Enthusiasm: Emotional Practices of Conviction in Modern Germany

Description

Enthusiasm seeks to contribute to a culturally and historically nuanced understanding of how emotions secure and ratify the truth of convictions. More than just pure affective intensity, enthusiasm is about something: a certainty, clarity, or truth. Neither as clearly negative as fanaticism nor as general as passion, enthusiasm specifically entails belief. For this reason, the book takes its starting point in religion, the social arena in which the concept was first debated and to which the term still gestures. Empirically based in modern German Protestantism, where religious emotion is intensely cultivated but also subject to vigorous scrutiny, it combines historical and ethnographic methods to show how enthusiasm has been negotiated and honed as a practice in Protestant denominations ranging from liberal to charismatic. The nexus of religion and emotion and how it relates to central concepts of modernity such as rationality, knowledge, interiority, and sincerity are key to understanding why moderns are so ambivalent about enthusiasm. Grounded in practice theory, Enthusiasm assumes that emotions are not an affective state we 'have' but mind-body activations we 'do', having learned to perform them in culturally specific ways. When understood as an emotional practice, enthusiasm has different styles, inflected by historical traditions, social milieus, and knowledge (even ideologies) about emotions and how they work. Enthusiasm also provides insight into how this feeling works in secular humanism as well as in politics, and why it is so contested as a practice in any context. Cover Enthusiasm Copyright Preface Contents Introduction: Enthusiasm as an Emotional Practice A Brief History of Enthusiasm Protestantism, Emotion, and Modernity The Ambivalence of Fervor Aims, Methods, and Theories Emotion as a Cultural Practice The Turn to Emotion and Affect Chapter Overview 1: Emotional Ideologies: A Brief Archeology of Terms and Theories Knowledge About Emotion Shifting Encodings of Inner and Outer, Body and Soul The Invention of “Feeling” The Victory of “Affect” Over “Passion” Emotional Ideologies: “Enlightened” and “Romantic” 2: Safeguarding InteriorityDebates over Protestant Enthusiasm in Nineteenth-Century Germany Enthusiasm as Schwärmerei: From False Inspiration to Inauthentic Feeling The Situation of German Protestantism in the Late Nineteenth Century Protestant Innerlichkeit Evangelism’s Challenge to Protestant Innerlichkeit Conclusion 3: Free to Follow the Feeling: Doubt as Material Practice Emotions as Material, Mediating Practices “Resonant Process”: Worship Getting “Into It”: Prayer Presence and Autonomy Toward an Enthusiasm of Doubt Religion and Emotion as Practices of Freedom Conclusion 4: Styles of Sincerity: On the Morality of Performances of Enthusiasm Approaching Sincerity Styles of Sincerity: Prudent and Sentimental Why Insincerity Happens: Local Knowledge Controlled Joy as Liberal Sentimentalism Secular Sincerity and the Enthusiasm Imperative 5: Awkward Enthusiasts: Emotionalizing Atheism in Berlin Feeling Atheist in Berlin The “Preference Gap” in Humanist Cultures Secular Styles: Provinces of the Heart vs. Ethics Emotion Out of Place: Awkwardness and Failed Enthusiasm Conclusion Conclusion: Enchanting Conviction: “Enthusiasm” as an Analytical Term Back to Weber: Modern Emotionality Enthusiasm as Enchanting Conviction Analyzing Political Enthusiasm Closing Thoughts APPENDIX: List of Encyclopedias and Abbreviations References Index