Doing Emotions History

Chapter 8. Emotion and Political Change

CHaPtEr 8 Emotion anD PolitiCal CHangE n i Co lE EustaC E From Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke, to Jürgen Habermas, social theorists have long argued that political transformations rest on a foundation of reasoned public critiques. Habermas contended that widespread public debate about—and criticism of—official government policies first developed in the seventeenthandeighteenthcenturiesthroughaprocessofrationaldisputation conducted via the press. For Habermas, emotion had no part to play in this idealized political process. Instead, he applauded “the critical judgment of the public making use of its reason.” From his contemporary eighteenth-century vantagepoint,Bolingbroketoosawlittleefficacyinemotion.Hefamouslyurged readers to “contemplate ourselves, and others, and all things of this world . . . through the medium of pure, and if I may say so, of undefiled reason.” But, he also lamented that “reason has so little, and ignorance, passion, interest and custom, so much to do in forming our opinions.” He was thus not entirely sanguineinhisassessmentofthecommonpeople ’scapacityforrationalobjection.1 TakingBolingbroke’sprescriptionasdescription,Habermasstakedtheclaim that “Bolingbroke . . . propounded the relationship of private and public interests as the relationship of court and country, of ‘in power’ and ‘out of power,’ of pleasure and happiness, passion and reason.” For Habermas, this list of contrastingpairsmadeclearthatreasonwasthecriticalweaponofchoiceforthose “outofpower”whosoughttopromotethetrue“publicinterest.”IfBolingbroke had posited a certain correlation between political corruption at court and the 164 n i Co l E EUs taCE indulgenceofluxuryandpassion,Habermasultimatelyinterpretedthistomean that effective political opposition rested on reason alone.2 Nevertheless,the revolutionarytransformationsthatswepttheeighteenthcentury Atlantic in the decades after Bolingbroke’s death gave lie to both his predictions and to Habermas’s later reflections on the course of events. In fact, from the American Revolution to the French Revolution to the Haitian Revolution, from the rise of eighteenth-century republicanism to the emergence of nineteenth-century nationalism, emotion would prove pivotal to political change. Whether animating the spirit of freedom or sparking action on behalf of the nation, emotion was, by definition, central to patriotism in all its dynamic forms. Emotion anD rEason in tHEory anD PraCtiCE: tHE EigHtEEntH CEntury One of the first and most dramatic political changes of the eighteenth century, the American Revolution, did not rely on the rational to the exclusion of the emotional.Instead,asanumberofhistorianshaverecentlystressed,theupheavals of the revolutionary era grew from a carefully calibrated blend of emotion andreason.InherworkSensibilityandtheAmericanRevolution,historianSarah Knott affirms that for revolutionary Americans, “cognition and emotion were understoodasnecessarilyintertwinedandboundtogether.”Indeed,whileemphasizing the crucial role of print in the spread of political ideas and alliances, Knott rejects the notion that print was the exclusive realm of reason, insisting tothecontraryontheimportanceof“sentimentalprint.”Sheexplainsthat“the story of sensibility and the world of print in the turmoil of imperial crisis and independenceisprimarilyoneofpopularization.”InKnott’swell-documented account,sentimentalprintculturewasakeyconduitfortheformationofpublic opinion. In responding to Habermas’s claims about the centrality of reason to the rise of public opposition, it is essential to measure his assertions against the revolutionary ideas and events of the enlightenment era.3 In Passion Is the Gale: Emotion, Power and the Coming of the American Revolution , I demonstrate that American revolutionaries explicitly rejected the traditional associations between passion and sin propounded by theorists like Bolingbroke. Instead, eighteenth-century British Americans relied on the assurancesofwriterslikeAlexanderPope ,whoofferedthemtherhyme“Onlife’s vast ocean, diversely we sail / Reason the card [compass], but passion is the gale.” The force of emotion gave power to the human will, put wind in people’s sails. Contradicting the widespread notion that passions were private and use- 165 Emotion and Political Change ful only in advancing personal interests at the expense of the common good, Pope asserted that “reason and passion answer one great aim.” With reason to guide people’s ideas, emotion could propel them to implement them. Nor would indulgence of emotion lead people to luxuriate in sin for, Pope insisted, “trueself-loveandsocial[love]arethesame.”Individualambitionbroughtthe promise of collective progress. For revolutionary Americans, these proved to be inspiring words.4 Up and down the social spectrum, eighteenth-century British Americans came to see emotion as an essential animating force for social and political change. As emotion’s moral valence changed, social attitudes were likewise transformed.Solongasindividualisticpassionwasassociatedprimarilywithsin, itremainedlinkedtoservility.Facedwithanyrebelliononthepartofmembers of subordinate groups, from runaway servant women to restive backcountry vigilantes,leadingcolonialmenwerelikelytoridiculetheirprotestsastheproduct of unbridled passion rather than respect them as the legitimate response to injustice.Thosewhowereslavestotheirownpassionsdeservedtoinhabitsubservientrolesinsociety .Yetinthesociallyunsettledatmosphereofeighteenthcentury British America, the attractions of individualism, of opportunities to follow one’s passions and rise in the world, proved irresistible to all. Even members of the putative local elite (who should have been most interested in maintaining a fixed communal order...