Jeffrey C. Alexander
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195162509
- eISBN:
- 9780199943364
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195162509.003.0020
- Subject:
- Sociology, Culture
Civil society should be understood not merely in terms of contrasting symbolic categories but as structures of feeling, the diffusely sensed obligations and rights that represent, and are at the same ...
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Civil society should be understood not merely in terms of contrasting symbolic categories but as structures of feeling, the diffusely sensed obligations and rights that represent, and are at the same time evoked by, contrasting solidary ties. Collective representations of such social relationships are broadcast by civil society institutions specializing in communicative, not regulative tasks—by the mass media, public opinion polls, and voluntary organizations. The structures of feeling that such institutions produce must be conceptualized as influence rather than authoritative control, or power in a more structural sense. They institutionalize civil society by creating messages that translate general codes into situationally specific evaluations and descriptions. This chapter analyzes these organizations of influence. It begins by discussing the lifeworld of public opinion which anchors communicative and regulative institutions alike.Less
Civil society should be understood not merely in terms of contrasting symbolic categories but as structures of feeling, the diffusely sensed obligations and rights that represent, and are at the same time evoked by, contrasting solidary ties. Collective representations of such social relationships are broadcast by civil society institutions specializing in communicative, not regulative tasks—by the mass media, public opinion polls, and voluntary organizations. The structures of feeling that such institutions produce must be conceptualized as influence rather than authoritative control, or power in a more structural sense. They institutionalize civil society by creating messages that translate general codes into situationally specific evaluations and descriptions. This chapter analyzes these organizations of influence. It begins by discussing the lifeworld of public opinion which anchors communicative and regulative institutions alike.
Juliet John
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199257928
- eISBN:
- 9780191594854
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199257928.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This chapter examines the role of Dickens's aesthetics works in enabling Dickens to become the author most adapted for the screen. It is an exploration, through Dickens's relationship with film, of ...
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This chapter examines the role of Dickens's aesthetics works in enabling Dickens to become the author most adapted for the screen. It is an exploration, through Dickens's relationship with film, of the ideology of the aesthetic in relation to the mass market, a topic famously addressed by Sergei Eisenstein in his essay ‘Dickens, Griffith and Ourselves’. The chapter argues that the ‘structures of feeling’ in Dickens's art enabled it to function as a bridge between the most popular form of entertainment in his own day (stage melodrama) and the most popular form of entertainment in the age that followed (the screen). While Dickens's influence on film and the influence of nineteenth‐century stage melodrama on Dickens is well known, this chapter maintains that it is the ability of Dickens's novels to ‘sit astride’ melodramatic and realist aesthetics that is the key to their capacity to function as a bridge between stage melodrama and the new medium of the cinema. The history of Dickens on screen makes clear that aesthetic forms, especially when transported across historical periods and cultures, do not carry with them unchanging or consistent ideological baggage.Less
This chapter examines the role of Dickens's aesthetics works in enabling Dickens to become the author most adapted for the screen. It is an exploration, through Dickens's relationship with film, of the ideology of the aesthetic in relation to the mass market, a topic famously addressed by Sergei Eisenstein in his essay ‘Dickens, Griffith and Ourselves’. The chapter argues that the ‘structures of feeling’ in Dickens's art enabled it to function as a bridge between the most popular form of entertainment in his own day (stage melodrama) and the most popular form of entertainment in the age that followed (the screen). While Dickens's influence on film and the influence of nineteenth‐century stage melodrama on Dickens is well known, this chapter maintains that it is the ability of Dickens's novels to ‘sit astride’ melodramatic and realist aesthetics that is the key to their capacity to function as a bridge between stage melodrama and the new medium of the cinema. The history of Dickens on screen makes clear that aesthetic forms, especially when transported across historical periods and cultures, do not carry with them unchanging or consistent ideological baggage.
Steven Mullaney
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226547633
- eISBN:
- 9780226117096
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226117096.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
The introduction clarifies the use of “social emotions” and discusses the concept in relation to debates over the nature and historicity of emotions in the social sciences and the humanities. It ...
