Blog

Gerade in Zeiten gesellschaftlichen Umbruchs sind Emotionen von besonderer Bedeutung. Die aktuelle Gesundheitskrise um Covid-19 zeigt dies einmal mehr: Ängste vor einer Ansteckung mit dem Virus verändern unseren Alltag; zeitgleich haben viele Arbeitnehmer*innen und Arbeitgeber*innen sowie Selbständige, Freiberufler*innen und Künstler*innen Angst um ihre berufliche Existenz und fürchten gar den wirtschaftlichen Ruin; auf der Ebene der internationalen Politik werden längst Forderungen nach einer solidarischen EU-Politik laut; in zahlreichen Ländern gibt es verschiedenste Solidaritäts-Bekundungen mit sogenannten „systemrelevanten“ Berufsgruppen; im Lokalteil der Zeitungen lesen wir Berichte über solidarische Aktionen im Dorf und im Kiez der Großstadt.

Dieser Blog thematisiert die Funktion und Bedeutung von Emotionen wie Angst, Solidarität, aber auch Liebe, Vertrauen, Scham, Hass, Neid und Ekel in derartigen Krisensituationen und legt ihre historische Dimension offen. Denn: Emotionen prägen die (Zeit-)Geschichte und haben eine Geschichte. Die allgemeinverständlichen Beiträge des Blogs sind kurz gehalten, um eine zeitnahe Reaktion auf gesellschaftlich relevante Ereignisse zu ermöglichen: sie sind „Feeling News“! Der Blog komplementiert die Internetplattform „Geschichte der Gefühle – Einblicke in die Forschung“, die an konkreten Beispielen und in Beiträgen zeigt, wie die Geschichte der Emotionen erforscht werden kann: mit welchen Quellen, mit welchen Fragestellungen und Perspektiven, mit welchen Methoden.

Der Blog gehört zum Forschungsbereich der „Geschichte der Gefühle“ des MPIB. Die Redaktion, und freut sich aber auch über externe Autoren*innen sowie Kommentaren zu Blog-Beiträgen. Schreiben Sie bei Interesse und teilen Sie mit uns Ihre „Feeling News“!


Helen Ahner
26. April 2022

Online, one can find plenty of advice on how to feel athletic, and even more reasons why such emotions are desirable: They promise success, beauty and health. They help one become “the best version of oneself.” [mehr]
Javier Sadarangani
19. Mai 2021

The emotional impact of the coronavirus pandemic is unquestionable. Along with the feeling of uncertainty produced by the relative novelty of living through a pandemic, there are the feelings inspired by measures that have been set up around the world to deal with it. Regulations promoting relative: isolation, as well as the restriction of public freedoms, have produced anxieties, frustrations, vulnerability, fears, sadness and a series of emotional constellations that are simultaneously difficult to manage. [mehr]
Mika Toyota
10. Dezember 2020

In Japan, if an employee is found to be COVID-positive, their identifiable personal information could be announced company-wide. In some cases, the infected are asked to submit a formal letter of apology to their superior, which comes attached with a detailed account about how he or she was infected; a full acknowledgement about the negative implications for the company, including possible damage to its reputation; and a promise that they would not create troubles for the company again. [mehr]
Bettina Hitzer
4. Dezember 2020

Metaphern spielen eine wesentliche Rolle dafür, wie Krankheitsgefahr und Schutzmaßnahmen erfahren und emotional belegt werden. Viele der Metaphern, die noch heute in der Konfrontation mit Krankheitserregern, Ansteckung und Immunisierung benutzt werden, gehen auf das späte 19. Jahrhundert zurück. [mehr]
Kerstin Pahl
23. November 2020

It is a truism that during the 2020 US presidential election, emotions were running high. On Election Tuesday, politicians, journalists, the electorate, and a large amount of non-Americans were on pins and needles about the outcome. For some time, it was a nail-biter. [mehr]
Rukmini Barua
7. Oktober 2020

