Atrocity and Emotion

The new journal, Passions in Context; International Journal for the History and Theory of Emotions has just published a special issue on “Atrocities - Emotion - Self”. The issue focuses on the complex interrelation between emotions that are provoked by atrocities, and selfhood that is put into question by these emotions.

In her article in this issue, “Pain, Abjection, and Political Emotion”, Senior Researcher Robin May Schott (Holocaust and genocide) analyzes the newly re-issued diary, A Woman in Berlin, that makes an important contribution to the belated study of sexual violence during World War II. The text offers insights into the role of pain in creating political identities as well as the role of abjection in showing the fragility of these identities. The notion of abjection also challenges the adequacy of a cognitivist approach to emotion, such as Martha Nussbaum develops, and shows how emotions are effects of political practices and norms.

Postdoctoral Fellow Johannes Lang's contribution, “A Potential in Us All”, reviews Kathleen Taylor's recent book, “Cruelty: Human Evil and the Human Brain” (Oxford UP, 2009). Taylor is searching for the biological origins of excessive violence and genocide. Her book, and Lang's review of it, explore the evolutionary genesis of emotions such as fear, anxiety, and disgust, and evaluate their roles in human violence.

http://www.passionsincontext.de/index.php?id=772