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The introduction clarifies the use of “social emotions” and discusses the concept in relation to debates over the nature and historicity of emotions in the social sciences and the humanities. It argues that a phenomenology of historical emotions—social emotions felt, expressed, and understood by others as well as oneself—cannot be derived from humoral medicine or other etiological and physiological theories of the period. Social emotions participate in “structures of feeling,” in Raymond Williams’s phrase. They are a form of embodied social “thought,” in Michelle Rosaldo’s sense, an affective and cognitive apprehension that “I am involved.” With the help of Williams, Rosaldo, Peter Marshall, Sara Ahmed, Patrick Collinson, and a number of other historians, anthropologists, and literary scholars, I argue that the Reformation in England did not succeed in severing affective ties to the past but did manage to loosen and unravel them, with significant consequences for individual and collective senses of identity. Like the emptiness at the foundations of St. Paul’s after 1549, gaps had opened up in the affective landscape of the period. The introduction closes with brief readings of plays by Marlowe and Shakespeare and an overview of the chapters to comeLess
The introduction clarifies the use of “social emotions” and discusses the concept in relation to debates over the nature and historicity of emotions in the social sciences and the humanities. It argues that a phenomenology of historical emotions—social emotions felt, expressed, and understood by others as well as oneself—cannot be derived from humoral medicine or other etiological and physiological theories of the period. Social emotions participate in “structures of feeling,” in Raymond Williams’s phrase. They are a form of embodied social “thought,” in Michelle Rosaldo’s sense, an affective and cognitive apprehension that “I am involved.” With the help of Williams, Rosaldo, Peter Marshall, Sara Ahmed, Patrick Collinson, and a number of other historians, anthropologists, and literary scholars, I argue that the Reformation in England did not succeed in severing affective ties to the past but did manage to loosen and unravel them, with significant consequences for individual and collective senses of identity. Like the emptiness at the foundations of St. Paul’s after 1549, gaps had opened up in the affective landscape of the period. The introduction closes with brief readings of plays by Marlowe and Shakespeare and an overview of the chapters to come
Jesus A. Ramos-Kittrell
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199735921
- eISBN:
- 9780199918607
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199735921.003.0010
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music, History, American
This chapter explores how locally marginalized young musicians and dancers from Monterrey, Mexico, adopted and transformed cumbia in order to develop a sense of transnational belonging that ties them ...
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This chapter explores how locally marginalized young musicians and dancers from Monterrey, Mexico, adopted and transformed cumbia in order to develop a sense of transnational belonging that ties them not only to Colombia, the place of origin of the genre, but also to the U.S. Borrowing Raymond Williams's notion of “structures of feeling,” the author shows the preeminent place of music and sound in the construction of a sense of cultural citizenship that is clearly transnational.Less
This chapter explores how locally marginalized young musicians and dancers from Monterrey, Mexico, adopted and transformed cumbia in order to develop a sense of transnational belonging that ties them not only to Colombia, the place of origin of the genre, but also to the U.S. Borrowing Raymond Williams's notion of “structures of feeling,” the author shows the preeminent place of music and sound in the construction of a sense of cultural citizenship that is clearly transnational.
Yoon Lee
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199915835
- eISBN:
- 9780199315956
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199915835.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
The everyday and the racial form of Asian Americans both depend on the non-sublime awareness of large numbers in the context of capitalist modernity. The modern everyday consists in a sense of scale ...
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The everyday and the racial form of Asian Americans both depend on the non-sublime awareness of large numbers in the context of capitalist modernity. The modern everyday consists in a sense of scale and a particular experience of time as empty repetition. Asian American writing can be considered a form of realism because of its concern with the modern everyday. This book reads for the everyday as a structure of feeling.Less
The everyday and the racial form of Asian Americans both depend on the non-sublime awareness of large numbers in the context of capitalist modernity. The modern everyday consists in a sense of scale and a particular experience of time as empty repetition. Asian American writing can be considered a form of realism because of its concern with the modern everyday. This book reads for the everyday as a structure of feeling.
Corey Kai Nelson Schultz
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781474421614
- eISBN:
- 9781474449588
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474421614.003.0108
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The introduction examines Raymond Williams’s notion of “Structures of feeling” and how it has been theorized. Then, it reviews the history of class in China, the changes made to the Chinese class ...
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The introduction examines Raymond Williams’s notion of “Structures of feeling” and how it has been theorized. Then, it reviews the history of class in China, the changes made to the Chinese class structure during the Maoist period (1949 to 1978), and the use of class figures in Chinese visual culture to advertise political changes, criticize institutions and attitudes, and inspire the populace. It concludes by examining the effects that China’s market reforms adopted in the Reform Era (beginning 1978) has had on Chinese society.Less
The introduction examines Raymond Williams’s notion of “Structures of feeling” and how it has been theorized. Then, it reviews the history of class in China, the changes made to the Chinese class structure during the Maoist period (1949 to 1978), and the use of class figures in Chinese visual culture to advertise political changes, criticize institutions and attitudes, and inspire the populace. It concludes by examining the effects that China’s market reforms adopted in the Reform Era (beginning 1978) has had on Chinese society.