In May this year, Kent, a company manufacturing water purifiers ran a coronavirus themed advertising campaign in India. “Are you allowing your maid to knead atta dough by hand? Her hands may be infected,” said the advertisement. Following outrage on social media over its classist and casteist rhetoric, the advertisement has since been taken down. Nevertheless, it is telling of the ways in which the working body is routinely cast as a bearer of pollution—and especially so, during times of disease.   [mehr]
Leon Hughes
7. September 2020

The privileging of the digital has obviously had a great impact upon our lived experiences as work, socialising, even exercise have moved online. However, the eruption of the Black Lives Matter protests in America, and their spread to Paris, London, Buenos Aires, among many other global cities, demonstrated how the spatial and temporal absence, has turned into collective action. [mehr]
Francesco Buscemi
10. Juli 2020

You may have felt it while waiting your turn in the cafeteria and your colleague is too far away to chat. It may be what your teenage son is afraid to feel if he respects your request to wear a mask when he meets his pals after the lockdown. It is what you and your best friends may have felt when you finally met and didn’t know whether to hug, kiss or bump elbows. [mehr]
Mercy Dutta
1. Juli 2020

22nd March 2020 saw the execution of a 12-hour national shutdown in India to express gratitude to the “frontline warriors” fighting against Corona Virus in the country. The catch being, our pradhansewak (chief-servant, our Prime Minister prefers to be addressed thus) urged the people to come out to their ‘balconies and terraces’ at 5.00 p.m. and bang pots and pans for five minutes. [mehr]
Margrit Pernau
12. Juni 2020

If there is one thing that a large majority of articles published, in print and even more in the social media agree on, it is the global character of the Corona crisis. The pandemic has spread to all the countries of the world and it forms part of a global experience – as a grim reality or at least as a threat – for every single individual. This imaginary of a shared plight gave rise to many instances of unexpected solidarity. [mehr]
Caroline Moine
4. Juni 2020

Seit Beginn der Corona-Krise erlebt Die Pest von Albert Camus (1947) eine erstaunliche Renaissance in der Lesergunst – und das nicht nur in Frankreich, sondern auch im Ausland: In Italien, Japan und China schnellten die Verkaufszahlen in die Höhe, ebenso in Deutschland oder in Großbritannien. In Österreich lasen mehr als 100 Prominente in einer 10-stündigen Marathonsendung das Buch im Radio vor. [mehr]
Ying Li and Shabnam Mousavi
29. Mai 2020

Within only a few months, the coronavirus has claimed 340,000 lives, with over five million infections reported around the globe. Lockdown, shutdown, and isolation have been the dominant responses by governments and people. In a recent 2020 study by Ying Li, Shenghua Luan and Ralph Hertwig, people in China and the US were asked to write down five words to describe their feelings from the previous week. Overall, both Chinese and Americans experienced negative emotions more than usual at the time the pandemic peaked in their respective countries. Surprisingly, the usual suspects, fear and anxiety, were closely matched and even exceeded by the feeling of boredom. [mehr]
Lukas Herde
25. Mai 2020

When physical distancing to stop the spread of Covid-19 is the dictum of the hour, how can one have sex? Anticipating such insecurities, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) published Sex and Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), a ‘safe sex’ guide in times of Corona. A media sensation upon release, the two-paged digital leaflet is a hybrid of classic sexual health advice and Covid-19 prevention measures. It comprises information on Covid-19’s transmission paths; partnered, solitary and digital sex; STIs and sex toy hygiene. Via knowledge transfer, it attempts to navigate two affective states through the pandemic: anxiety and (sexual) pleasure. [mehr]
Ute Frevert
13. Mai 2020

Es gibt einen neuen Volkssport, und er hat auch schon einen Namen. Im Englischen heißt er social distancing shaming, auf Deutsch könnte man ihn Abstandsscham nennen. Das Phänomen wird in Zeitungen beschrieben, in Blogs kommentiert und auf Twitter geteilt. Es ist das alte Lied im neuen Gewand: Menschen stellen Mitmenschen bloß, die sich ihrer Meinung nach nicht an Regeln halten, und wollen auf diese Weise Regelkonformität erzwingen. Der Beschämte soll sich schämen und sein Verhalten ändern. [mehr]
Erica Baffelli und Frederik Schröer
12. Mai 2020

