Kerr, Tom. “The Feeling of What Happens in Departments

Kerr, Tom. “The Feeling of What Happens in Departments of English.” A way to Move: Rhetorics of Emotion & Composition Studies. Eds. Dale Jacobs & Laura R. Micciche. Boyton/Cook:Portsmouth, NH. (2003). 23.

“And yet, what Brand observes of the writing classroom may also be said of English departments, material conditions notwithstanding: ‘when things are stalled. . .it is because of emotion. When things go well, it is also because of emotion (Brand 2000, 216).

“It is imperative that we understand emotion quite explicitly as symbolic communication, as a highly inflected semiotic system—a rhetoric of the body, if you will—that relies on signs and representations at both the molecular (interior, biochemical) and molar (exterior, behavioral) levels of the organism” (27).

“As for the second economy, emotional communication regulates the internal states of our organism, ‘providing increased blood flow to arteries in the legs so that muscles receive extra oxygen and glucose, in the case of a flight reaction, or changing heart and breathing rythms,’ in the case say, of presenting a paper before an audience (54). Emotions not only signal our intentions and reactions to others, they also tell our own bodies what to do and when to do it” (27).

“But the ideological manipulation of emotion takes on much finer hues and textures as well; the systemic, culturally sanctioned suppression of the emotions that one finds in departments of English serves as a good example (30).