10 EMOTION
Juliane Brauer and Martin Lucke
Reenactment is among a series of performative practices that treat history as an experience and thus as something that can be (re)created. Corporeal experience, empathy, sensory immersion, traveling through time—these are central motifs of popular history writing and its reception in a performative way.
Suspense, enjoyment, and entertainment are seen as things that might spark laypeople's interest, curiosity, and enthusiasm for the past. These performative practices are based on an appeal to “authentic” feelings, which promise that the reenactor will be able to approximate the actions, thoughts, and emotions of historical actors (authenticity). As such, reenactors ascribe greater authenticity to non-linguistic phenomena such as feelings and perceptions than to the kinds of linguistic narrative practices traditionally associated with historical representation.Reenactment can thus be seen as indicative of“history's recent affective turn” (Agnew, 2007, p. 300). In the following, however, the concept of affect is dispensed with in favor of the concepts of emotion and feeling, used here as synonyms. In the neurosciences and psychology, an affect is a purely physical reaction to an external stimulus. Emotions and feelings, in contrast, have come into use in cultural studies, particularly history, during the past two decades (Plamper, 2015, p. 12). Reenactment scholars still prefer the term affect. Agnew calls reenactment “a form of affective history” (2007, p. 301; McCalman and Pickering, 2010b, pp. 6f). The various positions from cultural studies on emotions (Plamper, 2015) can be distilled into the following definition: first, emotions are culturally specific and change over time; second, they are inextricably bound to the body; third, they are learned, mediated, and communicated through practices of the body (Scheer, 2012, p.
199). Thus, emotions are neither cultural constructs in a social-constructivist sense, nor are they anthropological constants as often understood by neuroscientists. They are to be located on the border between the body and the psyche, inside and outside. In this way, emotions form a contact zone between self and other. They are “impressions” that the outside world leaves on the body (Ahmed, 2004, p. 28). Thus, emotions mediate between the body and mind, on the one hand, and the subject and society on the other, constituting a central dimension of experience and knowledge. Constantly new perceptions moving from inside to outside and vice-versa mean that emotions are always subject to change. The same goes for the “mindful body” (Scheper-Hughes and Lock, 1987, pp. 7—8), which changes with the emotional impressions made upon it. From all this follows the most important insight: the history of emotions is a history of practices (Frevert, 2016, p. 56). Monique Scheer coined the notion “emotional practices” (2012, p. 209), which both follow from and are transformed by bodily knowledge. Accordingly, emotions are something that we learn, experience, manage, and, above all, something we do (Scheer, 2012, p. 195). This definition of emotions as an expression of malleable knowledge embedded in the body leads to problems for contemporary historical-cultural attempts to re-experience or re-feel history. This entry thus explores the significance and function of emotions in the performative practices of reenactment.Viewed as a reproduction, re-creation, or “meticulous reconstruction of a historical event or artefact,” reenactments of historical events are supposed to serve as a “cultural and performative time machine” that makes it possible to “repeat and reanimate” “the past in the time and space of the present” (Hinz, 2011, n.p.). As a historical genre and form of historical representation, reenactment is per se an emotional mode of the acquisition of history.
Reenactments are a peculiar object in the analysis of “the functions of emotions and their systematic place in the multifaceted processes through which individuals learn about past realities as history” (Brauer and Lucke, 2013, p.
11). Reenactment is a “participatory reconstruction of history” that enables “reenactors and their audience to have an aesthetic experience of the past in their own body and as a collectively experienced live event” (Hinz, 2011, n.p.). This means that reenactments—here in the specific form of live events—are a particular form of historical-cultural objectification in which emotions play a constitutive role on multiple levels.In general, there are two different aspects of emotions in practices of learning about the past and acquiring historical knowledge. First, the emotions of historical actors are objects of historical learning, as are emotions qua forces of history. We might thus inquire into the emotions that motivated historical persons, asking which emotional rules or “emotionology” structured social relations in a given period (Stearns and Stearns, 1985, p. 813), and which practices of showing and communicating emotions were dominant in certain periods and societies, or how groups were shaped by common emotions to form “emotional communities” (Rosenwein, 2002, p. 842). These questions shed light on the role of emotions in history in a way that opens novel, yet accessible, perspectives on historical events and persons. For instance, one might think about the contradictory emotions felt by soldiers fighting in the American Civil War and the role feelings like pride, rage, and loyalty might have played in determining their actions. Thus, considered as part of the historical object, emotions can provide the reenactor with experiences of alterity. On this level, it is important to analyze why the significance of certain feelings has changed over time and how the reenactor’s contemporary conception of emotions differ from those of historical persons.
This makes clear that the emotions of historical persons can be an object of historical study, while, at the same time, it underscores the point that feeling the identical emotions they felt or empathizing with them is impossible.