Shelley Streeby
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520224384
- eISBN:
- 9780520925267
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520224384.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
This chapter looks at the ways U.S. racial economies and class relationships were reshaped by a redrawing of the boundaries that followed the Gold Rush and the U.S.-Mexican War. It also aims to show ...
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This chapter looks at the ways U.S. racial economies and class relationships were reshaped by a redrawing of the boundaries that followed the Gold Rush and the U.S.-Mexican War. It also aims to show that identifying the intersecting trajectories of the various revisions of the Murrieta crime narrative can reveal many interdependent relationships. These include the mid-nineteenth-century popularization of a fictive, transcontinental, white, American identity and the long, uneven postwar re-racialization of former Mexican nationals and other Spanish speakers. The chapter determines that the different versions of the Murrieta story suggest how whiteness took hold as a unifying transcontinental and national structure of feeling. The ways the structure's parameters started to shift during the postwar period to include previously despised European groups and to exclude the majority of the newly conquered peoples in the West are also studied.Less
This chapter looks at the ways U.S. racial economies and class relationships were reshaped by a redrawing of the boundaries that followed the Gold Rush and the U.S.-Mexican War. It also aims to show that identifying the intersecting trajectories of the various revisions of the Murrieta crime narrative can reveal many interdependent relationships. These include the mid-nineteenth-century popularization of a fictive, transcontinental, white, American identity and the long, uneven postwar re-racialization of former Mexican nationals and other Spanish speakers. The chapter determines that the different versions of the Murrieta story suggest how whiteness took hold as a unifying transcontinental and national structure of feeling. The ways the structure's parameters started to shift during the postwar period to include previously despised European groups and to exclude the majority of the newly conquered peoples in the West are also studied.
James Chandler
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226034959
- eISBN:
- 9780226035000
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226035000.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
In the middle of the eighteenth century, something new made itself felt in European culture—a tone or style that came to be called the sentimental. The sentimental mode went on to shape not just ...
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In the middle of the eighteenth century, something new made itself felt in European culture—a tone or style that came to be called the sentimental. The sentimental mode went on to shape not just literature, art, music, and cinema, but people's very structures of feeling, their ways of doing and being. This book challenges Sergei Eisenstein's influential account of Dickens and early American film by tracing the unexpected history and intricate strategies of the sentimental mode and showing how it has been reimagined over the past three centuries. It begins with a look at Frank Capra and the Capraesque in American public life, and then digs back to the eighteenth century to examine the sentimental substratum underlying Dickens and early cinema alike. With this surprising move, the author reveals how literary spectatorship in the eighteenth century anticipated classic Hollywood films such as Capra's It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, and It's a Wonderful Life. He then moves forward to romanticism and modernism—two cultural movements often seen as defined by their rejection of the sentimental—examining how authors like Mary Shelley, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf actually engaged with sentimental forms and themes in ways that left a mark on their work. Reaching from Laurence Sterne to the Coen brothers, the book casts new light on the long eighteenth century, and on the novelistic forebears of cinema and our modern world.Less
In the middle of the eighteenth century, something new made itself felt in European culture—a tone or style that came to be called the sentimental. The sentimental mode went on to shape not just literature, art, music, and cinema, but people's very structures of feeling, their ways of doing and being. This book challenges Sergei Eisenstein's influential account of Dickens and early American film by tracing the unexpected history and intricate strategies of the sentimental mode and showing how it has been reimagined over the past three centuries. It begins with a look at Frank Capra and the Capraesque in American public life, and then digs back to the eighteenth century to examine the sentimental substratum underlying Dickens and early cinema alike. With this surprising move, the author reveals how literary spectatorship in the eighteenth century anticipated classic Hollywood films such as Capra's It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, and It's a Wonderful Life. He then moves forward to romanticism and modernism—two cultural movements often seen as defined by their rejection of the sentimental—examining how authors like Mary Shelley, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf actually engaged with sentimental forms and themes in ways that left a mark on their work. Reaching from Laurence Sterne to the Coen brothers, the book casts new light on the long eighteenth century, and on the novelistic forebears of cinema and our modern world.
