HomeEmotions, masculinities, and violence from the Middle Ages to the present

HomeEmotions, masculinities, and violence from the Middle Ages to the present

Emotions, masculinities, and violence from the Middle Ages to the present

Émotions, masculinités et violences du Moyen Âge à nos jours

*  *  *

Published on Wednesday, October 04, 2023

Abstract

Français English

This conference proposes to question the evolution of violence over the long term. The articulation between masculinities, violence and emotions adopts different forms and stakes according to the historical context in which it occurred. Thus, the symposium will seeks to highlight the cultural stakes and the specific imaginary, as violence is defined in variable ways depending on historical, geographical, and discursive contexts. Therefore, the first objective will be to address the problem of sources: their production varied according to the aeras, which impacts the representation of the relationship between violence, gender and emotions.

Announcement

English Français

Argument

In 2018, Damien Boquet and Dider Lett called on historians to confront emotions "to the challenge of gender" (Boquet, Lett: 2018). As a place of affective exacerbation, imbued with a particularly gendered imaginary, violent acts offer a privileged access to respond to this invitation.

Violence is a social fact that varies in form and intensity depending on the period and the context. As a notion with porous contours, it can be part of interpersonal relations as well as political or social dynamics. The historiography of violence, often apprehended through the prism of law, has initially focused on its criminalization (Castan: 1980, Nassiet: 2011, Porret: 1995, Spierenburg: 2013). Research devoted to the European context has arrived at an unequivocal conclusion: the quantitative analyses based on court records show that condemned acts of violence were largely dominated by gendered dimorphism and marked by a clear male over-representation.

Studying this social fact thus invites the integration of a gender perspective, whose impact was measured on normative constructions as well as on individual perceptions (van der Heijden: 2016, Walker: 2003). Under the impulse of women’s history, and then gender history, historiography has seized upon this category of analysis, whether to interrogate sexual, marital, or women's violence. Gender impacted not only the way in which brutal acts were normalized, practiced and regulated, but it also influenced their very definition.

The over-representation of men invites us to study more specifically at the links between masculinities and violence. In this perspective, it is insufficient to address merely the norms of manhood and the male codes of honor. Indeed, scholars have demonstrated the richness of the intersectional approach which takes into consideration the whole range of social hierarchies. The analysis of norms, experiences and representations in a dynamic and plural way, even within the category of the masculine, would allow us to shed new light on the links between violence and gender.

Tightly tied to sensitive experience, the history of violence would benefit greatly from the contribution brought by the history of emotions, which has grown into a dynamic field of research in constant renewal over the last twenty years. Emotions have long been considered ahistorical since they were referred to as simple bodily mechanisms. This lack of interest stemmed from the dichotomous paradigms that structure Western thought, such as nature-culture, conscious-unconscious, language-experience: they oppose reason and emotions and, as a result, reject the affects in the physiological sphere. In the last few decades, numerous works, notably from medievalists, have taken up the subject of affects and have demonstrated that emotions also evolved according to the historical context (Boquet, Lett: 2018; Nagy: 2018, 2020, 2021; Rosenwein: 2006, 2015, 2017). While the first syntheses on this historiographic field are being published, the links between violence, masculinities and emotions remain little explored (Corbin, Courtine, Vigarello: 2016; Broomhall: 2015).

This conference proposes to question the evolution of violence over the long term. The articulation between masculinities, violence and emotions adopts different forms and stakes according to the historical context in which it occurred. Thus, the symposium will seeks to highlight the cultural stakes and the specific imaginary, as violence is defined in variable ways depending on historical, geographical, and discursive contexts.

Therefore, the first objective will be to address the problem of sources: their production varied according to the aeras, which impacts the representation of the relationship between violence, gender and emotions. How to apprehend male emotions in the archives: using with which documents and applying which methodology? What are the particularities and difficulties posed by this approach? In parallel, what is the emotional experience of historians in front of archives of violence?

Secondly, it will also focus on the role of emotions in the discourse produced on violence. Are emotional experiences mobilized in the narratives, for example to justify men’s violence? To what extent do they echo pre-established narrative structures? What do they say about gender identities and individual strategies? Are they also subject to reappropriation, including by women? Are there gender differences in the testimonies and descriptions?

Thirdly, this conference proposes to look at the role of emotions as a driving force for male involvement in violent actions, whether political or interpersonal. In this perspective, large-scale events (revolutionary moments, collective unrest...) could be studied specifically. Periods of upheaval are also conducive to affective transgressions that lead to a new fluidity in the social and cultural delimitation of gender boundaries.

