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Incarnating Feelings,

Constructing Communities
Experiencing Emotions via

Education, Violence, and

Public Policy in the Americas

Edited by

Ana María Forero Angel

Catalina González Quintero

Allison B. Wolf

Incarnating Feelings, Constructing Communities

“Emotions engender emotions. And, working with emotions in the

academic con-

text is a very serious and complex endeavor because they put the
researcher (he or

she) in the challenging situation of recognizing themselves as

embodied subjects

who also feel. This is probably one of the reasons why they too
often receive insuf-

ficient attention—both as objects of study and philosophical inquiry.

But emotions

are important inquiries of study and they are significant as a way of

knowing, creat-

ing and being in the world. The collection that Allison B. Wolf,
Catalina González
Quintero and Ana María Forero Angel have put together is a brave
and wonderful

example of how remarkable, stimulating and productive the

challenge of taking

emotions seriously in philosophy, anthropology and in daily life can

be.”

—Gabriela Arguedas Ramírez, Associate Professor of Philosophy and

Faculty Member of the Center for Research in Women’s Studies,

University of Costa Rica

“We know injustice when we feel it. Our emotional responses to

structural vio-

lence, cruelty, tyranny, and intolerance have epistemic content. They

not only tell

us about the kinds of people we are, they also call attention to the
texture of our

engagements with the emotional climate of world-wide uncertainty.

We frequently

restrain our emotional responses to violence and harm. We are

socialized to ignore

what our embodied reactions are trying to tell us during intellectual

conversations

on injustice. These expressions of willful ignorance take the

knowledge present in

our angry, fearful, or guilty responses out of circulation. When we

restrain our
emotions we flatten our collective engagement with the issues we
care about most.

Incarnating Feelings, Constructing Communities, highlights the

importance of

attending to this affective content that moves silently, often without

notice,

through our public policy discussions, lived experiences with state

violence, and in

classrooms where students push back against ideas that make them
feel uncomfort-

able. This remarkable collection of essays highlights the important

role that our

emotional responses to injustice play in the production of meaning in

conversa-

tions related to violence, education, and public policy in South

America and the

United States. The essays in this collection work together to

illustrate how collec-

tive attention to the affective dimensions of these issues pushes

these conversations

onto new epistemic terrains that reveal more nuanced and promising
directions for

future inquiry.”

—Alison Bailey, Professor of Philosophy, Illinois State University, USA

Ana María Forero Angel

Catalina González Quintero

Allison B. Wolf

Editors

Incarnating Feelings,

Constructing

Communities

Experiencing Emotions via Education, Violence,

and Public Policy in the Americas

Editors

Ana María Forero Angel

Catalina González Quintero

Department of Anthropology,
Department of Philosophy,

Universidad de los Andes

Universidad de los Andes

Bogotá, Colombia

Bogotá, Colombia

Allison B. Wolf

Department of Philosophy and

Center of Migration Studies

Universidad de los Andes

Bogotá, Colombia

ISBN

978-3-030-57110-8 ISBN

978-3-030-57111-5 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57111-5

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive

licence to Springer

Nature Switzerland AG 2021

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively
licensed by the

Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned,

specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting,
reproduction on

microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or

information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer
software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now

known or hereafter developed.

The use of general descriptive names, registered names,

trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply,
even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are

exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and

therefore free for general use.

The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that
the advice and information

in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of

publication. Neither the

publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed

or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any
errors or omissions that may have been made. The

publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in

published maps and

institutional affiliations.

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered

company Springer Nature

Switzerland AG.

The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham,

Switzerland
Acknowledgments

As with any major project, this book would not have been possible
with-

out the hard work and support of so many. We would all like to
thank the

entire editorial staff at Palgrave Macmillan, especially Mary Al-Sayeed

for

believing in our vision from the very beginning, and both Madison
Allums

and Arun Prasath for all of their help as we have brought the project
to

fruition. We also would like to thank the School of Social Sciences

and our

colleagues in Anthropology and Philosophy at Universidad de los

Andes.

In particular, we want to recognize the School of Social Sciences for

pro-

viding financial support to Ana María Forero’s and Catalina

González’s

original research project, “Narratives and Rhetoric of Emotions in

Colombian Career Soldiers,” which served as the foundation for this

col-

lection. We also thank Felipe Zárate Guerrero for all of his astute
attention
to detail and patience as we finalized the manuscript. Last, but not
least,

we would like to thank our families for their support through this,
and so

many other, endeavors.

contents

1 Introduction: The Force of Emotions

Ana María Forero Angel, Catalina González Quintero, and

Allison B. Wolf

Part I Emotional Communities in Contexts of Violence

13

2 The Emotional Turn in Colombian Experiences of Violence

15

Myriam Jimeno

3 Understanding Emotions in Members of Societally

Powerful Institutions: Emotional Events and Communities

in the Narratives of Colombian Soldiers

41

Ana María Forero Angel and Catalina González Quintero

Part II Teaching Emotions: White Fragility and the

Emotional Weight of Epistemic Resistance

67

4 Moral Development and Racial Education: How We

Socialize White Children and Construct White Fragility

69

Sonya Charles

vii

viii CONTENTS

5 Epistemic Pushback and Harm to Educators

93

Gaile Pohlhaus, Jr.

Part III Constructing Emotions in Public Policy and

Discourse

115

6 “Quit Trying to Make Us Feel Teary-Eyed for the

Children!” Constructions of Emotion, Anger, and

Immigration Injustice 117

Allison B. Wolf

7 Staging Guilt and Forgiveness in Colombian Mass Media:

Transactional Forgiveness and the Effacement of Victims 151

Julieta Escobar and Santiago Roa

8 Awkward Ruins: Topophilia and the Narratives of

Stripping in Santiago and Bogotá 183

Andrés Góngora and Francisca Márquez

notes on contributors

Ana María Forero Angel is Associate Professor of Anthropology at

Universidad de los Andes. She completed her doctoral studies at the

Universitá degli Studi La Sapienza, Roma, Italia, and holds degrees

in

philosophy and anthropology from Universidad de los Andes. Her

research

interests include the anthropology of emotions, political

anthropology,

and anthropology of the state and elites. She is author of the book
The

Colonel Has No One to Listen to Him: An Anthropological Approach

to

Military Narratives (2017) as well as many articles, including, “El

Ejército

Nacional de Colombia y sus heridas: una aproximación a las

narrativas
militares de dolor y desilusión,” published in Antípoda (2017), and
“La

invención del orden en las narrativas del Ejército Nacional” published

in

Contemporary Ethnographies III, Myriam Jimeno, Daniel Varela and

Angela Castillo (eds.) (2016). For the past two years, she
coordinated the

project Narratives and Rhetoric of Emotions: The War in the

Testimonies of

Professional Soldiers with Professor Catalina González Quintero. As

part of

that project, she has published the articles: “‘The War That Lingers’:

Construction and Transformations of the Body in the Narratives and

Rhetoric of Colombia’s Professional Soldiers” (with Catalina González

and Simón Ramírez) in Revista Latina de Comunicación Social 74

(2019),

and “‘Entering the Army Is Not Choosing to Kill’: Towards the

Understanding of Two Emotional Events Among Professional Soldiers

of

Colombia” (with Catalina González, Simón Ramírez and Felipe

Zárate) in

Revista Latina de Comunicación Social 73 (2018).

ix
x NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Sonya Charles is Professor of Philosophy at Cleveland State

University,

where she teaches various courses in bioethics, feminist theory,

critical race

theory, and philosophy and science fiction. Her main research areas
are

bioethics, feminist philosophy, and virtue ethics. Her recently pub-

lished book Parents and Virtues: An Analysis of Moral Development

and

Parental Virtue came out in 2019. In addition, her work has been

published in The International Journal of Feminist Bioethics (IJFAB),

The

Hastings Center Report, American Journal of Bioethics (AJOB),

Journal of

Medical Humanities, Janushead, Journal of Medical Ethics, Social

Theory and Practice, and Philosophy in the Contemporary World.

Julieta Escobar completed her master’s degree in Philosophy at

Universidad Nacional de Colombia in 2019. In her thesis entitled, El

perdón, una fabulación, she argues that forgiveness should not be

reduced

to a normative model since it is a lived experience expressed in

distinct and
imaginative ways. Currently, she works as editorial assistant at the
journal,

Ciencia Política (Editorial Universidad Nacional). Her research

interests

focus on contemporary ethics and ancient philosophy. Her article,

“Del

resentimiento a la reconciliación. Consideraciones sobre un proceso

de

paz inclusivo,” appeared in ¿Venganza o perdón? Un camino hacia la

rec-

onciliación, Maria Victoria Llorente and Leonel Narvaez (eds.) (2017).