Steven Mullaney
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226547633
- eISBN:
- 9780226117096
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226117096.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
The crises of faith that traumatized Reformation Europe precipitated crises of individual and collective identity. Structures of feeling and structures of belief underwent a lasting transformation; ...
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The crises of faith that traumatized Reformation Europe precipitated crises of individual and collective identity. Structures of feeling and structures of belief underwent a lasting transformation; there was a reformation of social emotions—a necessary recalibration of community—as well as a Reformation of faith. It is an informing belief of this study that our most lasting and moving works of culture are what they are—lasting and moving—because they are so deeply rooted in the soil of their times, complexly engaged with what is at risk in the historical moment and unsettled in the collective identity. This is especially true of theater, one of the most social of the arts. As a public and performative art, theater provides public and performative cultures with a means of thinking about themselves, especially when other methods and media fail. This book argues that Elizabethan popular drama served as a form of embodied social and affective thought, challenging the first generation born into the Elizabethan Protestant Settlement—Shakespeare, Kyd, and Marlowe’s generation—to confront its fault lines and differences in social thinking, feeling, and belief. A lasting example of art at its most engaged, early modern Reformation drama was also a critical phenomenon in the way that theory, an etymologically related term for seeing, is critical: a far from harmonious and not always therapeutic way of thinking and feeling, by means of actual bodies on stage and in the audience, about the larger, traumatized social body.Less
The crises of faith that traumatized Reformation Europe precipitated crises of individual and collective identity. Structures of feeling and structures of belief underwent a lasting transformation; there was a reformation of social emotions—a necessary recalibration of community—as well as a Reformation of faith. It is an informing belief of this study that our most lasting and moving works of culture are what they are—lasting and moving—because they are so deeply rooted in the soil of their times, complexly engaged with what is at risk in the historical moment and unsettled in the collective identity. This is especially true of theater, one of the most social of the arts. As a public and performative art, theater provides public and performative cultures with a means of thinking about themselves, especially when other methods and media fail. This book argues that Elizabethan popular drama served as a form of embodied social and affective thought, challenging the first generation born into the Elizabethan Protestant Settlement—Shakespeare, Kyd, and Marlowe’s generation—to confront its fault lines and differences in social thinking, feeling, and belief. A lasting example of art at its most engaged, early modern Reformation drama was also a critical phenomenon in the way that theory, an etymologically related term for seeing, is critical: a far from harmonious and not always therapeutic way of thinking and feeling, by means of actual bodies on stage and in the audience, about the larger, traumatized social body.
Garth Myers
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781447322917
- eISBN:
- 9781447322931
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
- DOI:
- 10.1332/policypress/9781447322917.003.0004
- Subject:
- Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
This chapter centers on the actual physical-natural substances of African urban environments, but also on the imaginary – the symbolic and spiritual conceptualizations of those landscapes, as seen ...
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This chapter centers on the actual physical-natural substances of African urban environments, but also on the imaginary – the symbolic and spiritual conceptualizations of those landscapes, as seen for instance in place-names - with Zanzibar as the featured city. Conceptually, the chapter builds from both African studies scholarship and from what was once called the ‘new’ cultural geography. It examines the cityscape physically, politically and metaphysically, arguing for the significance of spiritual cityscapes to everyday cultural understandings of urban environments as well as the generally common pattern of risk in terms of physical settings (emphasizing vulnerabilities to climate change). Emphasis on the importance of religion and spirituality in African cityscapes is not about further exoticising urbanism on the continent but instead a crucial space for using insights from African urban political ecology to speak back to UPE in other parts of the world. The Zanzibar case builds an understanding of the structures of feeling in the cityscape as manifestations of the Swahili term, fitina, meaning discord. The chapter shows that the development of a critical analysis of environmental politics requires recognition of the depths of complexity in socio-environmental conflicts such as those in Zanzibar.Less
This chapter centers on the actual physical-natural substances of African urban environments, but also on the imaginary – the symbolic and spiritual conceptualizations of those landscapes, as seen for instance in place-names - with Zanzibar as the featured city. Conceptually, the chapter builds from both African studies scholarship and from what was once called the ‘new’ cultural geography. It examines the cityscape physically, politically and metaphysically, arguing for the significance of spiritual cityscapes to everyday cultural understandings of urban environments as well as the generally common pattern of risk in terms of physical settings (emphasizing vulnerabilities to climate change). Emphasis on the importance of religion and spirituality in African cityscapes is not about further exoticising urbanism on the continent but instead a crucial space for using insights from African urban political ecology to speak back to UPE in other parts of the world. The Zanzibar case builds an understanding of the structures of feeling in the cityscape as manifestations of the Swahili term, fitina, meaning discord. The chapter shows that the development of a critical analysis of environmental politics requires recognition of the depths of complexity in socio-environmental conflicts such as those in Zanzibar.
