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- Convenors:
-
Ulla Savolainen
(University of Helsinki)
Niina Hämäläinen (Kalevala Society)
- Stream:
- Body/Embodiment
- Location:
- A209
Short Abstract:
The purpose of the panel is to examine the orchestration of emotions as cultural heritage. The panel explores the uses, manifestations and manipulations of emotions in different spheres of culture, in different historical and current contexts as well as in various forms of expression.
Long Abstract:
Emotions are not only restricted to the personal and individual spheres of life; they are also used in different arenas of culture. Consequently emotions and their possible outcomes - the power potential relating to emotions - has led to the consideration of some of the emotions and various creative expressions of emotions as ideal, preferable and useful while others are viewed as unwanted, avoidable and harmful. In folklore studies and ethnology emotions are often used as attributes in defining objects of research. Emotions and representations of emotions are not only an instrument for those who have power; they are also a central driving force in the resistance and processes of defining cultural heritage for minorities. At the level of individual meaning making, emotions justify action and authorize different opinions.
The purpose of this panel is to examine the orchestration of emotions as cultural heritage. The panel explores the uses, manifestations and manipulations of emotions in different spheres of culture, in different historical and current contexts as well as in various forms of expression. Also theoretical views on the topic are in the scope of the panel. Relevant questions are: whose emotions define and cultural heritage and what kinds become attributes of heritage; what kind of meanings are given to particular emotions and their representations in a particular context; and for what purposes, whose agendas, and what kind of possible futures are emotions considered as ideal or articulated as cultural heritage?
Accepted papers:
Session 1Jonas Frykman (Lund University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper discusses affects in relation to material culture at the occasion of the parting of an estate.
Paper long abstract:
At the parting of an estate, affects usually run high among the heirs. The parting of an estate will here be the empirical point of departure for discussing the benefit of using perspectives from "the affective turn" within cultural theory. In order to understand the workings of material culture, the Heideggerian concepts of "worlding","gathering" and "assertion" will be central. The very event for parting the estate will be seen from Hannah Arendt's theory of "space of appearance". The art of passing on and sharing of summer-houses will be one of the arenas for discussing the benefits of this and similar approaches.
Kerstin Pfeiffer (Heriot-Watt University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the emotional dimension of modern performances of medieval plays. It explores ways in which the emotional scripts of plays of the Massacre of the Innocents are re-written for contemporary audiences and what is at stake in such re-imaginings.
Paper long abstract:
Performing medieval drama has become increasingly popular in England since the 1950s: revivals regularly draw large crowds. Performances are no longer purely a research tool for medieval drama scholars, but become living theatre through the modernisation, re-appropriation and re-reading of extant medieval play texts.
Drawing on affect and performance theory (Ahmed, 2004; Schechner, 2003), and the history of emotions (Reddy, 2001; Rosenwein, 2006), this paper seeks to explore how modern performances of medieval plays seek to evoke and enhance emotions and feelings in their audiences. It focuses on performances of a biblical event which was popular in the medieval drama and which has become a 'staple' in modern productions: the Massacre of the Innocents.
Examining the performances of the Massacre of the Innocents in the Chester and York Mystery Plays in 2013 and 2014 against the extant medieval play texts, the paper investigates the following questions: how do gesture, sound, silence, music, choreography, props, staging and spatial arrangements, or other visual and textual elements generate the kinds of affective resonances that circulate about, between bodies, sometimes sticking to them? How are these resonances employed to enhance or complicate emotional responses in spectators? What is at stake in such emotional productions?
The larger aim of this paper is to contribute not only to our understanding of the popularity of modern performances of medieval plays but also the afterlife of plays which sought to create and shape a sense of community and identity by fostering a community of feeling.
Niina Hämäläinen (Kalevala Society)
Paper short abstract:
The paper discusses how and to what extent the emotional language of oral lyric poetry, dovetailed with Romantic modernity, was used for different historical, social and ideological purposes through written representations of oral tradition.
Paper long abstract:
The concept of lyric poetry as a form of emotional language is widely accepted to characterize Romantic ideas of literature and oral folk poetry in the 19th century. Lyric poetry in literature is usually considered as a poetry of love and of nature. In Kalevala-meter oral tradition, lyric covers other emotional themes, such as sorrow, hate, humor, erotic and grotesque. However, Kalevala-meter lyric poetry has been labelled as characteristically sorrowful. This side of the Kalevala-meter poetry has been emphazised by editors and readers of the written representations of oral poetry. Common people were seen as a suffering group of people with hard life experiences.
What kind of meanings does lyric as a special language of expressing emotions carry in oral tradition and how did its further usage in written representations possibly change and restraine its emotional content? The question is: whose emotions we thus address in publications? I will concentrate to examples, which illustrate how some parts of oral lyric poetry were adapted (and other parts rejected) in written publications. And further, how and to what extent the emotional language of oral lyric poetry, dovetailed with Romantic modernity, was used for the purposes of the historical, social and ideological processes through written representations of oral tradition.
Piret Koosa (Estonian National Museum)
Paper short abstract:
In this paper I intend to consider the embodied and emotional aspects of becoming and being a believer and articulating faith among evangelical Christians.
Paper long abstract:
In evangelical Christianity, specific speech practices have a significant role in articulating one's faith. Bible-based language is employed to express one's evangelical identity as well as to convert non-evangelicals. This emphasis on verbal practices has left unduly little attention to sensuous aspects of being and becoming an evangelical Christian.
