History’s Affect
As a noun, “affect” refers to “the conscious emotion that occurs in reaction to a thought or experience.” Can—should—the parts of human experience traditionally excluded from “rational” thought like emotion, conscious or not, inform the discipline and practice of history? Resolute adherents to scientific positivism would say no, but some feel otherwise.
Photo: Luc/Flickr/CC BY-NC-SA 2.0. Image cropped.
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