional'(205).
'The habitus is the precondition for
subjectification, for example, by determining the
level of inhibition to shedding tears that is part
and parcel of gender performance' (206).
'The habits of the mindful body are executed
outside of consciousness and rely on social
scripts from historically situated fields'
(207). This leads to a denial of the
mind/body split as well as the current attempt to
valorize emotions as something spontaneous and
authentic. There are hints of Foucault and
the connections between the outside and the inside
in the fold [See Deleuze's commentary here]
[Quoting from Masculine Domination]
'Symbolic force is a form of power that is exerted
on bodies, directly and as if by magic, without
any physical constraint; but this magic works only
on the basis of the dispositions deposited, like
springs, at the deepest level of the body.
If it can act like the release of a spring, that
is, with a very weak expenditure of energy, this
is because it does no more than trigger the
dispositions that the work of inculcation and
embodiment has deposited in those who are thereby
primed for it. In other words, it finds its
condition of possibility, and is economic
equivalent... in the immense preliminary
labour that is needed to bring about a durable
transformation of bodies and to produce the
permanent dispositions that it triggers and
awakens. These acts "often take the form of
bodily emotions - shame, humiliation, timidity,
anxiety, guilt - or passions and sentiments -
love, admiration, respect. These emotions
are all the more powerful when they are betrayed
in visible manifestations such as blushing,
stuttering, clumsiness, trembling, anger or
impotent rage, so many ways of submitting, even
despite one's self" (208). For example in
some societies, women are excluded from public
space and "their terror of the public space leads
them to exclude themselves from it… and thus
develop a "social imposed agoraphobia"'(208).
'Bourdieu's approach allows for the recognition of
the politics of emotion, which in the end is an
intervention that increases the domain of agency
by denaturalizing bodily impulses' [Bourdieu are
aimed to emancipate people by making them aware of
the underlying emotions] (208).
There are different kinds of emotional practices:
'Emotional management' (209) which
involves learning an emotional repertoire and
maintaining it, very often together with other
people, artefacts or technologies like photos and
music [managing the media 'is an important
emotional practice '(210)]. An approach
based on practice would emphasize the use of
rituals to achieve and modulate emotions for
personal as well as social purposes.
Although emotional practices are carried out
alone, the social setting is important, and
individuals learn to expect reactions according to
the rank or similarity of the other: such
apprehensions are 'not necessarily - or even
usually - achieved conceptually, but mimetically
through the habitus' (211) [with some good
examples on drugs and dance]
'The use of emotives', which refers to the
bodily aspects of emotions like tone of voice
facial expression and even heart rate. These
are affected by the social relationship of the two
speakers, and lie 'somewhere between deliberate
control and unconscious habit' (212). The
social context and usage turn speech and gestures
into emotives, since meaning depends on how these
are performed. Once made public they can
also be re-experienced and reinterpreted, and
sometimes are understood differently after a
period of time. Again this will be different
in different historical periods: these days,
'discourses of therapy' including those in the
media affect this process.
Communicative, where 'clear, socially
agreed-upon signs' facilitate the process,
although shared meanings are never guaranteed
(214). For example, the notion of sincerity
involves quite complex practices 'whose cultural
variations have frequently been commented
on'(215). Much depends on bodily
performances like tone of voice or facial
expression or movements, and these are culturally
transmitted in a kind of skilled
performance. There is no point in trying to
'reconstruct emotional "truth"' (215).
Historical variations should be noted.
Regulation. Expectations 'are
implicated in learned habits of feeling and stored
in the habitus' (216). They reflect notions
of emotional style and sensibility. They are
instilled through socialization as well as
explicit instruction, for example when boys are
told not to cry. 'Education of the
sentiments' and aesthetic appreciation also serve
to regulate the feelings, helping people to
recognize the 'higher' or 'most true' ones and to
associate them with the material. These
higher emotions are also embodied and require a
particular 'bodily disposition, for example in the
silent, reverent postures and minimal movements
that support interiorization'. Regulation is
better understood in terms of emotional
communities rather than emotional regimes.
To allow for flexibility, we might talk about
particular emotional styles 'a term less binding
and more conscious than "habitus"' (217).
Dominant styles are challenged by counter
cultures, who often are assumed to be excessively
emotional, but this 'makes sense only in relation
to a standard, which also changes through time and
is bound to a dominant social group'[clear
implications for discussions of new kinds of
emotions in education] [Nevertheless, Scheer says
the clear differences between emotions and reason
are not historical, but permanent].
In historical analysis, it is common to focus on
objects and artefacts including images, since
emotions in social behaviours are not just private
and personal. However, the representation of
emotion changes, producing subversions, conflicts,
and changing genres. We need to look for
emotional language, including references to bodily
states such as fainting, tears, or
discomforts. Empathy is not a reliable
method because habituses and subjectivities
differ, and so do specific embodiments: 'the
specific feeling of honor made available to
bourgeois or practitioners of duelling in 18th and
19th century Europe, for example, is lost when the
duel falls out of use' (219).
Nor are modern neurological techniques very
helpful: 'if indeed fMRI scans show the neutral
correlates of emotion, then they must be red as
images of a "used" brain, one moulded by the
practices of a specific culture' (220).
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