Programme

Jeudi 19 octobre

09H00 accueil

09H30 introduction : Clarissa Yang (UNIGE), Eléonore Beck (UNIGE)

10H00 Panel 1 Masculinités combattantes

Présidence : Irène Herrmann (UNIGE)

  • Nina Viry (Université de Bourgogne), 1870-1871, quand les soldats vivent et racontent la guerre
  • Pierre Perroton (EHESS), Écriture en fleurs, écriture de poudre, justifier la violence masculine à Paris pendant la Grande Guerre
  • Daniel BAKER (Université de Cardiff), Emotional training and torture in La Milice française during the Vichy Regime (1943-1944)

11H45 pause de midi

13H45 Panel 2 Définir les violences sexuelles

Présidence : Daniela Solfaroli Camillocci (UNIGE)

  • Laure Zhang (UNIGE), La construction du discours judiciaire sur l’émotion et la violence masculines dans les affaires « homosexuelles » en Chine au XVIIIe siècle
  • Marion Philip (EHESS-Paris Sorbonne), Émotions, violences et sexualités masculines : insensibilité ou maîtrise de soi ? (Paris, XVIIe – XVIIIe siècle) Confronter les discours féminins et masculins à propos des émotions des hommes violents
  • Cristina Ferreira (HESAV), « La peur de la virilité ». L’expertise psychiatrique pénale d’auteurs de délits sexuels (1960-1970)

15H30 pause-café

16H00 table ronde. Aux sources de l’histoire des émotions et du genre : objets, épistémologie et expériences d’historiennes

Modération : Anne-Lydie Dubois (UNIGE), Loraine Chappuis (UNIGE)

  • Dolores Martin Moruno (UNIGE)
  • Sylvie Steinberg (EHESS)
  • Sophie Wahnich (CNRS)
  • Lidia Zanetti Domingues (Université de Sheffield)

Vendredi 20 octobre

08H30 accueil

08H45 Panel 3 Colère et maîtrise de soi

Présidence : Fabrice Brandli (UNIGE)

  • Bernard Dauven (Université Catholique de Louvain – Paris 1), Les hommes colériques et violents des rémissions : quelles lectures possibles en termes d’émotions, de continuités et de changements ? (Brabant, XVIe-XVIIe siècles)
  • Marielle Lavenus (Université de Lille), Texte et images : Gérard de Nevers, un héros de roman d’aventures chevaleresques du XVe siècle pris dans les feux de l’amour et de la colère (Bruxelles, KBR, ms. 9631)
  • Noëlle-Laetitia Perret (UNIGE), L’ambassadeur médiéval : une figure « virile » ?

10H30 pause-café

11H00 Panel 4 Les émotions face à la justice

Présidence : Taline Garibian (UNIGE)

  • Joëlle Droux (UNIGE), Une justice sous le coup de l’émotion ? Le traitement pénal des jeunes délinquants au prisme des émotions (Suisse romande, 1910-1960)
  • Mikhaël Moreau (IHM-CHUV-UNIL), Sur les traces des émotions des hommes psychopathes. Apports et limites des archives psychiatriques vaudoises (1940-1970)

12H15 repas de midi

13H45 Panel 5 Violences rituelles, violences sacrées

Présidence : Francesca Arena (UNIGE)

  • Giovanni Ricci (Université de Ferrare), Violence masculine et violence sacrée dans l’Italie de la Renaissance
  • Mathieu Nicati (UNIGE), Souffrir en guerrier ou mourir pour Dieu ? Virilités amérindiennes et jésuites à l’épreuve de la violence rituelle des iroquoiens de Nouvelles-France (1640-ca. 1650)
  • Ju Garry (Université de Bourgogne), Le duel d’honneur chez les combattants Napoléoniens, la peur, la contrainte et la dépendance

15H30 mot de clôture

Informations

The conference will be held on October 19 and 20, 2023 in Geneva.

Contact: clarissa.yang@unige.ch; eleonore.beck@unige.ch.

Scientific organizing committee

  • Francesca Arena
  • Camille Bajeux
  • Eléonore Beck
  • Loraine Chappuis
  • Anne-Lydie Dubois
  • Taline Garibian
  • Clarissa Yang

Places

  • Musée Voltaire
    Geneva, Switzerland

Event attendance modalities

Full on-site event


Date(s)

  • Thursday, October 19, 2023
  • Friday, October 20, 2023

Keywords

  • émotion, masculinité, violence

Contact(s)

  • Clarissa Yang
    courriel : clarissa [dot] yang [at] unige [dot] ch

Information source

  • Eléonore Beck
    courriel : eleonore [dot] beck [at] unige [dot] ch

License

CC0-1.0 This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.

To cite this announcement

« Emotions, masculinities, and violence from the Middle Ages to the present », Conference, symposium, Calenda, Published on Wednesday, October 04, 2023, https://doi.org/10.58079/1bxj

Archive this announcement

  • Google Agenda
  • iCal
Search OpenEdition Search

You will be redirected to OpenEdition Search