Scrivere la storia delle emozioni: dall'oggetto alle categorie di analisi

Abstract

For about a decade now, the historiography of emotions has developed spectacularly, though with mixed outcomes. This paper will assess the main research orientations that have shaped this history. It will provide a first critical account of the main works in the field. To do so, we will begin by highlighting the often implicit tensions and the various debates that have erupted around the history of emotions. Among the contentious historical approaches to the study of emotions, we will focus on the so-called tensions between nature and culture, language and experience, the individual and the collective. Starting from an essentially nineteenth/twentieth century historiography, this paper aims to go beyond just a history of emotions as a research topic. Instead, it seeks to seize emotions more broadly as a category of cross-analysis that allows historians to reach and study all aspects of social life. In this regard, emotions can be analyzed both through their own historicity and through the agency of the social actors.