Katsuya Hirano
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226060422
- eISBN:
- 9780226060736
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226060736.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
Chapter 1 explores the ideological and socioeconomic structures constructed by the founders of the Tokugawa government as the mechanism of rule capable of sustaining the newly unified polity after ...
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Chapter 1 explores the ideological and socioeconomic structures constructed by the founders of the Tokugawa government as the mechanism of rule capable of sustaining the newly unified polity after century-long civil war and strife. It then examines the dramatic transformations of socioeconomic structures around the beginning of the eighteenth century, and how those transformations brought about popular articulations of a new sensibility or “structure of feeling,” and how it in turn led to a profound sense of dissonance with the ideological structure in place. The structure of feeling manifested itself in the word ukiyo, or the floating world, which denoted the sense of ontological indeterminacy and was often used in and to refer to the eighteenth and nineteenth-century artistic and literary genres. To examine the use of this term, ukiyo, I focus on the genre called the “story of double-suicide,” which depicted the tragedy of forbidden love between townsman and courtesan. The popularity of the genre was such that ordinary townspeople began to copy the suicides. The authorities responded by imposing bans on the performance of the genre. The chapter probes the implications of this criminalization as a case that demonstrates the crucial interface of governmental power and popular culture.Less
Chapter 1 explores the ideological and socioeconomic structures constructed by the founders of the Tokugawa government as the mechanism of rule capable of sustaining the newly unified polity after century-long civil war and strife. It then examines the dramatic transformations of socioeconomic structures around the beginning of the eighteenth century, and how those transformations brought about popular articulations of a new sensibility or “structure of feeling,” and how it in turn led to a profound sense of dissonance with the ideological structure in place. The structure of feeling manifested itself in the word ukiyo, or the floating world, which denoted the sense of ontological indeterminacy and was often used in and to refer to the eighteenth and nineteenth-century artistic and literary genres. To examine the use of this term, ukiyo, I focus on the genre called the “story of double-suicide,” which depicted the tragedy of forbidden love between townsman and courtesan. The popularity of the genre was such that ordinary townspeople began to copy the suicides. The authorities responded by imposing bans on the performance of the genre. The chapter probes the implications of this criminalization as a case that demonstrates the crucial interface of governmental power and popular culture.
Anna Stirr
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780198089384
- eISBN:
- 9780199082483
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198089384.003.0012
- Subject:
- Sociology, Social Movements and Social Change
This chapter examines the roles of emotion in Nepal’s Maoist People’s War through attention to senior Maoist composer Khusiram Pakhrin’s opera ‘Returning from the Battlefield’. This opera was ...
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This chapter examines the roles of emotion in Nepal’s Maoist People’s War through attention to senior Maoist composer Khusiram Pakhrin’s opera ‘Returning from the Battlefield’. This opera was composed and performed specifically to promote unity within the party at a critical time during the war. Through close attention to the music and lyrics of this opera and their situation within a Nepali national imaginary, this chapter argues that the party promotes a particular regime of emotion, or politically regulated set of structures of feeling, and that artists make use of musical and poetic tropes common in wider Nepali society to promote intra-party unity and shared feelings of commitment to a common goal.Less
This chapter examines the roles of emotion in Nepal’s Maoist People’s War through attention to senior Maoist composer Khusiram Pakhrin’s opera ‘Returning from the Battlefield’. This opera was composed and performed specifically to promote unity within the party at a critical time during the war. Through close attention to the music and lyrics of this opera and their situation within a Nepali national imaginary, this chapter argues that the party promotes a particular regime of emotion, or politically regulated set of structures of feeling, and that artists make use of musical and poetic tropes common in wider Nepali society to promote intra-party unity and shared feelings of commitment to a common goal.
Celia Hughes
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780719091940
- eISBN:
- 9781781708989
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719091940.003.0002
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
This chapter presents stories of childhood and early adolescence to consider the beginnings of radical subjectivity and journeys towards left enclaves. It situates the protagonists’ stories against ...