Andrés Góngora is chief curator of the Department of Ethnography

at

the National Museum of Colombia. He holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. in

Social Anthropology from Universidad Federal de Rio de Janeiro and

is a

member of the research groups “Conflicto Social y Violencia”

(Universidad

Nacional de Colombia), “Núcleo de Pesquisas sobre Economía y

Cultura”

(Universidad Federal de Río de Janeiro), and “Núcleo de Estudios

Interdisciplinarios sobre Psicoactivos de la Universidad de São

Paulo.” He

has also taught Anthropology at Universidad Nacional de Colombia

and
has worked on issues such as cultural diversity, gender, sexuality,
social

movements, drug policies, urban anthropology, medical anthropology

and popular economy. His more recent work explores the bonds
between

materiality, memory, and conflict in Colombia. His recent publications

include: “Cannabis medicinal y arreglos farmacológicos en Colombia”

in

Cahiers des Amérques Latines 92, (2019), “200 años de vida

callejera en

Bogotá” in Cuadernos de Curaduría (2019), and “La maqueta de la

“L”

in Espacios heterotópicos y experimentación etnográfica (with A.

Rodríguez,

M. Cano, A. Jiménez, N. & J.D. Jiménez) in 2019.

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

xi

Myriam Jimeno is professor emerita at Universidad Nacional de

Colombia

and before that was Professor of Anthropology and Researcher at

the

Center for Social Studies of the same university. She served as

Director of

the Colombian Institute of Anthropology and History (ICANH) twice

(1988–1990 and 1992–1993). Dr. Jimeno received her doctorate in

Anthropology from University of Brasilia and received the Medals for

University Merit and Meritorious Comprehensive Academy from the

National University of Colombia (1997 and 2006). In 1995 she

received

the Alejandro Angel Escobar National Prize for Research in Social and

Human Sciences for her work on domestic violence and in 2010 she
was a

research fellow at the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. Since

1993

she has coordinated the research group Social Conflict and Violence
at

Centro de Estudios Sociales (CES) at Universidad Nacional de

Colombia.

She has authored the books Después de la Masacre. Emociones y

política en

el Cauca Indio ( co-authored with Ángela Castillo and Daniel Varela)

pub-

lished in 2016; Crimen Pasional. Contribución a una Antropología de

las

Emociones published in 2004, which received an honorable mention

from

the Ibero-American Prize of the Latin American Studies Association

(LASA) in 2006; Juan Gregorio Palechor: Historia de mi vida in 2006
in

Spanish and 2010 in English, and Las Sombras Arbitrarias. Violencia

y

autoridad en Colombia in 1996 (co-authored with Ismael Roldan).

Francisca Márquez is Professor of Anthropology at Alberto

Hurtado

University, in Santiago de Chile. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from

Université Catholique de Louvain (Belgium) and an M.A. in

Development

from the same university. Her most recent publications include:

“Chile: de

los subterráneos al protagonismo, ¿ocaso del modelo neoliberal?” in

Revista Realidad Económica (2019), Ciências Sociais E Ética: Sobre O

Respeito Aos Outros Saberes, Revista Pós-Ciências Sociais da UFMA

(2019),

and the entry “Urban Ethnography” (co-authored with Walter

Imilan), in

The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies

(2019).

She conducts research on urban ruins in Bogotá, Quito, and

Santiago

de Chile.

Gaile Pohlhaus Jr is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Miami

University of Ohio where she teaches both graduate and advanced
under-

graduate student courses in Feminist Philosophy, Critical

Epistemology,

Social Epistemology, and Wittgenstein. Her research interests focus

on the

intersection of Epistemology and Social and Political Philosophy. In

par-

xii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

ticular, she is interested in questions of knowledge and identity in

light of

differences in social position. Her work draws on feminist and critical

race

theorists, both analytic and continental. In addition, she works on

and in

the spirit of the later Wittgenstein insofar as he sought to avoid both

foun-

dationalist and relativist tendencies in philosophizing. Her

publications

include The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice, co-edited

with

I.J. Kidd and J. Medina (2017) and “Knowing Without Borders and
the

Work of Epistemic Gathering,” in Decolonizing Feminism:

Transnational
Feminism and Globalization ed. McLaren (2017). Her work has been

published in Hypatia, Social Epistemology, Feminist Philosophical

Quarterly, and Teoria.

Catalina González Quintero is Associate Professor of Philosophy

at

Universidad de los Andes. She has a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Emory

University (USA), an M.A. in Philosophy from Universidad Nacional

de

Colombia, and a B.A. in Social Communication from Pontificia

Universidad Javeriana (Colombia). Her research interests include

modern

philosophy, skepticism, rhetoric, hermeneutics, and the study of

emotions.

She has just completed a book, Academic Skepticism in Hume and

Kant,

which is due to be published in early 2021 by Springer. In addition,

she

has published various articles, including: “The Prussian Academy’s

Struggle between Dogmatism and Skepticism: An Antecedent to the

Kantian Critiqu e” in Critique in German Philosophy edited by María

del

Rosario Acosta and Collin McQuillan (2020), “Modern Skeptical

Disturbances and their Remedies” in Skeptical Doubt and Disbelief in

Modern European Thought, edited by Plínio Smith and Vicente Raga

(2020), and “Secularization and Infinity in Pascal and Kant” in CTK-

Contextos kantianos (2017). For the past two years, she has
coordinated

the project Narratives and Rhetoric of Emotions: The War in the

Testimonies

of Professional Soldiers with Professor Ana María Forero Angel. As

part of

this project, she has also published: “‘The War That Lingers’:
Construction

and Transformations of the Body in the Narratives and Rhetoric of

Colombia’s Professional Soldiers” (with Ana María Forero and Simón

Ramírez) in Revista Latina de Comunicación Social 74 (2019) and

“‘Entering the Army is Not Choosing to Kill’: Towards the

Understanding

of Two Emotional Events among Professional soldiers of Colombia”

(with

Ana María Forero, Simón Ramírez, and Felipe Zárate) in Revista

Latina

de Comunicación Social 73 (2018).

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

xiii
Santiago Roa is a psychologist from Universidad de los Andes
(Bogotá,

Colombia), and holds an M.A. degree in Philosophy from the same

uni-

versity. His Master’s thesis Habitar el laberinto: Un ensayo sobre la

culpa y

la amistad, aims at defining guilt from an existential perspective and

show-

ing how friendship can alleviate the suffering of this emotional

experience

and he is currently the academic coordinator at the Spanish Center

in

Universidad de los Andes. He has been awarded several

scholarships,

among them the scholarship of the CienciAmerica Summer Research

Program of Cornell University (2015). His research interests are

related

to the philosophy and psychology of emotions, social reconciliation

pro-

cesses and hermeneutics. He co-authored, with Santiago Amaya and

Maria

Camila Castro, the chapter on Moral Psychology of the book,

Introducción

a la Filosofía de las Ciencias Cognitivas (Skidelsky & Barberis, 2020).

Allison B. Wolf is Associate Professor of Philosophy and an
affiliated

faculty member of the Center of Migration Studies at Universidad de

los

Andes in Bogotá, Colombia, where she teaches political philosophy,

phi-

losophy of immigration, and feminist philosophy. She is the author of

the

book Just Immigration in the Americas: A Feminist Account

(Rowman &

Littlefield International, 2020) as well as various essays on

immigration

justice, feminist philosophy, feminist ethics and bioethics including:

“Dying in Detention as an Example of Oppression,” in Hispanic/Latino

Issues in Philosophy Newsletter of the American Philosophical

Association

(2019), “Breastfeeding In-Between: A Comparative Analysis of

Watsuji

and Maria Lugones” in Comparative Studies in Asian and Latin

American

Philosophies edited by Leah Kalmanson and Stephanie Rivera-Berruz

(2018), “Tell Me How That Makes You Feel”: Philosophy’s Reason/

Emotion Divide and Epistemic Pushback in the Philosophy

Classroom,”
Hypatia, (2018), and “Embracing Our Values: Ending the ‘Birth Wars’

and Improving Women’s Satisfaction with Childbirth,” in International

Journal of Feminist Bioethics (IJFAB) (2017). Her work has been

pub-

lished in various journals and collections, including: Hypatia,

Comparative

Studies in Asian and Latin American Philosophies, Hispanic/Latino

Issues

in Philosophy Newsletter of the American Philosophical Association,

International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics, Diversidad

