13.12.2013

Conference: Feeling Differently - Emotional Non-Conformism in the 20th Century

December 13-14, 2013 at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin

Conference organizers: Beate Binder (Humboldt Universität zu Berlin), Benno Gammerl (MPI, Berlin), Joachim Häberlen (Warwick University), Jan Hutta (University of Bayreuth) and Monique Scheer (Eberhard Karls University Tübingen)

Funded by the DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft)

The focus of the recent interest in emotions in sociology, history, literary and cultural studies as well as anthropology has been, to a large extent, on ‘feeling rules’ and norms of conduct, on the bodily knowledge that structures feeling, on dominant patterns of emotion and corresponding emotional practices.

Our interdisciplinary and international workshop builds on this research but shifts the focus to discourses and practices of ‘feeling differently’. It discusses conflicts over feeling rules and the dynamics involved in the creation of emotional difference. Do nonconformist feeling emerge as a result of social exclusion? Or are they ascribed to certain individuals or groups in order to stigmatize or even pathologize them? Are ‘different’ feelings a means – whether conscious or not – of displaying resistance to norms and marking one’s difference? What is the role of communicative and bodily practices in this process? Do alternative cultures of feeling create spaces that are more free, or do they, in turn, develop their own considerable pressure to conform?

By investigating the formation of specific subjectivities in specific political and social constellations in which nonconformist emotional cultures or patterns can be observed, the workshop will result in a more nuanced and complex understanding of the shaping of emotion in present-day and historical contexts. The workshop thus opens new perspectives on current debates over emotions and affect in the social sciences and humanities, particularly queer and feminist studies and the historical disciplines.

Conference Program

Friday, December 13, 2013

10:30-11:30 Registration

11:30-12:00 Welcome and Opening Remarks

Ute Frevert (Max Planck Institute for Human Development Berlin)
Joachim C. Häberlen (University of Warwick)
Jan Hutta (University of Bayreuth)

12:00-15:00
Panel I: Suffering and Emotional Difference
Chair: Benno Gammerl (Max Planck Institute for Human Development Berlin)

Ritu Vij (University of Aberdeen): Being Otherwise: Subalternity and Conformism in the Post-Colony

Anja Michaelsen (Ruhr University Bochum): Collectively Different: The Generalization of Political Suffering in the 20th and 21st Centuries

Umut Yildirim (Istanbul University): Medical Facts, Spaced-Out Affects: Reconsidering Mental Health in Diyarbakir, Turkey

Uffa Jensen (Max Planck Institute for Human Development Berlin): Commentary

15:00-15:30 Break

15:30-18:30
Panel II: Subversive Emotions: Subcultures and Political Movements
Chair: Jan Simon Hutta (University of Bayreuth)

Maik Tändler (Georg-August University of Göttingen): 1968 – (Also) an Emotional Revolt?

Joachim C. Häberlen (University of Warwick): Feelings against Capitalism: Practices of Feeling Differently within the New Left during the 1970s

Elena Apostoli Cappello (University of Neuchâtel): Subjectivation Processes in European Radical Movements: Emotional Logics in Militancy

Gabriele Dietze (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin): Commentary

Saturday, December 14, 2013

9:00-12:00
Panel III: Alternative Emotions in Youth and Popular Cultures
Chair: Monique Scheer (Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen)

Henning Wellmann (Max Planck Institute for Human Development Berlin): “Anger is a Gift”: Emotional Deviance in Popular Music Culture

Christoph Bareither (Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen): A Taste of Blood: Ethnographic Perspectives on the Joy of Killing in Online Computer Games

Maja Figge (Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg): The Two Sides of Rage in German Integration Discourse

Annette Timm (University of Calgary): Commentary

12:00-13:00 Lunch

13:00 -16:00
Panel IV: Contested Emotional Norms
Chair: Beate Binder (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)

Monica Black (University of Tennessee, Knoxville): A (Post-)Fascist History of Emotions: Bruno Gröning in West Germany after WWII

Anna Parkinson (Northwestern University Evanston): Feeling Otherwise: Democratic Sentiments vs. Communities of Resentment in Postwar West Germany

Daniel Siemens (University College London): “What can a Man believe?” Personal Faith, Masculine Identities and Emotional Non-Conformism in the United States in the early 20th Century

Monique Scheer (Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen): Commentary

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There is no conference fee, however, if you wish to attend, please register by December 10, 2013, with Karola Rockmann: <link mail ein fenster zum versenden der>rockmann@mpib-berlin.mpg.de