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This chapter presents stories of childhood and early adolescence to consider the beginnings of radical subjectivity and journeys towards left enclaves. It situates the protagonists’ stories against existing studies of post-war family life in order to show how they fit into prevalent patterns of social continuity and change, and to emphasise their role as agents challenging the post-war social and domestic consensus. Through attention to early structures of feeling or underlying feeling, it shows how encounters and experiences in the family home, school, and local community intersected with the wider national and international world, to forge often uneasy and disputatious relationships with the post-war landscape.Less
This chapter presents stories of childhood and early adolescence to consider the beginnings of radical subjectivity and journeys towards left enclaves. It situates the protagonists’ stories against existing studies of post-war family life in order to show how they fit into prevalent patterns of social continuity and change, and to emphasise their role as agents challenging the post-war social and domestic consensus. Through attention to early structures of feeling or underlying feeling, it shows how encounters and experiences in the family home, school, and local community intersected with the wider national and international world, to forge often uneasy and disputatious relationships with the post-war landscape.
Zizi Papacharissi
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199999736
- eISBN:
- 9780190213329
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199999736.003.0002
- Subject:
- Political Science, American Politics, Political Theory
This chapter explicates the concept of affect. It explains how affect is mediated though newer technologies that connect us and permit us to tell stories about who we are and how we make sense of the ...
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This chapter explicates the concept of affect. It explains how affect is mediated though newer technologies that connect us and permit us to tell stories about who we are and how we make sense of the world. The focus then turns to Twitter, which is interpreted as a platform supporting networked structures of feeling. Richer understandings of the place of the internet in contemporary political environments can be obtained by examining how networked platforms support affective processes. These processes produce affective statements that mix fact with opinion, and with emotion, in a manner that simulates the way that we politically react in our everyday lives.Less
This chapter explicates the concept of affect. It explains how affect is mediated though newer technologies that connect us and permit us to tell stories about who we are and how we make sense of the world. The focus then turns to Twitter, which is interpreted as a platform supporting networked structures of feeling. Richer understandings of the place of the internet in contemporary political environments can be obtained by examining how networked platforms support affective processes. These processes produce affective statements that mix fact with opinion, and with emotion, in a manner that simulates the way that we politically react in our everyday lives.
Teresa Barnett
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226059600
- eISBN:
- 9780226059747
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226059747.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
This chapter argues that the historical relic cannot be understood apart from the specifically nineteenth-century form of the sentimental memento. Like the memento, the relic was bound up with ...
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This chapter argues that the historical relic cannot be understood apart from the specifically nineteenth-century form of the sentimental memento. Like the memento, the relic was bound up with sentimental structures of feeling. It was designed to evoke “memories” of the historical past, to create bonds of sympathy between the living and the dead, and to unite the living in a community of shared feeling. Mementoes—and by extension relics—should also be understood as a material means of channeling affect. They allowed their users to physically engage with the body of the one being remembered, to merge the physical boundaries of the rememberer and the remembered, and to affirm mutual commitments. They were efficacious objects, things that could effect changes in the self’s relational world that could not take place without them.Less
This chapter argues that the historical relic cannot be understood apart from the specifically nineteenth-century form of the sentimental memento. Like the memento, the relic was bound up with sentimental structures of feeling. It was designed to evoke “memories” of the historical past, to create bonds of sympathy between the living and the dead, and to unite the living in a community of shared feeling. Mementoes—and by extension relics—should also be understood as a material means of channeling affect. They allowed their users to physically engage with the body of the one being remembered, to merge the physical boundaries of the rememberer and the remembered, and to affirm mutual commitments. They were efficacious objects, things that could effect changes in the self’s relational world that could not take place without them.
Tracey Jensen
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781447325055
- eISBN:
- 9781447325109
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
- DOI:
- 10.1332/policypress/9781447325055.003.0002
- Subject:
- Sociology, Marriage and the Family
This chapter examines some of the key shifts in mothercraft and parent pedagogy, focusing on what ‘counts’ as good parenting and who is recognised as a legitimate expert. Using the case of parenting ...