Sexual: Democracía y cuidanía, International Journal of Applied

Philosophy,

Journal of Medical Humanities (with Sonya Charles), Philosophical

Inquiry

into Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Mothering: Maternal Subjects (with

Jennifer Benson), Queer Philosophy: Presentations of the Society of

Lesbian

xiv NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

and Gay Philosophy, 1998– 2008, and the Journal of Global Ethics.
She is currently working on projects about philosophical issues
arising in the

content of Venezuelan migration to Colombia, issues in feminist

episte-
mology (especially related to epistemic oppression and feminism and
skep-

ticism), and obstetric violence in the context of immigration in the

Americas.

list of figures

Fig. 8.1

Márquez, F. (2018a, April) Villa San Luis in ruins and the

corporate towers of LATAM in the background [Photograph] 188

Fig. 8.2

Contreras, T. (2017) Backhoe and collapse [Photograph]

189

Fig. 8.3

Lawner, M. ( ca. 1972) Resident families settled in transit

camps adjacent to the Villa San Luis project [Photograph]

191

Fig. 8.4

Márquez, F. (2018b) Ruins of Villa San Luis in the mirrored

city [Photograph]

192

Fig. 8.5
Márquez, F. (2018c, April) Ruins of Villa San Luis, concrete

and iron [Photograph]

194

Fig. 8.6

Contreras, T. (2019a) Taken from the photobook. The Collapse of

a Dream [Photograph]

195

Fig. 8.7

Contreras, T. (2019c) View of the garden from an abandoned

apartment [Photograph]

197

Fig. 8.8

Ramírez, M. (2019) The Stripping Performance; Group of

former residents of Villa San Luis [Photograph]

199

Fig. 8.9

Ramírez, M. (2019) The Stripping Performance; Group of

former women and men residents of Villa San Luis [Photograph] 201

Fig. 8.10 Márquez, F. (2018, August) Ruins of Villa San Luis and

corporate buildings, August [Photograph]

204

Fig. 8.11 IDIPRON-Press: office (2018a) Ruins of the Bronx

[Photograph] 206

Fig. 8.12 Ortiz, F. (2019a) Demolition of the last house in the Bronx

[Photograph] 209

Fig. 8.13 IDIPRON-Press: office (2018b) Ruins of the Bronx

[Photograph] 212

xv

xvi LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 8.14 IDIPRON-Press: office (2018c) Ruins of the Bronx in Black

and White [Photograph]

214

Fig. 8.15 Góngora, A. (2019) Scale model of “the L” in the National

Museum of Colombia [Photograph]

216

Fig. 8.16 Ortiz, J. (2019b) La Esquina Redonda team [Photograph]

217

CHAPTER 1
Introduction: The Force of Emotions

Ana María Forero Angel, Catalina González Quintero,

and Allison B. Wolf

We write this introduction after almost three months of preventive

isolation

in Bogota, Colombia, with no end in sight. On March 23, 2020, the

nation’s president, Iván Duque, announced that, like so many of the

nations

of the world, quarantine and lockdown measures requiring all

citizens to

remain at home and avoid physical contact were to be implemented

by both

the national and local governments to avoid the spread of

Coronavirus.

While he, understandably, used his speech to detail how our physical
exis-

tences would have to change and adjust during these

unprecedented times,

Duque also emphasized that we had to learn to express our

emotions in a

different way than we usually did. And, with this, he officially

enlisted the

A. M. Forero Angel
Department of Anthropology, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá,
Colombia

e-mail: am.forero260@uniandes.edu.co

C. González Quintero

Department of Philosophy, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá,

Colombia

e-mail: cgonzale@uniandes.edu.co

A. B. Wolf (*)

Department of Philosophy and Center of Migration Studies,

Universidad de los

Andes, Bogotá, Colombia

e-mail: a.wolf@uniandes.edu.co

© The Author(s) 2021

A. M. Forero Angel et al. (eds.), Incarnating Feelings, Constructing

Communities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57111-5_1

2 A. M. FORERO ANGEL ET AL.

Colombia’s population in a global emotional regime (Reddy, 2001)

marked by social distancing as well as feelings of anxiety, distrust of
others (because

we do not know who is infected or not, who is following the rules or

not,
etc.), solidarity with health care practitioners and a sense of
connection

with the poorest sectors of the population. Mere days earlier, on

March 19,

2020, the President of Chile, Sebastián Piñera, officially declared a

Catastrophic State of Emergency (Estado Excepcional de Catástrofe),

with

which the country became officially part of this emotional climate of

world-

wide uncertainty and a member of the global emotional regime.

While various measures were implemented to varying degrees in

differ-

ent states at the same time as they were imposed in Colombia, 1 the
United

States of America, and specifically President Donald Trump,

continues to

underestimate (or outright deny) the gravity of the situation. Despite

very

emotionally forceful (Rosaldo, 1984) arguments from

epidemiologists, public health officials, health care workers, and
members of the opposition

party, he refuses to enact national measures against the pandemic,

instead

leaving each individual state to envisage and put in place the policies
and
strategies they consider adequate. These uneven measures combine
with

the hyper-partisan political climate and overall fatigue with the virus
to

generate other emotions, such as anger, indignation, fear, and

sadness,

and both sustain and expand the global emotional regime just
outlined.

It is within this global context, that we, the authors and editors of
this

volume—all of whom are citizens of the three aforementioned

countries—

finished writing our contributions for this book. Put differently, we

con-

cluded our writings in the context of a shared global emotional

regime

that highlights the main theoretical assumption of this book, namely

that

emotions are unavoidable, socially constructed, and politically

meaningful

and, as such, they constitute a highly influential part of our social

exis-

tence. Allow us to elaborate.

In order to make a lasting impression and affect their citizenry, the

presidential declarations in these different countries must resonate
with

both the collective’s and everyday individuals’ emotional lives. This is

because political appeals and socially binding laws are only

successful when

they are made in communities that share the same emotional

repertoires

(Reddy, 2001; Rosenwein, 2002); emotional repertoires that traverse

common values, beliefs, and goals. For this reason, we (and all the
authors

1 Because of its system of government, in the United States it is

likely illegal and impractical to impose a national lockdown as they
are doing in Latin American nations.

1 INTRODUCTION: THE FORCE OF EMOTIONS

of the chapters that comprise this volume) insist that emotions do

not live

“inside” the subject—they are not private states of mind that only
live or

occur in the brain. To the contrary, they are enacted and acted-upon
forces

that convey and constitute social meanings; they are intersubjective

in

nature and should be understood as public phenomena rather than

inter-
nal states of mind.

In addition to rejecting the common belief that emotions are private,

internal, states of mind, we reject the idea that emotions are

“irrational

moments” that happen to people when they “lose their minds”—as if

they

constituted exceptions to a state of permanent and “normal”

rationality.

To the contrary, we note that, in addition to their social elements,

emo-

tions have cognitive aspects that inform and are informed by values

embedded in social practices. In this way, the book builds on the

theoreti-

cal legacy of approaches to emotion in both the social sciences and

human-

ities, a legacy that recognizes their unavoidable social and historical

character.

In light of the above, the chapters in this collection utilize a

methodol-

ogy that investigates emotions as they develop, embed, and express

them-

selves in specific, concrete practices, valuations, and patterns of

action in
multiple contexts in the Americas, including Colombia, Brazil, Chile,
and

the United States. In particular, Incarnating Feelings, Constructing

Communities: Experiencing Emotions in the Americas Through

Education,

Violence, and Public Policy in the Americas attempts to show the

social life,

development, expression, and consequences of emotions in different

cul-

tural practices throughout the continent. Its chapters explore how

distinct

subjects (children, migrants, indigenous peoples, soldiers, and

victims of

violence and displacement) feel, act, establish and alter

communities, and

take political stances within their specific social contexts. All of the
chap-

ters discuss research conducted in different countries of the

Americas in

ways that illuminate how emotions both necessarily motivate and

chal-

lenge social inequality, violence, and political change throughout

the region.