After all, feelings have a history: our contemporary forms of interpreting them and our own cultures of emotions differ from historical forms too radically to ever re-experience the thoughts, feelings, and actions of historical persons. People living in the 21st century cannot experience the terrible fear of the plague experienced by people in the Middle Ages. We can get a sense of these emotions through our own experiences; we cannot, however, know how these emotions were felt and communicated by historical persons. We have grown up in different circumstances and bring along our own personal emotional memories, expectations, knowledge, and cultural practices when interpreting the past. Such impressions structure our understanding of historical events and actors and help determine our emotional reactions.Aside from this dimension of emotions as historical objects, however, subjective emotions— which is to say, the emotions of those doing the learning—also play a role in learning about
Emotion
history. It is on this level that the interplay of emotions and historical simulation is most apparent in reenactments: “Reenactment is fun. It [involves]... work and play” (Agnew, 2004, p. 327). This emotional involvement in the production of historical meaning constitutes the appeal of reenactments, which are “less concerned with events, processes or structures than with the individual’s physical and psychological experience” (Agnew, 2007, p. 301).
A defining feature of reenactment is the way in which it blurs the lines between object and subject, which, from the perspective of historical pedagogy, makes it problematic. Reenactments seek to reproduce historical events as authentically as possible—from the most accurate period shoes to the reconstruction of old ships—all with the aim of mastering the same challenges as those living centuries ago. Despite such strategies of authentication, reenactors “can never be them [historical persons]” (Cook, 2004, p.
489). Nevertheless, Cook sees “a persistent tendency to privilege a visceral, emotional engagement with the past at the expense of a more analytical treatment” (p. 490). The privileging of emotional reliving underpins the work of philosopher, historian, and archaeologist Collingwood, one of the pioneers of the idea of reenactment (Collingwood, 1946). Nevertheless, reenactors might not really care whether Collingwood was thinking of reenactment as “sympathetic identification with the past” or as “nonintuitive, constructivist methodology” (Nielsen, 1981, pp. 4, 31; Dray, 1995, pp. 123-132). Instead, they might, as in 2001, undertake a six-week journey on a reconstruction of the Endeavour that is supposed to feel as real and authentic as the one Captain James Cook took in 1770 (Cook, 2004, p. 488).The subjective emotions at play can be more accurately grasped by considering the ways in which different groups of people participate in reenactments. First are the reenactors themselves, those who embody history during the reenactment and in doing so express emotions. One might ask how much members of this group reflect on the ways they appropriate the emotions of the historical persons and to what extent this appropriation (conscious or not) contributes to the production of a particular historical identity.
Other participants include spectators and visitors. For them, the reenactors are already part of the (representation of the) past, simply because they embody the historical narrative. One might ask whether viewers consciously seek out emotional-aesthetic pleasure when attending reenactments or if they are capable of seeing the emotional force of the reenactment as an aesthetic strategy used to give the event a veneer of authenticity. It should be added that during the reenactment, both reenactors and spectators experience emotions not only as individuals, but also as a collective. The reenactment of historical events and the act of viewing a reenactment are both concrete encounters with the past through which emotional communities are produced.
Additionally, those working behind the scenes constitute a third group within the reenactment. Just as there are directors, costume designers, and dramaturges, along with actors and audience members in the theater, so too are there people responsible for the planning, research, set, and costume design of live event reenactments. This group may be partially or wholly identical with the actors. Still, it is worth asking whether those working “backstage” consciously employ emotions as an aesthetic strategy that is geared toward lending the reenactment the appearance of authenticity. How is this strategy concretely realized and what aim is it intended to serve? Is the point of such strategies to increase the aesthetic pleasure the audience takes in the reenactment, to increase its didactic value, or to make the actors identify more with their roles?
Reenactments blur the line between the emotions of the object and those of the subject. Reenactments’ intention to re-enact and re-create makes it difficult for participants to distance themselves from the emotions of the historical object. This turns encounters with history into an experience of identity founded on strategies of entertainment and, in doing so, elides the task of triggering the kind of reflection on the difference between the contemporary world and
historical realities necessary for learning about history. Melanie Hinz says actors should “reenact instead of act,” but one might ask whether a mere reenacting of history can even work without an element of acting, or if this would not rob reenactments of their real appeal.
Notwithstanding the fact that reenactments are predicated on a belief that historical events can be re-experienced, their capacity to stimulate people's emotions cannot be denied. Indeed, such forms of performative historical learning contribute to increased public interest in history. Reenactments have the potential to make people sensitive to historical alterity—to see, feel, and possibly reflect on the fact that past realities were different from our present world: “The real question is not whether the experience of reenactment allows us to simulate the mentalities of the past; it is whether the exercise can help improve our understanding of a different world and of the behavior of its inhabitants” (Cook, 2004, pp. 491-492).
Further reading
Brauer, J., and Lucke, M., 2013; Frevert, U., 2016.