Our Emotional Make-Up

by Vinciane Despret

"Broken hearts, edgy nerves, tightened throats - our emotions grab and take hold of us. But if our emotions appear obvious to us, are they necessarily real or universal? This is what researchers in physiology and psychology often assert, but they will ultimately be disappointed." "Vinciane Despret shows how some of our emotions, precisely those we thought were a natural part of our makeup, do not exist unless they have been inscribed in our subjectivity through the mediation of culture." "Our emotions, then, exist only within our relations to others. Anthropologists and ethnologists often return from distant regions and remote islands with emotions unknown to their peers at home, which can only be expressed in the tribal tongue they have learned. Following such discoveries, one should not be surprised to find that anger does not exist among the Uktus, and the Ikfalus have to teach fear to their children." "One only has to consider the emotions of other societies and traditions to recog