Chapter 12 Spectacle, Enthusiasm, Objectivity – Managing Fire as an Emoterial

In: Early Modern Fire
Author:
Simon Werrett
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Type:
Chapter
Pages:
329–344
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004521766_014

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Abstract

Recent attempts to better understand early modern material culture have proposed thinking about sociomaterials, stressing the bond between subjects and objects in early modern contexts. In this paper I use explorations of early modern ideas and practices around fire to propose a new category of the emoterial, a term that indicates the entanglement of emotions as much as sociability with materials in the early modern period. Fire was immensely evocative and transformative, delighting or destroying human and non-human bodies through everything from fireworks displays to domestic catastrophes. Human life and passions were said to reside in fiery economies inside the body, so managing social order depended on fire management. Natural philosophy claimed to discipline fiery spirits through knowledge, experiment, and self-discipline. Fire management therefore should be recognized as a critical feature of competing approaches to social, epistemic, economic and emotional order in the early modern period; and fire provides an excellent example of a more general phenomenon of emoteriality.

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Early Modern Fire

Science, Technology, and the Urban Space

Series:  Intersections, Volume: 95
Cover Early Modern Fire
E-Book ISBN:
9789004521766
Publisher:
Brill
Print Publication Date:
05 Nov 2024
Front Matter
Introduction: the Early Modern Fire
Part 1 Fire in Early Modern Science
Part 2 Early Modern Fire Technologies
Part 3 Fire in the Urban Space
Back Matter

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