1 OrganizatiOn Of the BOOk

The philosophers and anthropologists who have contributed to this
col-

lection focus on achieving the above by understanding both how

emo-

tions are lived and how they produce meaning in contexts of

violence,

education, and enforcement of public policy. To that end, the volume

is

divided into three parts focusing on precisely these themes—

emotions

4 A. M. FORERO ANGEL ET AL.

related to violence, education, and public policy throughout South

America and the United States. The first part, “Emotional

Communities

in Contexts of Violence,” consists of two chapters—one by

anthropologist

Myriam Jimeno and the second by anthropologist Ana María Forero

Angel and philosopher Catalina González Quintero—examining emo-

tions that arise out of different social practices in contexts of

violence in

Colombia. In the first chapter of this part (Chap. 2), “The Emotional

Turn in Colombian Experiences of Violence,” Jimeno offers a state-of-

the-art summary of different perspectives that promoted and

centered the
study of the emotions in the social and natural sciences. Specifically,
after

describing the main characteristics and consequences of the so-

called emo-

tional turn, she argues that recent work in both neuro- science and

the social sciences questions the classical dichotomies between body

and

soul, reason and emotion, cognition and feeling, materiality and

immate-

riality, and biological and social determinations, which has been

enriched

and supported by experimental research, observation, and analysis

of col-

lective practices, cultural meanings, historical processes, and social

struc-

tures. After offering a general overview of the emotional turn,

Jimeno

turns to analyze three case studies from her own research to

demonstrate

that emotions are fundamentally social and relational. In the first

case, she

shows the political projection of emotions rooted in childhood experi-

ences of domestic abuse and highlights how these emotions

negatively
shape the social performance of adults vis-à-vis public authority. In
par-

ticular, she reveals how traumatic experiences of arbitrary and

violent exer-

cises of parental authority engender a deep mistrust of both political

authority and peers and, consequently, hinders the adequate

functioning

of society. In the second case, Jimeno surveys the results of her

compara-

tive study of crimes of passion between romantic partners in Brazil

and

Colombia. Crucially, the author claims that crimes of passion are not
path-

ological acts—they are not the product of “excessive love, as they

tend to

be depicted in Latin American societies—but rather, actions whose

moti-

vations involve a complex set of convictions and feelings about

romantic

couples, love, femininity, masculinity, honor, and loyalty. In other

words,

these crimes are only possible within a particular emotional

configuration—

the social tapestry of all these elements. In the last section of her
chapter,
Jimeno analyzes the emotional processes involved in the subjective
and

social reconstruction of a community in southwest Colombia (Cauca).

In

2001, a paramilitary group perpetrated a horrific massacre against

this

community, forcing many to flee. The surviving, displaced,

population

1 INTRODUCTION: THE FORCE OF EMOTIONS

then engaged in a process of social reconstruction, building an

emotional

community through creatively expressing their experiences of pain

and

loss and re-signifying those experiences as social injustices requiring

recti-

fication. In particular, they achieved this by producing a series of

dramatic

performances of their experiences of violence, directed to different

audi-

ences—both governmental and international agencies—as means to

reclaim the status of victim and the restoration of their rights and
territory.

In the second chapter of this part (Chap. 3), “Understanding

Emotions
in Members of Societally Powerful Institutions: Emotional Events and

Communities in the Narratives of Colombian Soldiers,” Ana María

Forero

Angel and Catalina González Quintero argue that analyzing emotions

is

essential to understanding powerful institutions, like the Colombian

mili-

tary. More specifically, they explore the emotional narratives of

Colombian

career soldiers in order to advance a topography of power (Lutz,

2006), or an anthropological study of the institutions that determine
the fate of

nations, while leaving behind the tradition of studying marginalized

social

groups. To develop this topography, the authors focus on two

emotional

events— experiences that transformed their identities—namely,

“joining

the institution” and “learning to kill.” The first event describes how

Colombian soldiers make the decision to join the Army as opposed to

other illegal, armed groups, such as guerrillas and paramilitary

groups as

well as the soldiers’ experiences during their first days in the Army,
espe-
cially the bodily and character changes they undergo during this
period to

incorporate a military identity. The second event concerns a “change

of

mentality” the soldiers claim to have in the combat area, when they
actu-

ally “learn to kill” the enemy. They argue that it is impossible to

“learn to

kill” during their training because for this to happen they need to
undergo

a psychological transformation that shifts their understanding of war

to

one that is a personal issue that affects them and their lives, rather
than an

abstract idea. But that only happens when the soldier feels that his
life is

actually threatened or when his best friend, his “lanza,” has been
killed by

the enemy. Based on their research, the authors uncover various

findings.

First, they note that the soldiers appeal to their emotions in their
narra-

tives to arouse empathy in their listeners and convince them of the

signifi-

cance and truthfulness of their stories. Second, they conclude that

narrating
and listening to these events, among others, the soldiers form an
emo-

tional community. This is a community of reciprocal listening, in

which

only soldiers, who have lived the transforming experiences of war,

know

6 A. M. FORERO ANGEL ET AL.

how to speak, listen, and sympathetically react to the emotional

force of

their peer’s narratives.

In the second part of the book, “Teaching Emotions: White Fragility

and the Emotional Weight of Epistemic Resistance,” philosophers

Sonya

Charles and Gaile Pohlhaus, Jr. explore the different ways that
emotions

are taught, learned, and carried in the United States. In the first
chapter of

this part (Chap. 4), “Moral Development and Racial Education: How
We

Socialize White Children and Construct White Fragility,” Charles offers

a

sharp criticism of “color-blind” education among progressive parents

and

teachers in the Unites States. She explains that, despite the fact that
many
maintain (or have maintained) that color-blindness is a strategy to
combat

ethnic and racial discrimination by focusing on people’s shared

humanity

by overlooking racial differences, in reality the approach fails. In

particu-

lar, it neither promotes empathy toward nor solidarity with minorities

because it makes it impossible for children to voice their questions

about

race and ethnicity. This approach yields two seriously problematic

responses: (1) it leads parents to become unreliable mentors by

encourag-

ing children to develop moral vices rather than virtues; and (2) it
cultivates

what Di Angelo calls, “white fragility,” as the default emotional

response

of white people to revelations of their participation and support

(inadver-

tent or intentional) in institutionalized racism in the United States.

For

this reason, Charles emphasizes the importance of explicitly

engaging

issues of race to promote children’s awareness of social injustices.

After
showing the limitations of color-blind education, Charles employs
Jennifer

Harvey’s approach to anti-racist education to show how white

parents can

help their children to overcome their own feelings of guilt over the
history

of racism in the United States and develop virtuous character traits

based

on Aristotle’s virtue ethics, arguing that, “a key component of early

moral

development is to cultivate proper habits. This means a person

should

practice doing the right thing—so much so that it becomes a habit.”

In

this way, questions about race and ethnicity should be encouraged in

chil-

dren to create healthy emotional and moral habits and behaviors

that resist

racial discrimination.

In the next chapter of this part (Chap. 5), “Epistemic Pushback and

Harm to Educators,” Gaile Pohlhaus, Jr. explores the negative

emotional

and physical effects that the students’ epistemic resistance produces

in uni-
versity professors who teach courses related to feminism, racism,
colonial-

ism, and other marginalized philosophies and ontologies. In

particular,

Pohlhaus explores and analyzes an all-

too-

common occurrence in

1 INTRODUCTION: THE FORCE OF EMOTIONS

university classrooms across the United States, namely students’

aggres-

sive, critical, responses to both their professors and their peers who
iden-

tify as members of marginalized groups when they feel that social

position,

ethical values, or worldviews around issues like race and gender are
threat-

ened. In addition to criticizing their professors’ intellectual abilities

and

epistemic authority, Pohlhaus argues that these answers usually

involve

sexist, racist, and even expressly violent comments intended to

discredit
and silence the professor and ensure that the challenging material is
dele-

