Ugly Intimacies and State Power: Separation Processes in Late Nineteenth-century Denmark
Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
Standard
Ugly Intimacies and State Power : Separation Processes in Late Nineteenth-century Denmark. / Vallgårda, Karen Asta Arnfred.
In: Gender & History, Vol. 33, No. 1, 2021, p. 111-128.Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
Harvard
APA
Vancouver
Author
Bibtex
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
T1 - Ugly Intimacies and State Power
T2 - Separation Processes in Late Nineteenth-century Denmark
AU - Vallgårda, Karen Asta Arnfred
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - This article is about the complicated intertwinements of state power, bureaucratic practices and the gendered formation of emotions in separation processes. Historians have long argued that ‘emotional regimes’ aim at regulating the emotional behaviour of different groups of people, and gender historians have demonstrated that marriage is crucial in shaping people's cognitive, social, sexual and economic possibilities in fundamentally gendered ways. This article contributes to these lines of research by suggesting that in order to understand the complex and variable nature of the state and the centrality of emotions to its gendered exercise of power, we need to interrogate the many local everyday interactions between state representatives and ordinary citizens in a variety of contexts. Concentrating on one of the public/private arenas in which these exchanges take place, the article examines separation cases from late nineteenth-century Denmark. It employs the concept of ‘emotional formation’ to argue that the state played a central role in shaping the contestants’ emotional dispositions in deeply gendered ways. Yet, this was not a top-down operation, but rather a multi-vocal process in which the boundaries between appropriate and inacceptable gendered emotional behaviour were a site of contestation.
AB - This article is about the complicated intertwinements of state power, bureaucratic practices and the gendered formation of emotions in separation processes. Historians have long argued that ‘emotional regimes’ aim at regulating the emotional behaviour of different groups of people, and gender historians have demonstrated that marriage is crucial in shaping people's cognitive, social, sexual and economic possibilities in fundamentally gendered ways. This article contributes to these lines of research by suggesting that in order to understand the complex and variable nature of the state and the centrality of emotions to its gendered exercise of power, we need to interrogate the many local everyday interactions between state representatives and ordinary citizens in a variety of contexts. Concentrating on one of the public/private arenas in which these exchanges take place, the article examines separation cases from late nineteenth-century Denmark. It employs the concept of ‘emotional formation’ to argue that the state played a central role in shaping the contestants’ emotional dispositions in deeply gendered ways. Yet, this was not a top-down operation, but rather a multi-vocal process in which the boundaries between appropriate and inacceptable gendered emotional behaviour were a site of contestation.
U2 - 10.1111/1468-0424.12449
DO - 10.1111/1468-0424.12449
M3 - Tidsskriftartikel
VL - 33
SP - 111
EP - 128
JO - Gender & History
JF - Gender & History
SN - 0953-5233
IS - 1
ER -
ID: 232389769