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This chapter examines some of the key shifts in mothercraft and parent pedagogy, focusing on what ‘counts’ as good parenting and who is recognised as a legitimate expert. Using the case of parenting website Mumsnet, it explores how the ‘scientific motherhood’ of early mothercraft came to colonise new disciplines and to create new forms of knowledge. It considers what kind of parental constituency Mumsnet imagines and addresses and what this imagined Mumsnet constituency might tell us about the construction of ‘good parenting’ today. By analysing the discourses of choice and individualism that structure Mumsnet, the chapter highlights questions around the biopolitics of the family and of childrearing expertise. Finally, it discusses the shifting ‘structures of feeling’ around parent pedagogy as well as key historical accounts that have tended to either celebrate the rise of the ‘empowered parent’.Less
This chapter examines some of the key shifts in mothercraft and parent pedagogy, focusing on what ‘counts’ as good parenting and who is recognised as a legitimate expert. Using the case of parenting website Mumsnet, it explores how the ‘scientific motherhood’ of early mothercraft came to colonise new disciplines and to create new forms of knowledge. It considers what kind of parental constituency Mumsnet imagines and addresses and what this imagined Mumsnet constituency might tell us about the construction of ‘good parenting’ today. By analysing the discourses of choice and individualism that structure Mumsnet, the chapter highlights questions around the biopolitics of the family and of childrearing expertise. Finally, it discusses the shifting ‘structures of feeling’ around parent pedagogy as well as key historical accounts that have tended to either celebrate the rise of the ‘empowered parent’.
Michael Davidson
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- March 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780198832812
- eISBN:
- 9780191880476
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198832812.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
The emergence of affect theory has returned the body to cultural theory by stressing the phenomenological impact of bodies on other bodies. Chapter 6 opens with a reading of Baudelaire’s “Une ...
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The emergence of affect theory has returned the body to cultural theory by stressing the phenomenological impact of bodies on other bodies. Chapter 6 opens with a reading of Baudelaire’s “Une Passante” that offers one such instance. Despite its emphasis on what Lauren Berlant calls the “messy dynamics of attachment,” affect theory has not attended to disability where the encounter with the non-traditional body incites emotions of anxiety, confusion, and in some cases solidarity. This chapter explores a structure of feeling around dynamic historical changes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through works by Sigmund Freud, Frank Norris, Henry James, Virginia Woolf, and Jean Toomer. Each illustrates stages in what Sara Ahmed calls “dramas of contingency” by which world historical changes are registered through quotidian moments of attention and confrontation. These stages mark a trajectory in the novel, from Realism and Naturalism to the modernism of Woolf and Toomer.Less
The emergence of affect theory has returned the body to cultural theory by stressing the phenomenological impact of bodies on other bodies. Chapter 6 opens with a reading of Baudelaire’s “Une Passante” that offers one such instance. Despite its emphasis on what Lauren Berlant calls the “messy dynamics of attachment,” affect theory has not attended to disability where the encounter with the non-traditional body incites emotions of anxiety, confusion, and in some cases solidarity. This chapter explores a structure of feeling around dynamic historical changes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through works by Sigmund Freud, Frank Norris, Henry James, Virginia Woolf, and Jean Toomer. Each illustrates stages in what Sara Ahmed calls “dramas of contingency” by which world historical changes are registered through quotidian moments of attention and confrontation. These stages mark a trajectory in the novel, from Realism and Naturalism to the modernism of Woolf and Toomer.
Margaret Ronda
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781503603141
- eISBN:
- 9781503604896
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9781503603141.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This chapter begins with a discussion of the new forms of environmental consciousness emerging in the 1960s and early 1970s around pollution and systemic toxicity. It focuses specifically on Rachel ...
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This chapter begins with a discussion of the new forms of environmental consciousness emerging in the 1960s and early 1970s around pollution and systemic toxicity. It focuses specifically on Rachel Carson and Barry Commoner, discussing their approaches to ecological interconnection under the sign of crisis but also the ways in which this interconnection is difficult to perceive or understand. The chapter then turns from their reflections on the scarcely perceptible intimacies of ecological interconnection to an examination of John Ashbery’s poetry, which explores these thresholds. Exploring Ashbery’s portrayals of waste and air as phenomena undergoing change, this chapter argues that Ashbery’s work depicts various forms of environmental consciousness. His poetry unfolds an affirmative embrace of ecological uncertainty that involves neither critique nor attempt to repair damage, nor even an attempt to understand the causes of emergent crisis. Instead, he traces the way crisis can be sensed in his poetic surrounds.Less
This chapter begins with a discussion of the new forms of environmental consciousness emerging in the 1960s and early 1970s around pollution and systemic toxicity. It focuses specifically on Rachel Carson and Barry Commoner, discussing their approaches to ecological interconnection under the sign of crisis but also the ways in which this interconnection is difficult to perceive or understand. The chapter then turns from their reflections on the scarcely perceptible intimacies of ecological interconnection to an examination of John Ashbery’s poetry, which explores these thresholds. Exploring Ashbery’s portrayals of waste and air as phenomena undergoing change, this chapter argues that Ashbery’s work depicts various forms of environmental consciousness. His poetry unfolds an affirmative embrace of ecological uncertainty that involves neither critique nor attempt to repair damage, nor even an attempt to understand the causes of emergent crisis. Instead, he traces the way crisis can be sensed in his poetic surrounds.