These days our access to space (be it workplaces, parks, shops, let alone travel) is strictly regulated and restricted. Our experience of time, also, seems to have changed in a radical way, a way that most of us have never felt before. Many of us feel acutely disconnected from our communities, while at the same time new forms of solidarity and belonging are emerging. Although the impact and consequences of the pandemic are not the same for all of us, there is no denying that we are all affected. [mehr]
Emma Zohar
11. Mai 2020

Love is probably the first emotion that comes to mind when one thinks of weddings. The color white is the modern visual coding that will probably accompany this thought. But there are also Black Weddings: a Jewish religious ritual in which a wedding is held between two orphans (or other unfortunate individuals) in a cemetery, under a black canopy instead of the white one normally used. Both the black canopy and the fact the weddings are held in a cemetery symbolize the threat of death posed by the plague. Black Weddings are also called Plague Weddings and one even took place in Israel this year.
[mehr]
Kerstin Pahl
28. April 2020

The pedestrian felt uncomfortable: "it was a most surprising thing, to see those Streets, which were usually so thronged, now grown desolate". However, since the disease had not yet spread to all parts of the city, people were "allarm’d, and unallarm’d again, till it began to be familiar to them" and, eventually, they "began to take Courage and to be, as I may say, a little hardened." [mehr]
Julia Wambach
28. April 2020

Das bislang einzige Geisterspiel in der Geschichte der 1. Fußballbundesliga, bei dem am 11. März 2020 Borussia Mönchengladbach den 1. FC Köln empfing, erregte ungewohnte Gefühle: Borussia Mönchengladbachs Patrick Herrmann sprach von einem "sehr seltsame[n] Feeling" und für den Schiedsrichter Deniz Aytekin war das Spiel "beängstigend", ohne Leidenschaft, etwas würde massiv fehlen (Berliner Morgenpost 19.04.2020, SZ 12.03.2020) Was fehlte waren die Fans, die Emotionen, vor allem die Begeisterung. [mehr]
Helen Ahner
26. April 2022

Online, one can find plenty of advice on how to feel athletic, and even more reasons why such emotions are desirable: They promise success, beauty and health. They help one become “the best version of oneself.” [mehr]
Javier Sadarangani
19. Mai 2021

The emotional impact of the coronavirus pandemic is unquestionable. Along with the feeling of uncertainty produced by the relative novelty of living through a pandemic, there are the feelings inspired by measures that have been set up around the world to deal with it. Regulations promoting relative: isolation, as well as the restriction of public freedoms, have produced anxieties, frustrations, vulnerability, fears, sadness and a series of emotional constellations that are simultaneously difficult to manage. [mehr]
Mika Toyota
10. Dezember 2020

In Japan, if an employee is found to be COVID-positive, their identifiable personal information could be announced company-wide. In some cases, the infected are asked to submit a formal letter of apology to their superior, which comes attached with a detailed account about how he or she was infected; a full acknowledgement about the negative implications for the company, including possible damage to its reputation; and a promise that they would not create troubles for the company again. [mehr]
Bettina Hitzer
4. Dezember 2020

Metaphern spielen eine wesentliche Rolle dafür, wie Krankheitsgefahr und Schutzmaßnahmen erfahren und emotional belegt werden. Viele der Metaphern, die noch heute in der Konfrontation mit Krankheitserregern, Ansteckung und Immunisierung benutzt werden, gehen auf das späte 19. Jahrhundert zurück. [mehr]
Kerstin Pahl
23. November 2020

It is a truism that during the 2020 US presidential election, emotions were running high. On Election Tuesday, politicians, journalists, the electorate, and a large amount of non-Americans were on pins and needles about the outcome. For some time, it was a nail-biter. [mehr]
Rukmini Barua
7. Oktober 2020

In May this year, Kent, a company manufacturing water purifiers ran a coronavirus themed advertising campaign in India. “Are you allowing your maid to knead atta dough by hand? Her hands may be infected,” said the advertisement. Following outrage on social media over its classist and casteist rhetoric, the advertisement has since been taken down. Nevertheless, it is telling of the ways in which the working body is routinely cast as a bearer of pollution—and especially so, during times of disease.   [mehr]
Zur Redakteursansicht