gitimated. Having to endure this constantly takes a serious toll that

we

must recognize. Professors who teach this material and are, often,
the

targets of these practices suffer both emotional and physical effects

—they

may become ill, psychologically burned out, and prone to somatic

reac-

tions. For this reason, she argues that it is urgent for these faculty
mem-

bers (and the universities to which they belong) to introduce and

encourage

self-care practices. Now, Pohlhaus expressly recognizes that the

emotional

and somatic consequences of this epistemic resistance depend on

the social

status and position the particular professor occupies—white men

teaching

feminism or white women teaching about issues of race do not

experience

these issues to the same extent or in the same ways as professors of

color

do. And, this matters. But, this should encourage us to take the
emotional
Another random document with
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often been used for political purposes with consummate skill. Bryan’s
famous Cross of Gold speech and Roosevelt’s Armageddon appeal
are excellent examples of it.
The question has often arisen why the fanatical reformer is so
omnipotent in America. Why does he succeed so well in imposing
his compulsions upon others? Why are we so defenceless against
his blackmail? Why, in plain language, do we stand for him? Foreign
observers have frequently commented upon the enormous docility of
the American public. And it is all the more curious because ordinarily
the average American prides himself upon his assertiveness and his
quickness in detecting false pretensions. Yet it is a common
occurrence to meet people with valid claims to hard-headedness
who nevertheless submit to every form of compulsion. They do not
believe in prohibition but vote for it, they smoke but think smoking
ought to be stopped, they admit the fanatical nature of reform
movements and yet continue their subscriptions.
In giving what can at best be only a partial answer to this
national enigma, we may briefly consider two types which profoundly
contribute to our atmosphere of compulsion: our immigrant and our
native aristocrat. The first, from the very nature of the case, becomes
the victim of compulsion, while the second imposes the compulsion
and then in turn, however unwillingly, succumbs to it himself. Our
society, with its kaleidoscopic changes of fortune and its
unchannelled social distinctions, presents a problem of adjustment
with which even those who are at home in America find it difficult to
cope. People on the make, people who are not sure of themselves
on a new social ladder, are likely to conform: we find an astonishing
amount of social imitation, in its milder and more ludicrous form, in
all our pioneer communities. The immigrant faces the same problem
to an intensified degree. He comes to us in an uprooted state of
mind, with many of his emotional allegiances still lingering in his
native country, and often with an entirely alien tradition. His mind is
set to conform, to obey at first without much asking. He is like a
traveller arriving in a strange town who follows the new traffic
directions even though he does not understand their purpose. But
even with the best of will he cannot entirely conform. He finds
himself in a new world where what formerly seemed right to him is
now considered wrong, his household gods have lost their power, his
conscience is no longer an infallible guide. It is a sign of character in
him to resist, to refuse to sink his individuality entirely, to struggle
somewhat against the democratic degradation which threatens to
engulf him too suddenly. But his struggle leads to a neurotic conflict
which is often not resolved until the third generation. It is thus quite
permissible to talk of an immigrant’s neurosis, which has
considerable sociological importance even though it does not
present an integral clinical picture. It leads either to the formation of
large segments of undigested foreigners in American society who
sullenly accept the forms we impose upon them while remaining
comparatively inarticulate in our cultural and political life, or else it
produces a type of whom our melting-pot romanticists are foolishly
proud, the pseudo-American who has sunk from individualism to the
level of the mob, where he conforms to excess in order to cover his
antecedents and becomes intolerant in order that he may be
tolerated.
Ordinarily, the mob tyranny which has become such an alarming
feature of our public life would be checked by the aristocratic
element in society. It is part of the aristocratic function to foster
cultural tolerance and to resist herd suggestion: the aristocratic or
dominant type, in enjoying the most privileges, is normally least
subject to compulsions and taboos. With us that is not the case. The
Southerner, for instance, our most traditional aristocrat, finds himself
paralyzed by the consciousness of a black shadow behind him who
constantly threatens both his political and his sexual superiority. He
moves in an atmosphere of taboos from which he himself cannot
escape, for it is an established fact that interdiction in one line of
thought has a crippling effect upon a man’s intellectual activity as a
whole. Elsewhere our native aristocrat frequently finds himself in the
position of a lonely outpost of a thin Anglo-Saxon tradition which he
must defend against the constant onslaughts of alien civilizations, in
the desperate attempt to uphold the fiction that spiritually, at least,
we are still an English colony. He is in a state of tension where he
himself cannot move with any of the freedom which he vaunts as
one of the outstanding characteristics of the country of his fathers. In
his hands his own latest hope, our war-born Americanization
programme, which should really be an initiation into freedom, has
quickly become little more than a forced observance of sterile rites
with which to impress the alien. He already sees its failure, and, like
a general who is afraid of his own army, he does not sleep very well.
Alfred B. Kuttner
 MEDICINE
FROM time immemorial the doctor has been the object of
respect and awe by the generality of mankind. It is true that he has
occasionally been made the butt of the satirical humour of such
dramatists as Molière and Shaw, but the majority of people have
regarded these jests as amiable buffooneries, and not as penetrating
criticisms. In ancient days the veneration of the medico was based
upon his supposed association with gods and devils, and upon the
belief that he could cure disease by wheedling propitiation of deus,
or by the exorcism of diabolus. In modern times he holds sway by his
supposed possession of the secrets of science.
In spite of his pretension to scientific attainment, many vestiges
of his former priesthood remain, and this mélange of scientist and
priest has produced curious contradictions and absurdities. But
these absurdities must by an inexorable law remain concealed from
all save a few, and the general failure to recognize them has led to a
great increase in the importance and prosperity of the medical cult.
In America, of all civilized nations, medical magnificence has
reached its most formidable proportions. This exaggeration,
characteristic of all social phenomena in the new world, makes the
real importance of the doctor to society easy to inspect and to
analyze.
A friend not long ago asked me to explain the co-existence, in
the same city, of the elaborate installation of the Harvard Medical
School and the magnificent temple of the religion of Mrs. Eddy.
“What is it in our culture,” said he, “that permits the symbol of such
obvious quackery as that of Mrs. Eddy to flourish within a stone’s
throw of such an embodiment of scientific enlightenment as the
medical college?”
 I replied that the reason for this must be sought in the gullibility
of our citizens, who are capable of entertaining most incompatible
and contradictory credos. Thus, the average American can believe
firmly and simultaneously in the therapeutic excellence of yeast, the
salubrious cathartic effects of a famous mineral oil, the healing
powers of chiropractors, and in the merits of the regimen of the
Corrective Eating Society. His catholicity of belief permits him to
consider such palpable frauds seriously, and at the same time to
admire and respect authentic medical education and even the
scientific study of disease. But the teachers, students, and alumni of
medical colleges are drawn from our excessively credulous
populace. So it is dangerous to consider the votaries of the
profession of medicine as sceptical and open-minded savants, in
contrast to the promulgators of the afore-mentioned imbecilities and
to Homo sapiens americanus, who is the unconscious victim of such
charlatanry. In reality the great majority of the medical profession is
credulous and must always remain so, even in matters of health and
disease.
The tendency to consider physicians in general as men of
science is fostered by the doctors themselves. Even the most
eminent among them are guilty in this respect. Thus the Director of
the Hospital of the Rockefeller Institute maintains that medicine must
be considered not as an applied science but as an independent
science (R. Cole, Science, N. S., Vol. LI, p. 329). And an eminent ex-
President of the American Medical Association holds a similar view,
at the same time preposterously asserting that “medicine has done
more for the growth of science than any other profession, and that its
best representatives have been among the leaders in the
advancement of knowledge....” (V. C. Vaughan, Journal, A. M. A.,
1914, Vol. LXII, p. 2003.)
Such pronunciamentoes rest upon the almost universal
confusion of the art of the practice of medicine with the science of
the study of disease. Science, in its modern definition, is concerned
with the quantitative relationship of the factors governing natural
phenomena. No favourites are to be played among these factors.
They are to be weighed and measured meticulously and coldly,
without enthusiasm for one, or disdain and enmity toward another.
Now, in the case of relationship of doctor to patient, it is clear that
such emotions must enter. The physician must entertain enthusiasm
for the defensive powers of his patient, John Smith, and at the same
time hate virulently the pneumococcus that attacks him. This
emotional state of the soldier of health prevents the employment of
what is known in the language of the laboratory as the “control.” For
example, a doctor wishes to test the efficacy of a serum against
pneumonia. In America it is practically unknown for him to divide his
cases of pneumonia into two groups of equal size, to administer his
serum to group A and to leave group B untreated. He almost
invariably has a parti-pris that the serum will work, and he reflects
