Feelings Materialized

Emotions, Bodies, and Things in Germany, 1500–1950

Derek Hillard, Heikki Lempa, Russell A. Spinney, Derek Hillard, Heikki Lempa, Russell A. Spinney

• Editore: Berghahn Books
• Anno: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781789205527
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: History
• Categoria: German History

Of the many innovative approaches to emerge during the twenty-first century, one of the most productive has been the interdisciplinary nexus of theories and methodologies broadly defined as "the study of emotions." While this conceptual toolkit has generated significant insights, it has overwhelmingly focused on emotions as linguistic and semantic phenomena. This edited volume looks instead to the material aspects of emotion in German culture, encompassing the body, literature, photography, aesthetics, and a variety of other themes.

PART I

Emotions and Bodies

CHAPTER 1

Mesmerizing Encounters

Affect and Animal Magnetism

SARA LULY

Animal magnetic case studies tell the stories of bodies: bodies in pain, bodies experiencing relief, bodies reacting to objects, as well as bodies experiencing physiological and psychological connections across time and space. A healing technique created by Franz Anton Mesmer at the end of the eighteenth century, animal magnetism sought to undermine Cartesian dualism by theorizing a connection between mind and body as well as self and environment. Mesmer proposed that universal fluids (All-Flut) connected all living and nonliving things, and argued that certain types of illness were caused by obstructions in a patient’s body that prevented the correct flow of universal fluid. Such patients could be healed by an animal magnetist (often shortened to “magnetist”)—a practitioner of sorts who redirected these fluids, thus removing the blockage and restoring health. What began with Mesmer’s practice in Vienna—and later Paris—spread quickly throughout Western Europe and the United States, leading to medical treatises, literary depictions of magnetism, and plenty of scandals. In the case studies and treatises of animal magnetists, we see many of the same themes that are addressed in this edited volume, namely the interconnectivity of objects and bodies as well as the way in which those interconnectivities are manifested physically in embodied affective responses.¹

In this chapter, I propose that animal magnetism is an eighteenth-century attempt to conceptualize affect and affective relationships between people and things, one that emphasizes the embodied qualities of affect. When we look at the case studies of animal magnetists, affect is apparent in multiple ways, three of which will be the focus of the chapter. First, affect appears as rapport, which is the positive connection between patient and doctor believed to be the prerequisite to successful magnetism. Second, affect establishes the authenticity of the magnetism (and thus of the magnetist) through the patient’s ability to feel certain sensations considered abnormal in a healthy state. Third, affect provides language with which patients could control emotional interfamily relationships and gender hierarchies within the family. To address these three affective aspects, I will analyze Eberhard Gmelin’s case study of Herr Reichardt from Materialien für die Anthropologie, a collection of animal magnetic and psychological case studies published in 1791.² Through a close reading of this case study, I will illustrate how animal magnetism provides a discourse to conceptualize and describe affective relationships between the patient, other people, objects, and their surroundings.

Although the relationship of animal magnetism to modern notions of affect has not been addressed in the secondary literature, several scholars have examined a related line of inquiry, namely the role of animal magnetism and somnambulism in expressing socially taboo emotions and desires. When in a magnetic state, patients were not believed to have the same degree of control over their actions and words as when they were awake. For this reason, any behavior that would be viewed as inappropriate in the waking state was excused while magnetized. Several scholars have discussed the subversive potential of this position, analyzing the way in which female patients used their role as somnambulist to articulate feelings and desires that were socially unacceptable.³ Jürgen Barkhoff identifies how animal magnetism enabled female patients to act out “feelings and attitudes that were strongly tabooed by society,” using Gmelin’s case study of Lisette who, while magnetized, would recommend treatment techniques with erotic overtones.⁴ In her work on Justus Kerner’s Seherin von Prevorst, Bettina Gruber recognizes the potential of animal magnetism to invert traditional structures of power between doctor and patient.⁵ She points to the relative passivity of the doctor during magnetism, and the active role that the female patient played in diagnosing and treating her body as well as shaping magnetic theory.⁶ Other scholars have examined how literary depictions of magnetism construct or undermine heteronormative gender roles.⁷

This secondary literature has several shortcomings with regard to discussions of affect. First, current scholarship focuses on the sociocultural construction of gender in magnetism and does not sufficiently address the embodied, affective elements.⁸ This results in readings in which parts of the body become visible to the extent that they are sexualized, but the body as a whole remains largely invisible. Second, there is a tendency in secondary literature to focus on female patients, thus overlooking the male embodied experience. The case studies of male patients allow for an examination of multiple masculinities, including the experiences of male bodies whose masculinity challenged heteronormative gendered expectations.

