Negotiating Truth:Semmelweis, Discourse on Hand Hygiene and the Politics of Emotions

This project will advance a new concept of understanding politics through emotions. The main argument is that emotions are key to politics because they frame the establishment of "truth" through their relationship with discourse. Current poststructuralist political theories on truth cannot sufficiently explain how discourses develop to "be true" because these theories overlook the negotiation between discourse and emotions. Emotions develop along with discourses but, reciprocally, affect them because they organize values and beliefs (Norval 2007, Solomon 1976 or Tappolet 2000). The aims to fill this gap by framing the figure of "truth" as seen from the perspective of poststructuralist political theory (Glynos & Howarth 2008, Howarth 2000 or Norval 2007), knowledge-oriented approaches in social studies of science (Barnes & Dupré 2008, Latour & Woolgar 1979, Jasanoff 2005 or Woolgar 2002), and discourse linguistics (Charaudeau 2000, Kerbrat-Orecchioni 1999). It elaborates a concept of politics, in which the relationship between discourse and emotions is negotiated, organizes values and beliefs and associates actors. By focusing on the "negotiation," we can explain how truth comes to being and then work toward a novel notion of power through which politics operates. The will look at a key medical dispute of the 19th century, initiated by Viennese gynecologist Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis. Semmelweis claimed that "childbed fever," a disease that afflicted many women giving birth in hospitals, could originate in the fact that doctors did not wash their hands before assisting in the birth. His thesis grew into a dispute over the duty of hand washing among physicians. The Semmelweis case demonstrates that a practice of hand washing, which has become implicit in Western medical practice, once was a matter for scientific dispute. The project will put this historical dispute in the light of the current medical evidence concerning hand washing in order to show how discourses develop over time along with their negotiation of emotions. The project will, first, synthesize three intellectual traditions - poststructuralism, STS and discourse linguistics - and argue that truth comes into being through the negotiation of discourses and emotions. Emotions are neither causal factors nor urges motivating actions (foreseen by Barbalet 2002, Edwards 1997, and mentioned by Jasper 2006): the project defines emotions as communicated experiences of values and beliefs that are inherent to discourses but that also affect them. For that reason, and second, the project will work toward a concept of truth that is a negotiation of discourse and the communicated experience of that discourse that is detractable through emotions. Third, the project will analyze Semmelweis`s dispute and its echo in the current public health discourse on hand washing. Through analysis of images, research protocols, correspondence, symbolic objects, manuscripts, scientific debates, biographical work, and the current scientific debate over the necessity of hand washing, in which Semmelweis appears as a point of reference and even an icon, the analysis illustrates how the truth about hand washing came to be revealed. The analysis will explain what impeded Semmelweis`s introduction of hand washing in his era and why, in ironic contrast, Semmelweis is today used as an icon of the current public health discourse on the necessity of hand washing.

Truth is a central instrument of politics: it divides actors into advocates and opponents, it creates committers and victims. The project combines political science and science and technology studies to redefine truth as a negotiation of emotions and facts. The way our societies treat factual knowledge as opposed to emotions and the way we talk about emotions in science and politics identify the range of actors, entitled to pronounce public concerns, and to negotiate truth. Emotions role in truth production was neglected by the political analyses so far, which had the effect that political scientists were surprised by the phenomenon of "post-truth". Post-truth - the recently coined term to describe raging against expertise and undermining of truth in western democracies - shows the need for a deeper understanding of how truth gets legitimized in politics. The trend of post-truth has united scientists and civil society in a public defence of truth: scientific journals praised the rationality of science, scientists held protests to defend truth and fact-checker sites spread across the western media world rapidly. However, this battle on truth may already have been lost to what the project calls a binary of facts and emotions. This binary is a thought construction that treats emotions as ultimately opposed to facts. The binary becomes a powerful tool to privilege some types of knowledge and some types of arguments. Specific way of referring to emotions in public debates is a substantive part of it. The analyses done in the project explain the consequences this binary has for the role of truth in modern democracies because they show how emotions operate inside scientific knowledge but get covered through the alleged neutrality of science in order to get legitimized in modern politics. The famous historical controversy around Ignaz Semmelweis over the duty of hand disinfection is one example of how truth comes to being. Ignaz Semmelweis` assumption that the disinfection of the hands of physicians leads to a significant reduction of childbirth fever - a fatal and widespread disease in the 19th century among mothers - reveals a political moment of truth. It shows that societal stereotypes, Semmelweis emotional behaviour and power games were decisive for the controversy. His truth was subversive because every scientific truth is subversive, and it was also partisan because every scientific finding takes side by bringing facts in the debate. The project compared these findings against the analysis of scientists protests against the Trump presidency during 2017 that were discussing truth and its neutrality. The analysis uncovers that while truth gets legitimized through the alleged neutrality of science, this neutrality is in fact created by a binary of factual knowledge and emotions. The project thus extends its findings to a general societal debate on a necessity to reflect on the values and beliefs of civil society scientists create and redefine through their discoveries.