with horror that if he holds his remedy from group B, some members
of this group will die, who might otherwise have been saved. So he
injects his serum into all of his patients (A and B), and if the mortality
in the entire group appears to him to be lower by statistics than that
observed in previous series of cases, he concludes that the value of
his nostrum is proved. This is an illustration of the fallacy of the
notion that medicine is a science in the modern sense.
Modern study of disease, conducted in the laboratory upon
experimental animals, has furnished medical practitioners with a few
therapeutic and prophylactic weapons. In the use of these the
American medico has not lagged behind his European colleague.
But the great majority of the malaises that plague us are not
amenable to cure, and it is with these that the doctor has since the
beginning of time played his most important rôle, i.e., that of a
“professional sympathizer.” The encouraging conversation with the
family of the sufferer; the mumbling of recondite Latin phrases; the
reassuring hopeful hand on the patient’s shoulder; the grave use of
complicated gimcracks; the prescription of ineffective but also
innocuous drugs or of water tinted to pleasing hues; all these are of
incalculable value to the ménage stricken by disease. It is my
lamentable duty to point out the danger of the decline of this
essential rôle among the doctors of America. The general
practitioner of the ancien régime was sincere in his performance of
his quasi-religious function. He was unsparing of his energies, stern
in his devotion to duty, deeply altruistic in sentiment, and charmingly
negligent in economic matters.
But at the present time this adorable figure is disappearing from
the land, to be replaced by another, more sinister type, actually less
learned in the important folklore of the bedside, pseudo-scientific,
given to rigidly defined office hours, and painfully exact in the
extortion of his emolument. What are the factors that give rise to the
appearance of this new figure on the American scene? The most
important of these is to be found in the high development of the craft
of surgery in the United States. Of all the dread afflictions that plague
us, a few may be cured or ameliorated by the administration of
remedies, and an equally small number improved or abolished by
surgical interference. But in spite of the relatively few diseases to
which surgery is beneficial, the number of surgeons that flourish in
the land is enormous. The fundamental discoveries of Pasteur and
their brilliant application by Lister were quickly seized upon in
America. The names of Bull, Halstead, Murphy, the brothers Mayo,
Cushing, and Finney are to be ranked with those of the best
surgeons of any nation. In fact, we may be said to lead the world—to
use an apt Americanism—in the production of surgeons, just as we
do in that of automobiles, baby carriages, and antique furniture.
The success of these protagonists in the higher carpentry at
once attracted a horde of smaller fry, imitators, men of inferior ability.
The rapid advances made by the leaders resulted in the
development of a diversified and complicated technic, which the
ordinary surgeon was able to master in sections but not in toto. From
this, specialization in surgery has developed rapidly and naturally, so
that now certain men devote their lives exclusively to the enthusiastic
and indiscriminate removal of tonsils, others are death on gall
bladders, some the foes of the vermiform appendix, and yet others
practise exclusively the radical cure of phimosis. It is obvious that
such narrow specialization, practised in isolation, would lead to most
amusing results, which may best be left to the imagination. But these
absurdities were finally apparent even to the surgeons themselves,
with the resulting development of what is now known as “group
medicine.”
 In brief, surgeons with special penchants for the removal of
various organs, form partnerships, calling to their aid the internist for
the diagnosis of their prospective victims. The internist gathers about
him, in turn, a group of less important fry, known as radiographers,
bacteriologists, pathologists, and serologists. Frequently a dentist is
added to the coterie. The entire organization is welded into a
business partnership of typically American efficiency. These groups
are forming over the entire nation, are appearing even in the tank-
towns of the hinterland. They occupy elegant suites in important
office buildings, their members are generally considered the arbiters
of the medical opinion of the community. Their more or less
intelligent use of the paraphernalia of pathology, bacteriology, et
cetera, gives them an enormous advantage over their more humble
brother, the general practitioner. This last, indeed, is being rapidly
routed in his battle with such associations of “best minds,” equipped
with the armamentarium of modern science.
The remuneration required by the “super-docs” of group
medicine is naturally far in excess of that demanded by the general
practitioner. It is right that this should be so, if not for the results
obtained, then by reason of the elaborate organization and
expensive equipment that the group system demands. This increase
in reward has made the profession of medicine in America what it
never was before, a paying proposition—again to use an apt
Americanism. The result of this entry of crass materialism into a
previously free-and-easy, altruistic, anything but business-like
profession is, once more, better left to the imagination than
described. The brigandage of many of these medical banditti is too
painful even to think about. It will be apparent that relatively few of
our citizens are able to pay for group medicine. So, it is interesting to
observe that the best in medical treatment and advice is accessible
only to the highest and lowest castes of our plutocracy. The rich
receive this at the elegant offices and private hospitals of the groups,
the miserably poor at the teaching hospitals of medical colleges.
The service of the “super-doc” to such of our citizens as can
afford him cannot at this time be properly estimated. It is true that he
is progressive, that he leans heavily upon the subsidiary sciences of
pathology, et cetera, that he publishes papers in medical periodicals,
that he visits medical libraries, frequents medical congresses. It has
just been insisted that the doctor has benefitted himself to a great
extent economically by forming the group; it is for the future to
divulge whether his ministrations have resulted in a perceptible
reduction of human suffering or in a prolongation of human life.
Certainly he has perpetrated some astounding hoaxes, the kind-
hearted will say unwittingly. Probably the most interesting of these is
to be observed in the focal infection mania just now subsiding.
Focal infection came into prominence as the theory, so called, of
a group of eminent physicians in Chicago. It is, in brief, the doctrine
that many of our aches and pains whose direct etiology it is
impossible to demonstrate are due to the presence in the body of
foci of harmful microbes, at the roots of the teeth, in the tonsils,
accessory sinuses, or the appendix. Discover the focus, remove it,
and presto!—the ache disappears like the card up the sleeve of the
expert American poker player. The advantages of this theory to the
various specialists of a group will be obvious. To illustrate. Henry
Doolittle is plagued by a persistent and annoying pain over his left
shoulder-blade. He goes to the office of a group of “super-docs,” is
referred to the diagnostician, who makes a careful record of his
status præsens, then orders his satellites to perform the
Wassermann reaction, make the luetin test, do differential blood
counts, perform the determination of his blood urea, and carry out a
thorough chemical study of his basal metabolism. If the results of
these tests show no departure from the normal, or if they seriously
contradict each other, the cause of the pain is probably focal
infection. The patient is then subjected to examination by X-ray, his
teeth are pulled by the dentist, his tonsils excised by the
otolaryngolist, who also takes a swipe, in passing, at his accessory
sinuses, and should these mutilations fail to relieve him, his
appendix is removed by the abdominal surgeon. If relief still fails to
occur, the theory is not given up, but the focus is presumed to exist
elsewhere. If Mr. Doolittle’s patience is equal to the test, and if his
purse is not by this time completely empty, additional operations are
advised. These continue until all organs and appendages not
actually necessary to mere existence have been removed. Henry
then returns to his former mode of life, depleted and deformed, it is
true, but occasionally minus his original pain. It is not the intention to
deny that infected teeth and tonsils have no significance in
pathology. But it is certain that their importance has been greatly
exaggerated by many physicians. The question needs more
investigation, with fewer preconceived ideas. The “science”
underlying this astounding practice is admirably outlined in the book
of Billings called “Focal Infection.” It is the most striking example of
medical Ga-Ga-ism that has appeared in our country. It is, as its
author himself admits, a triumph of the new idea of team-work and
co-operative research in medicine. The factors giving rise to this
lamentable Ga-Ga are the gullibility of patient and doctor, the
emotional element entering into the interpretation of all of the
phenomena observed by the physician, commercialism, and, finally,
the self-limiting nature of most disease.
So much for the Art of Healing as practised by the physicians of
America. What of our activities in the second aim of medicine, that is,
the prevention of disease? While superficial examination is enough
to lay bare the many hollow pretensions of the practice of medicine,
it would appear a priori that the work of disease prevention might at
least approach the category of the applied sciences. This would
seem to be so, since the greater part of this field must of necessity
concern itself with infectious disease. Now the etiologic agents of the
majority of infectious diseases are known. It is easy to see that the
labour of their prevention rests upon an exact knowledge of the
nature of the disease-producing microbes, the analysis of the
delicate balance between the virulence of the microbic invader and
the resistance of the human host, and, most important of all, upon
the exact path by which the germ in question travels from one
individual to another.
In the early days of preventive medicine, following shortly upon
the fundamental researches of Pasteur, several important
contributions were made by Americans. These include the brilliant