Affect and Animal Magnetism

Both “affect” and “animal magnetism” are terms with contested definitions, in part because of their contradictory usages in different times and contexts. For this reason, each warrants a brief definition here. I am using the term “affect” to refer to an embodied sensation closely related to emotion, similar to Brian Massumi’s usage.⁹ However, I differ from Massumi’s strict separation between affect and emotion. He defines affect as preconscious intensity felt in/on the body¹⁰ and distinguishes it from emotion, which he defines as “qualified intensity,” the “sociolinguistic fixing of the quality of an experience.”¹¹ For Massumi, affect is notoriously difficult to discuss, as it cannot be “qualified” and therefore “is not ownable or recognizable and is thus resistant to critique.”¹² Many theorists have rejected the strict division between affect and emotion on the basis of cognition. Ruth Leys, for example, argues that Massumi’s theories are based on an idealized, and ultimately incorrect, separation of body and mind, so that body can experience something completely independent from the mind.¹³ My use of the term departs from Massumi’s strict separation in a similar way.

Since animal magnetism challenged the body/mind division by theorizing in spatial and embodied terms the connection between object, body, mind, and sensation, any strict separation of body and mind is ahistorical and cannot be applied to animal magnetism. In addition, the cognitive/noncognitive distinction Massumi makes is not in keeping with the way that magnetists theorized cognition and consciousness. By virtue of describing their sensations, somnambulists would have, according to Massumi, already moved from precognitive affect to “nameable” emotion. Given, however, that animal magnetic theory viewed somnambulism as a state separate from normal cognition, one in which the patient had unmediated access to nature including the workings of their body and mind, then it does not make sense to speak of their utterances as either precognitive or cognitive. In the end, I use the term “affect” here to refer to an embodied sensation and reject an affect/emotion dichotomy based in cognition, recognizing that magnetists sought the connection of mind and body.

The terminology of animal magnetism poses its own problems due to its inconsistency, both in the late eighteenth/early nineteenth centuries and in modern discussions. Franz Anton Mesmer refers to his theory of healing as “animal magnetism” (tierisches Magnetismus), differentiating it from “mineral magnetism” (magnetism between metals). The term “mesmerism” quickly emerged, however, emphasizing the role that Mesmer’s personality played in spreading animal magnetism. While the term for one who practices animal magnetism is almost always “magnetist” (in later periods, “mesmerist” enters fashion), the person who is magnetized has several names, including ­somnambulist and magnetic sleep-talker (magnetischer Schlafredner). In the texts under investigation, all these terms are used interchangeably, and I will be using “animal magnetism” (often shortened to “magnetism”).

Case Study: Herr Reichardt

One of Gmelin’s case studies in Materialien is that of Herr Reichardt, a twenty-four-year-old man of delicate constitution who presents with attacks of severe cramping in his throat, chest, and lower abdomen, as well as episodes of lameness.¹⁴ His constitution is weak, Gmelin suggests, because of the material and emotional conditions in which he was raised—namely, that he was coddled as a child, protected against “every little breeze,” and “had free choice to enjoy every tasty delicacy.”¹⁵ Herr Reichardt is feminized here and throughout the text, in part to explain his receptivity to animal magnetism. Many magnetists believed that women were most easily magnetized because of their natural passivity, a characteristic that is extended to sickly, weak men (such as Reichardt) as well as children.

Reichardt describes the experience of being magnetized in positive affective terms: “whenever I [Gmelin] manipulate [Reichardt], he vividly feels that something flows out of the tips of my fingers and into him, something that calms his nerves, animates and warms his entire body.”¹⁶ Here, the verb “to manipulate” names the process of magnetizing. The unnamed “something” (etwas) stands in for the animal magnetic force moving into and through his body. This warm, calming, and also animating force moves from one body to the other, forming a connection between the men that is perceived to be physiological and characterized by positive affect. Embodied sensations of warmth verify the presence of magnetic fluids, and the fact that Reichardt “feels” something flowing into him, instead of merely seeing it, emphasizes the sensory, unmediated nature of the experience. The barriers between internal and external world are clear and emphasized by the fingertips. At the same time, at the moment of magnetism, the two men’s bodies and spirits are linked through an invisible fluid, suggesting the temporary fluidity of these barriers. In this way, we see an example of how animal magnetism both challenges the strict division between inside and outside, which was characteristic of Innerlichkeit, while relying on inside/outside barriers such as the skin to conceptualize the flow of animal magnetism.¹⁷

Oftentimes, objects were used to forge affective magnetic connections. Magnetists employed at times a variety of “magnetized objects” in their practice, including glasses of water, pieces of glass, and baquets,¹⁸ while at other times, only passes of their hand were used to create the desired effect. The ability of animal magnetic fluids to “stick” to certain objects and circulate with those objects highlights a moment of intersection between animal magnetism and affect theory. While animal magnetic fluids were conceptualized in more material terms than affect, both theories are interested in the circulation of objects and their relationship to the affect that people experience when interacting with these objects.

For example, Gmelin studies Herr Reichardt’s reactions to metals, a common animal magnetic experiment. These experiments occur in the text after Gmelin asks Herr Reichardt if there is any way to differentiate between true magnetism and faked magnetism, suggesting that the purpose of this experiment was to establish the validity of Herr Reichardt’s magnetized condition. Gmelin writes, “I placed silver in his hand; he could not hold it long due to the disagreeable (widerlich) impression it made, copper made an even more disagreeable impression, so that he complained of pain ...

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I. Emotions and Bodies
• Part II. Emotions, Spaces, and Material Interests
• Part III. Emotions and Things
• Index