Mike Sanders
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780719091698
- eISBN:
- 9781526109989
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719091698.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, Social History
There is a series of variable yet mutually constitutive relationships between the ‘culture of politics’ and the ‘politics of culture’ in the cultural politics of Chartism. The chapter constructs a ...
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There is a series of variable yet mutually constitutive relationships between the ‘culture of politics’ and the ‘politics of culture’ in the cultural politics of Chartism. The chapter constructs a taxonomy of those relationships using the categories of correspondence, metaphor, and structure of feeling, and argues that these categories represent three specific forms of mediation. ‘Correspondence’ indicates a direct relationship between political and theatrical practices. ‘Metaphor’ is used to describe the self-conscious use of theatrical figures and terms by Chartist writers to describe and/or interpret current events, and ‘structure of feeling’ refers to the ways in which the theatre/drama furnished a generative complex within which both the Chartist experience and interpretation of politics occurred. Overall, Sanders argues that it is the structure of feeling, and the ‘cultural’ more generally, which makes the practice of politics possible in Chartist discourse in the early Victorian period.Less
There is a series of variable yet mutually constitutive relationships between the ‘culture of politics’ and the ‘politics of culture’ in the cultural politics of Chartism. The chapter constructs a taxonomy of those relationships using the categories of correspondence, metaphor, and structure of feeling, and argues that these categories represent three specific forms of mediation. ‘Correspondence’ indicates a direct relationship between political and theatrical practices. ‘Metaphor’ is used to describe the self-conscious use of theatrical figures and terms by Chartist writers to describe and/or interpret current events, and ‘structure of feeling’ refers to the ways in which the theatre/drama furnished a generative complex within which both the Chartist experience and interpretation of politics occurred. Overall, Sanders argues that it is the structure of feeling, and the ‘cultural’ more generally, which makes the practice of politics possible in Chartist discourse in the early Victorian period.
Edward Paleit
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199602988
- eISBN:
- 9780191744761
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199602988.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval, British and Irish History: BCE to 500CE
War, Liberty and Caesar is chiefly an attempt to address aspects of early modern English literary and political culture between ca. 1580 to 1650, through the sometimes illuminating prism ...
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War, Liberty and Caesar is chiefly an attempt to address aspects of early modern English literary and political culture between ca. 1580 to 1650, through the sometimes illuminating prism of the reception of a classical text. It is also a study of that text itself, through the medium of early modern engagements. It examines and interprets responses to Lucan’s Bellum Ciuile across many different forms of discourse, trying to balance an account of the cultural assumptions and practices which shaped Lucan for early modern readers with a sense of the historical specificity of individual engagements, and an evolving narrative of pre-Civil War English writing. It argues that there were many sides to reading Lucan in the period but that collectively many if not most readers used Lucan to express aspects of a troubled, changing political experience. It examines readings of Lucan by a number of important early modern English authors, including Ben Jonson, Samuel Daniel, Christopher Marlowe, Philip Massinger and John Fletcher, Abraham Cowley, and Thomas May. The number and variety of engagements with Lucan in the period suggest it could be called an ‘age of Lucan’.Less
War, Liberty and Caesar is chiefly an attempt to address aspects of early modern English literary and political culture between ca. 1580 to 1650, through the sometimes illuminating prism of the reception of a classical text. It is also a study of that text itself, through the medium of early modern engagements. It examines and interprets responses to Lucan’s Bellum Ciuile across many different forms of discourse, trying to balance an account of the cultural assumptions and practices which shaped Lucan for early modern readers with a sense of the historical specificity of individual engagements, and an evolving narrative of pre-Civil War English writing. It argues that there were many sides to reading Lucan in the period but that collectively many if not most readers used Lucan to express aspects of a troubled, changing political experience. It examines readings of Lucan by a number of important early modern English authors, including Ben Jonson, Samuel Daniel, Christopher Marlowe, Philip Massinger and John Fletcher, Abraham Cowley, and Thomas May. The number and variety of engagements with Lucan in the period suggest it could be called an ‘age of Lucan’.
