Shame and Its Sisters

by Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky; Frank, Adam; Alexander, Irving E.

• ISBN13: 9780822316947
• ISBN10: 0822316943
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1995-11-01
• Publisher: Duke Univ Pr

Summary

The question of affect is central to critical theory, psychology, politics, and the entire range of the humanities; but no discipline, including psychoanalysis, has offered a theory of affect that would be rich enough to account for the delicacy and power, the evanescence and durability, the bodily rootedness and the cultural variability of human emotion.SilvanTomkins (19111991) was one of the most radical and imaginative psychologists of the twentieth century. InAffect, Imagery, Consciousness, a four-volume work published over the last thirty years of his life, Tomkins developed an ambitious theory of affect steeped in cybernetics and systems theory as well as in psychoanalysis, ethology, and neuroscience. The implications of his conceptually daring and phenomenologically suggestive theory are only now-in the context of postmodernism-beginning to be understood. WithShame and Its Sisters, editors Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Adam Frank make available for the first time an engaging and accessible selection of Tomkinsrs"s work. Featuring intensive examination of several key affects, particularly shame and anger, this volume contains many of Tomkinsrs"s most haunting, diagnostically incisive, and theoretically challenging discussions. An introductory essay by the editors places Tomkinsrs"s work in the context of postwar information technologies and will prompt a reexamination of some of the underlying assumptions of recent critical work in cultural studies and other areas of the humanities. The text is also accompanied by a biographical sketch of Tomkins by noted psychologist Irving E. Alexander, Tomkinsrs"s longtime friend and collaborator.

Table of Contents

Shame in the Cybernetic Fold: Reading Silvan Tomkins

A Note on the Text

What Are Affects?

Interest-Excitement

Enjoyment-Joy

Surprise-Startle

Distress-Anguish

Shame-Humiliation and Contempt-Disgust

Script Theory and Nuclear Scripts

Anger

Fear-Terror

Perception: The Body Image and Phantom Limbs

Silvan S. Tomkins: A Biographical Sketch

Index

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