Emotion and the Formation of Colonial Mentalities

This project examines the role of emotion in the portrayal of cross-cultural relationships during the early phases of European empire building. Concentrating on representations of cultural difference in scientific and imaginative accounts published from eighteenth and nineteenth-century journeys of exploration, it examines the threat to identity posed by expansionist aspirations. This project addresses an important gap in current research when it discusses emotion as a seminal but still insufficiently understood factor in the development of cultural hierarchies. It proposes to apply techniques from cognitive psychology to the study of emotional conflicts pervading early descriptions of cross-cultural encounters. Detailed interpretation of a broad range of literary and non-literary texts will explain how the explorers of the long eighteenth century resolved the conflicting emotions triggered by strongly divergent cultures. A cognitive analysis of the source material will examine the subliminal processes behind the development of a proto-colonial mentality in order to shed light on the role of voyaging accounts as instruments of colonial propaganda. The project will produce a single-authored monograph by the chief investigator and a jointly edited collection of essays. The two applicants will also establish an interdisciplinary forum for graduate students and staff at the University of Vienna, titled "Writing Emotion - Writing Cultural Difference". This forum will make a special effort to encourage postgraduate students to articulate their responses to cutting-edge research on the representation of emotion. In particular, it will offer junior academics opportunities of discussing written work in preparation for publication. This project`s affiliation with two interconnected, international networks devoted to the study of emotion (the "Languages of Emotion" Cluster of Excellence at Free University of Berlin and the Australian "History of the Emotions" Centre of Excellence at the University of Western Australia and the University of Queensland) will provide an informed context for the two investigators to develop innovative research methods for studying the representation of emotion. This new methodology will be presented at two seminal conferences organised by the networks on emotion (University of Western Australia, Perth, June 2011, and University of Queensland, Brisbane, July 2011); and it will be developed at a conference organised by the two co-investigators of this project at the University of Vienna in July 2012. Intensive cooperation with distinguished international academics in the study of emotion will add a new dimension to the intellectual landscape of the University of Vienna and enhance the standard of Austrian research of literary and cultural history.