investigations of Theobald Smith on the etiology and mode of
transmission of the Texas fever of cattle, and, later on, the
differentiation of bovine and human tuberculosis. America had again
reason to be proud when, in 1901, Reed, Carroll, Agramonte, and
Lazear demonstrated that yellow fever was spread exclusively by the
mosquito, Ædes calopus. These investigators showed a beautiful
spirit of self-sacrifice and devotion to their science. The construction
of the Panama Canal was made possible by the application of these
researches by Gorgas. Again, the American Russell was the first to
show that vaccination against typhoid and allied infections is
feasible. In the New York Board of Health, Park, Krumwiede, and
their associates have made careful and valuable studies on the
prevention of diphtheria. These constitute the high lights of American
achievement in preventive medicine. It must be admitted that the
majority of these examples are to be placed in the category of the
science of the study of disease, rather than in that of its application—
preventive medicine.
It is noticeable even by cursory survey of recent American work
that such striking achievements have become distinctly fewer in
recent years, despite an enormous increase in personnel,
equipment, and money devoted to the prevention of disease. Along
with this decrease in solid contributions there has been an
augmentation of fatuous propaganda and windy theory. All of the
judicious must view this tendency with alarm and sadness, since it
seemed for a time that science was really about to remove the
vestigia of witchcraft and high-priesthood from this branch of
medicine at least.
What is the cause of this retrogression? It must be laid at the
door of Religio Sanitatis, the Crusade of Health. This is one of the
most striking examples of the delusion of most Americans that they
are the Heaven-appointed uplifters of the human race. Just as all
Baptists, Presbyterians, and Methodists deprecate the heathen
happiness of the benighted Oriental, so the International Health
Board seeks to mitigate his contented squalour and to eradicate his
fatalistically born disease. Just as Billy Sunday rages against John
Barleycorn and the Dionysians who worship him, so the Great
Hygienists seek to point out the multiform malaises arising from such
worship. Just as the now extinct Wilson strove to show the world that
it was horrid and wrong to fight, so the Public Health Service seeks
to propagate the notion that chastity and adherence to marital vows
are the sole alternatives to a universal syphilization.
Thus we observe with horror the gradual replacement of those
Nestors of preventive medicine who had the dispassionate view of
science, and who applied its methods of cold analysis, by a group of
dubious Messiahs who combine the zealous fanaticism of the
missionary with the Jesuitical cynicism of the politician. For most of
the organizations for the promotion of health are closely dependent
upon state and municipal politics, and must become contaminated
with the obscenity of political practice. Finally, it is apparent that the
great privately endowed foundations are animated by the spirit of
proselytism common to the majority of religions, but especially to
Baptists. It will be objected that such charges are vague
generalizations. It is necessary, therefore, to bring forward one or
two specific instances in support of these contentions.
The soldiers of the recent successful campaign for national
prohibition were supported by battalions of noted hygienists who
made excellent practice with a heavy artillery of so-called scientific
evidence upon the confused ranks of brewers, distillers, and their
customers, the American bibuli. What is the value of their “scientific
evidence”? Two charges are made against the use of alcohol as a
beverage. Primo, that its moderate or excessive use is the direct
cause of various maladies. Secondo, that the children of alcoholic
parents are often deformed, degenerates, or imbeciles, and that
such lamentable stigmata are the direct results of the imbibitions of
their parents.
Now it is vain to argue that alcohol, taken in great excess, is not
injurious. Mania a potu (Korsakow’s disease) is without doubt its
direct result, at least in some instances. On the other hand,
excessive indulgence in water is also not without its harmful effects,
and I, for one, would predict evil days for our Great Commoner,
should he so far lose control of himself as to imbibe a gallon of grape
juice per diem. Many enthusiastic hygienists advance the opinion
that alcohol is filling our insane asylums! This generalization is a
gorgeous example of post hoc propter hoc reasoning, and is based
upon the idiotic statistical research which forms so large a part of the
activity of the minions of public health. The recent careful work of
Clouston and others tends more and more to indicate that chronic
alcoholics do not go crazy because they drink, but become
alcoholics because they already were crazy, or had the inherited
tendency toward insanity. This embarrassing fact is carefully
suppressed by the medico-hygienic heavy artillerists of the
prohibition army. What is more, diseases with definite pathologic
pictures, such as cirrhosis of the liver, have by no means been
definitely proved to be caused by alcohol. Indeed, the researches of
Friedenwald, who endeavoured to produce such effects by direct
experiment, have led to negative results.
The second indictment, i.e., that alcoholism in parents causes
degenerate offspring, rests upon still more dubious scientific
foundations. The most important animal experimentation in this field
is that of Stockard, who used guinea-pigs as his subjects, and of
Pearl, who had recourse to chickens. Both of these researches are
sound in scientific method. Unfortunately for hygienists, they lead to
completely contradictory conclusions. Stockard and his collaborators
found the offspring of alcoholic guinea-pigs to be fewer in number
than those of his normal controls. What is more, the children of the
alcoholics were frequently smaller, had a higher post-natal mortality,
and were prone to suffer from epileptiform convulsions. These
results brought forth banzais from the hygienists and were
extensively quoted, though their application by analogy to the
problems of human heredity is not to be made too hastily.
Pearl, on the other hand, discovered that while the number of
offspring from his inebriated chickens was distinctly fewer, yet these
were unquestionably superior to normal chickens in eight of the
twelve hereditary characters amenable to quantitative measurement.
Now if one can generalize Stockard’s results to human beings, then
it is equally permissible to do the same with Pearl’s. Of the two, the
latter generalization would be preferable, and of greater benefit to
the human race, were the analogy valid. For who will not whoop for
“fewer children, but better ones”? Do the votaries of preventive
medicine place the results of Pearl along side of those of Stockard?
Indeed, who even mentions Pearl’s results at all? If satisfactory
evidence is adduced that this has been done, I hereby promise to
contribute one hundred dollars in cash toward the foundation of a
home for inebriated prohibition agents. Again, while much is heard of
the results of Bezzola in regard to the Rauschkinder resulting from
the Swiss bacchanalia, the negative findings of Ireland in similar
investigations of the seasonal debauches of Scotland are carefully
avoided. Once more, Elderton and Karl Pearson have failed utterly to
find increase in the stigmata of degeneracy among the children of
alcoholic parents as compared with those of non-alcoholics. This
research, published in a monograph of the Francis Galton
Laboratory of London, is the one really careful one that has been
made in the case of human beings. It was directed by Pearson,
admittedly a master of biometrical science. Yet, turning to Rosenau’s
“Preventive Medicine and Hygiene,” the bible of this branch, I find
the Elderton-Pearson report relegated to a footnote in the edition of
1913, and omitted completely from the 1920 edition.
A discussion of the fatuity to which American preventive
medicine descends cannot be terminated without touching upon the
current propaganda of the syphilophobes. For just as practitioners of
medicine exploit human credulity, so the preventers of disease play
upon the equally universal instinct of fear. There is no intention of
minimizing the seriousness of syphilis. Along with cancer,
pneumonia, and tuberculosis, it is one of the major afflictions of
humanity. It causes thousands of deaths yearly; it leads to great
misery. Paresis, one of the important psychoses, is definitely known
to be one of its manifestations. It is obvious, therefore, that its
eradication is one of the major tasks of social hygiene.
But by what means? Let one of the most noted of our American
syphilophobes give the answer! This gentleman, a professor of
pathology in one of the most important medical schools of the Middle
West, yearly lectures over the length and breadth of the land on the
venereal peril. He begins his expostulation with reduction of his
audiences to a state of terror by a lantern-slide display of the more
loathsome manifestations of the disease. He does not state that
modern treatment makes these more and more rare. He insists upon
the utter impossibility of its cure, a fact by no means established. He
advocates early marriage to a non-syphilitic maiden as the best
means of prevention, and failing that, advises that chastity is both
possible and salubrious. Then follows a master stroke of advice by
innuendo—the current belief that masturbation causes insanity is
probably untrue. Finally he denies the value of venereal prophylaxis,
which was first experimentally demonstrated by Metchnikoff and
Roux, and which the medical department of the Army and Navy
know to be of almost perfect efficacy when applied early and
thoroughly.
Lack of space prevents the display of further examples of the
new phenomenon of the entrance of religion and morals into
medicine. It is not my intention for a moment to adopt a nihilistic
attitude toward the achievement of preventive medicine. But it is
necessary to point out that its contamination by moralism,
Puritanism, proselytism, in brief, by religion, threatens to reduce it to
absurdity, and to shake its authority in instances where its functions
are of unmistakable value to our republic. At present the medical
profession plays a minor rôle in the more important functions of this
branch. These are performed in the first place by bacteriologists who
need not be doctors at all, and in the second by sanitary engineers,
whose splendid achievements in water supply and sewage disposal
lead those of all other nations.
