AUC PHILOLOGICA
AUC PHILOLOGICA

AUC Philologica (Acta Universitatis Carolinae Philologica) is an academic journal published by Charles University. It publishes scholarly articles in a large number of disciplines (English, German, Greek and Latin, Oriental, Romance and Slavonic studies, as well as in phonetics and translation studies), both on linguistic and on literary and cultural topics. Apart from articles it publishes reviews of new academic books or special issues of academic journals.

The journal is indexed in CEEOL, DOAJ, EBSCO, and ERIH PLUS.

AUC PHILOLOGICA, Vol 2018 No 3 (2018), 43–56

De l’histoire des émotions à la généalogie de la subjectivité

[From the history of emotions to the genealogy of subjectivity]

Ondřej Švec

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14712/24646830.2018.35
published online: 23. 11. 2018

abstract

Recent historical works dealing with the changing role of emotions in social and private life over centuries present a challenge to any philosophical or scientific theory aiming to grasp the essence of emotions. The paper identifies several methodological difficulties that all inquiries into past forms of emotional life are inevitably faced with. Then, it develops three philosophical lessons from the vast overview gathered by par A. Corbin, J.-J. Courtine and G. Vigarello in three recent volumes of their History of emotions. The first conceives of the radical historicity of emotions as an argument against reductionist accounts of emotions in contemporary affective neuroscience, according to which emotions are best explained as autonomous physiological responses to a changing environment. The second lesson makes explicit the methodological postulate of many historical investigations that assimilates the emotional experiences with their narrative traces in literature, autobiography and correspondence. It also provides several reasons justifying the indivisibility of emotions from their expression. The final lesson develops a novel genealogy of subjectivity stemming from the study of our past “emotional regimes”. Contemporary psychology and neurobiology – the author argues – shapes a new conception of ourselves, making visible and manageable our emotional life in a way that is undoubtedly more informal and democratic, but nevertheless subjected to new forms of control through different incentives to account for what we feel.

keywords: history of emotions, emotional regimes; genealogy of subjectivity; narrative structure of emotions; emotional intelligence

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De l’histoire des émotions à la généalogie de la subjectivité is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

230 x 157 mm
periodicity: 3 x per year
print price: 150 czk
ISSN: 0567-8269
E-ISSN: 2464-6830

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