In this paper, my aim is to take a closer look at nonverbal facets of manifesting religious identity on the example of an evangelical community in Komi Republic, Russia. On the one hand, I intend to consider references to emotional and even bodily felt changes that are invoked in describing subjective conversion and faith. On the other hand, I am interested in how certain kind of behavioural and emotional conduct are seen to enable evaluating others' commitment to evangelical faith. Furthermore, displaying positive emotions and acting altruistically are thought to be effective methods in bringing new people to God. I will also ponder how, in spite of central place of speech in evangelical practices, verbalising religious experiences can be challenging for people and moreover, how emotional and behavioural comportment are sometimes considered more reliable than speaking.
Ulla Savolainen (University of Helsinki)
Paper short abstract:
The paper explores the forms, uses and functions of nostalgia in the case of written narratives of Karelian evacuees about their return visits to their home places in Russian Karelia.
Paper long abstract:
After the Second World War, Finland ceded areas of Karelia to the Soviet Union. The Finns living in the ceded Karelia were evacuated and resettled to the Finnish side of the new border. After the war, most of the ceded areas in Karelia remained closed to outsiders until the latter half of the 1980s. Eventually the collapse of the Soviet Union made tourism and visits to Karelia possible on a larger scale. Since then, thousands of evacuees have visited their former home regions every summer and tourism to ceded Karelia can be seen as a form of roots-tourism. Nostalgia - the bitter-sweet longing for a place and time in the past- is an eminent driving force behind roots-tourism. This paper analyses written narratives of Karelian evacuees about their return visits to their home places in Russian Karelia. It concentrates discussion on the forms, uses and functions of nostalgia in these narratives. It analyzes the descriptions of meeting the changed home place in the present time of the trip and examines the reminiscences about the very same place as it used to be in the past. I suggest that nostalgia is more than a perspective toward the time-places of the past: nostalgia is also a cultural script affecting how the home and life in the past are described and remembered. Nostalgia is ultimately a strategy that is used in order to create and maintain a comprehensible relationship with the present place.
Anna Rajavuori (University of Helsinki)
Paper short abstract:
The paper examines emotions in socialist agitation performances in the early 20th century Finland. The paper focuses on the variety of emotions utilized by the agitators in their oral performances in order to influence people’s political opinions.
Paper long abstract:
The labour movement in Finland utilized oral agitation widely as a means of propagating socialist ideology in the early 20th century. The Social Democratic Party had dozens of speakers traveling across the country. Socialist agitators traveled from village to village and gave speeches in private houses and social evenings. Oral agitation was a powerful way to influence people's opinions and reach those who did not read newspapers. A strong emotional charge was often an important part of an agitation performance.
This paper explores the opportunities to study emotions in the past by utilizing viewpoints of performance studies. I will utilize the concept of emotive by anthropologist William M. Reddy. Emotive is a public expression of emotion that is capable to influence people (Reddy 2001). What kind of emotions were performed in the early 20th-century agitation? What emotives were applied to influence people's opinions? The variety of emotions in political agitation has been ignored in Finnish historical research. Hatred, anger and revenge have been emphasized over other strong emotives such as love and comradeship, hope and enthusiasm. The paper focuses on the uses and manifestations of diverse emotions in political agitation. Research material of the paper consists of published and unpublished descriptions of agitation by the speakers and their audiences.
Mariana Sirimarco (Universidad de Buenos Aires)
Paper short abstract:
In Argentina, stories about the “street corner policeman” activate a nostalgic and mythic look about the police. Which are the values idealized in that story? This paper analyzes the connections between past, memory and emotion (nostalgia) that underlie the construction of institutional stories.
Paper long abstract:
Memoirs have an important role in the vast literature written by and about policemen. Displaying personal and professional experiences, they intend to narrate the police labor in terms of a series of institutionally valued topics. Stories about the "street corner policeman" stand out among them, showing the policemen of old times and their close and trusty relation with community. Nowadays, when Argentinean police have a serious problem of discredit, referring to the "street corner policeman" activates a nostalgic and mythic look about the past that tries to impose an idealized understanding of police attitude.
This paper intends to analyze the connections between past, memory and emotion that underlie the construction of institutional stories, proposing that nostalgia is an inherent tool to the construction of the past and the sense of an interrupted flow of time. Thus, examining the "street corner policeman" story will imply both analyzing the very values that police institution convert into moral imperatives and rescuing the role that emotions play in the defining and reproduction of institutional traditions.
Guadalupe Jiménez-Esquinas (University of Santiago de Copostela)
Paper short abstract:
This presentation examines the role of emotion and affect in the heritagization process of a particular Galician textile craft. I analyze how affects are produced, put in circulation and attached to different agents in affective economies of heritage.
Paper long abstract:
Affections and emotions are not usually taken into account when talking, managing and researching about heritage, which is displayed as a dispassionate issue (Thrift, 2004). Grand narratives on identity, nation, economic profitability and tourism development are flooding heritage practices. Both Authorized Hetitage Discourses and Heritage Regimes (Smith, 2006, Bendix et al., 2012) are politically silencing other relevant elements such as affects and emotions that, however, come always into play when people are (dis)identified, (dis)affected and (not) interacting with heritage. Affective labor and production of value through emotion are also silenced common practices in heritage construction and contemporary political activity (Hardt, 1999, Marazzi, 2011).
Based on the feminist theory of the Affective Economies (Ahmed, 2004) I apply it to my research on the patrimonialization of textile crafts made by Galician women. This presentation analyzes the stake of affect through all the heritagization process, how affects are put in circulation and attached to different bodies