It has been remarked above that one of the chief causes of the
unscientific nature of medicine and the anti-scientific character of
doctors lies in their innate credulity and inability to think
independently. This contention is supported by the report on the
intelligence of physicians recently published by the National
Research Council. They are found by more or less trustworthy
psychologic tests to be the lowest in intelligence of all of the
professional men excepting only dentists and horse doctors. Dentists
and horse doctors are ten per cent. less intelligent. But since the
quantitative methods employed certainly carry an experimental error
of ten per cent. or even higher, it is not certain that the members of
the two more humble professions have not equal or even greater
intellectual ability. It is significant that engineers head the list in
intelligence.
 In fact, they are rated sixty per cent. higher than doctors. This
wide disparity leads to a temptation to interesting psychological
probings. Is not the lamentable lack of intelligence of the doctor due
to lack of necessity for rigid intellectual discipline? Many conditions
conspire to make him an intellectual cheat. Fortunately for us, most
diseases are self-limiting. But it is natural for the physician to turn
this dispensation of nature to his advantage and to intimate that he
has cured John Smith, when actually nature has done the trick. On
the contrary, should Smith die, the good doctor can assume a pious
expression and suggest that, despite his own incredible skill and
tremendous effort, it was God’s (or Nature’s) will that John should
pass beyond. Now the engineer is open to no such temptation. He
builds a bridge or erects a building, and disaster is sure to follow any
mis-step in calculation or fault in construction. Should such a
calamity occur, he is presently discredited and disappears from view.
Thus he is held up to a high mark of intellectual rigour and discipline
that is utterly unknown in the world the doctor inhabits.
A survey of the present condition of American medical education
offers little hope for a higher intellectual status of the medical
profession or of any fundamental tendency to turn medicine as a
whole from a mélange of religious ritual, more or less accurate folk-
lore, and commercial cunning, toward the rarer heights of the applied
sciences.
Such a reform depends absolutely upon the recognition that the
bodies of all the fauna of the earth (including Homo sapiens) are
essentially physico-chemical mechanisms; that disease is a
derangement of one sort or another of this mechanism; and that real
progress in knowledge of disease can only come from quantitatively
exact investigation of such derangements.
Up to the present, the number of professors in any branch of
medicine who are aware of this fact is pitifully few. The men, who,
being aware of it, have the training in physics and chemistry to put
their convictions into practice are less in number. So, it is vain to
hope that medical students are being educated from this point of
view.
 This casual glance at American medicine may be thought to be
an unduly pessimistic one. It has not been my intention to be
pessimistic or to be impertinently critical. Indeed, turning from the art
of the practice of medicine, and the religion and folk-lore of
sanitation, to the science of the study of disease, we have much of
which to be proud. American biochemists of the type of Van Slyke
and Folin are actually in the lead of their European brothers. Their
precise quantitative methods furnish invaluable tools in the exact
study of the ills that afflict us.
Finally, the greatest figure of all, Jacques Loeb, working in an
institution that declares its purpose to be the dubious one of medical
research, has in the last three years published investigations which
throw a flood of light upon the dark problems of the chemistry of
proteins. His work is of most fundamental significance, will have far-
reaching results, and is measurably in advance of that of any
European in the same field. Loeb, like all men of the first rank, has
no spirit of propaganda or proselytism. His exact quantitative
experiments rob biology of much of its confused romantic glamour.
The comprehension of his researches demands thorough knowledge
of physical chemistry. However, it is encouraging to note that among
a few younger investigators his point of view is being accepted with
fervour and enthusiasm. But it is time to stop. We are straying from
our subject which was, if I remember, American medicine.
Anonymous
 SPORT AND PLAY
BARTLETT does not tell us who pulled the one about all work
and no play, but it probably was the man who said that the longest
way round was the shortest way home. There is as much sense in
one remark as in the other.
Give me an even start with George M. Cohan, who lives in Great
Neck, where I also live, without his suspecting it—give us an even
start in the Pennsylvania Station and route me on a Long Island train
through Flushing and Bayside while he travels via San Francisco
and Yokohama, and I shall undertake to beat him home, even in a
blizzard. So much for “the longest way round.” Now for the other. If it
were your ambition to spend an evening with a dull boy, whom would
you choose, H. G. Wells, whose output indicates that he doesn’t
even take time off to sleep, or the man that closes his desk at two
o’clock every afternoon and goes to the ball-game?
You may argue that watching ball-games is not play. It is the
American idea of play, which amounts to the same thing, and
seventy-five per cent, of the three hundred thousand citizens who do
it daily, in season, will tell you seriously that it is all the recreation
they get; moreover, that deprived of it, their brain would crack under
the strain of “business,” that, on account of it, they are able to do
more work in the forenoon, and do it better, than would be possible
in two or three full days of close sticking on the job. If you believe
them, inveterate baseball fans can, in a single morning, dictate as
many as four or five twenty-word letters to customers or salesmen,
and finish as fresh as a daisy; whereas the non-fan, the grind, is logy
and torpid by the time he reaches the second “In reply to same.”
But if you won’t concede, in the face of the fans’ own statement,
that it is recreation to look on at baseball or any other sport, then let
me ask you to invite to your home some evening, not a mere
spectator, but an active participant in any of our popular games—say
a champion or near-champion golfer, or a first string pitcher on a big
league baseball club. The golfer, let us say, sells insurance half the
year and golfs the rest. The pitcher plays eight months of the year
and loafs the other four. Bar conversation about their specialty, and
you won’t find two duller boys than those outside the motion-picture
studios.
No, brothers, the bright minds of this or any other country are
owned by the men who leave off work only to eat or go to bed. The
doodles are the boys who divide their time fifty-fifty between work
and play, or who play all the time and don’t even pretend to work.
Proper exercise undoubtedly promotes good health, but the theory
that good health and an active brain are inseparable can be shot full
of holes by the mention of two names—Stanislaus Zbyzsk and
Robert Louis Stevenson.
It is silly, then, to propound that sport is of mental benefit. Its
true, basic function is the cultivation of bodily vigour, with a view to
longevity. And longevity, despite the fact that we profess belief in a
post-mortem existence that makes this one look sick, is a thing we
poignantly desire. Bonehead and wise guy, believer and sceptic—all
of us want to postpone as long as possible the promised joy-ride to
the Great Beyond. If to participate in sport helps us to do that, then
there is good reason to participate in sport.
Well, how many “grown-ups” (normal human beings of twenty-
two and under need not be considered; they get all the exercise they
require, and then some) in this country, a country that boasts
champions in nearly every branch of athletics, derive from play the
physical benefit there is in it? What percentage take an active part in
what the sporting editors call “the five major sports”—baseball,
football, boxing, horse racing, and golf? Let us take them one by one
and figure it out, beginning with “the national pastime.”
Baseball. Twenty or twenty-one play. Three hundred to forty
thousand look on. The latter are, for two hours, “out in the open air,”
and this, when the air is not so open as to give them pneumonia and
when they don’t catch something as bad or worse in the street-car or
subway train that takes them and brings them back, is a physical
benefit. Moreover, the habitual attendant at ball-games is not likely to
die of brain fever. But otherwise, the only ones whose health is
appreciably promoted are the twenty or twenty-one who play. And
they are not doing it for their health.
Football. Thirty play. Thirty thousand look on. One or two of the
thirty may be killed or suffer a broken bone, but the general health of
the other twenty-nine or twenty-eight is improved by the exercise. As
for the thirty thousand, all they get is the open air—usually a little too
much of it—and, unless they are hardened to the present-day cheer-
leader, a slight feeling of nausea.
Boxing. Eight to ten play. Five thousand to sixty thousand look
on. Those of the participants who are masters of defence may profit
physically by the training, though the rigorous methods sometimes
employed to make an unnatural weight are certainly inimical to
health. The ones not expert in defensive boxing, the ones who
succeed in the game through their ability to “take punishment” (a trait
that usually goes with a low mentality) die, as a rule, before reaching
old age, as a result of the “gameness” that made them “successful.”
There is a limit to the number of punches one can “take” and retain
one’s health. The five or sixty thousand cannot boast that they even
get the air. All but a few of the shows are given indoors, in an
atmosphere as fresh and clean as that of the Gopher Prairie day-
coach.
Horse Racing. Fifty horses and twenty-five jockeys play. Ten
thousand people look on. I can’t speak for the horses, but if a jockey
wants to remain a jockey, he must, as a rule, eat a great deal less
than his little stomach craves, and I don’t know of any doctor who
prescribes constant underfeeding as conducive to good health in a
growing boy.
Racing fans, of course, are out for financial, not physical, gain.
They, like the jockeys, are likely to starve to death while still young.
Golf. Here is a pastime in which the players far outnumber the
lookers-on. It is a game, if it is a game, that not only takes you out in
the open air, but makes you walk, and walking, the doctors say, is all