Special Session

Shifting Perspectives / Languages and Linguistics

Carina Breidenbach (University of Munich)
Cari@****.com (Log-in to reveal)

Literature affects us emotionally and can thereby shift our perspectives. For one, it can help us develop "emotional literacy." Through modulations of narrative voice/focalisation, literature can, for example, teach us empathy by allowing us to adopt unfamiliar perspectives, or reflect upon the emotional impasses and contradictions faced by marginalized or "othered" individuals or groups. Vice versa, our emotions affect the way we write and read literature and can shift our interpretative perspectives. Furthermore, literature participates in shifting perspectives on specific emotions, e.g. by renegotiating previously disavowed or vilified emotions (e.g. the vocalisation of "female rage" by contemporary women writers). The importance of considering emotions in literary studies was emphasized by a major shift of perspective in our discipline: the "affective turn". This panel examines the manifold interrelations of literature and emotion(s) from diverse perspectives and welcomes both exemplary readings and theoretical approaches to literary "affect studies."

The "affective turn" marked one of the major theoretical and methodological shifts in perspective in the recent history of literary studies. This panel will offer an opportunity to examine the manifold interrelations between literature and emotion and welcomes exemplary readings of literary texts as well as theoretical approaches to literary "affect studies".

Literature affects us emotionally and can thereby profoundly shift our perspectives, expand our horizons or cause us to question our beliefs and opinions by employing literary techniques of defamiliarization or undermining (genre-specific) expectations. Literary texts can negotiate the ambiguities and complexities of emotions in a highly nuanced way and help us develop our "emotional literacy", that is our ability to read, understand and cope with our own emotions and those of others. Through modulations of narrative voice and focalisation, literature can, for example, teach us empathy by allowing us to adopt unfamiliar perspectives, or reflect upon the emotional impasses, contradictions and precarities faced by marginalized or "othered" individuals or groups (e.g. recent representations of neurodivergent people in literature/film that challenge derogatory stereotypes such as the presumed, unfeelingness’ or, lack of empathy’ of individuals on the Autism spectrum).

Vice versa, our emotions can affect the way we write, read and respond to literature and shift our interpretative perspectives, thereby always making our readings of texts subjective to a certain degree.

Furthermore, literature can participate in shifting the perspectives on specific emotions, e.g. by critically renegotiating emotions that were previously disavowed (cf. "ugly feelings" [Ngai, 2005]) or deemed "unacceptable" (e.g. the vocalisation of "female rage" by contemporary authors such as Ottessa Moshfegh or Rachel Yoder, or the critical subversion of the pejorative trope of the "Angry Black Woman" by Black women writers). By studying literary representations of emotions from comparative and diachronic perspectives, we can also gain insight into the cultural variability, historicity and social constructedness of emotions (for example the history of romantic love that has been and is still written by literary discourse to a significant degree, or the historically changing prevalence of certain collective emotions such as paranoia or nostalgia) .

In addition to discussions of emotions in and towards texts and the role of literature in the constitution, definition and renegotiation of emotions, the panel also aims to consider the significance of new developments in cognitive- and neuroscience for our ever-shifting discipline (e.g. empiric studies of emotional reader response or the neuroscience of embodiment).