Introduction

Abstract

It might seem trivial and mere common sense to note that revolts and revolutions are deeply emotional moments. In history books and newspapers, we read about the tense and emotionally charged atmosphere that leads to violence when protestors confront police forces, or about furious and passionate crowds acting in defiance of the ideal of rational and coldblooded politics. But rage and anger are not the only emotions involved in the politics of protest. Consider the iconic photographs of the summer strikes during the French Popular Front in 1936, depicting smiling workers occupying their factories and construction sites, or the cheering crowds storming the Berlin Wall in November 1989. Or consider the genre of protest songs, telling stories of solidarity and hope as well as deep sorrow. At times, social and political movements even made feelings their central concern, such as the hippy movement with its calls for free love. On the other side of the political spectrum, conservative as well as social democratic observers often denounced protests and riots as politically irrelevant outbreaks of hatred, or mocked the ‘hysterical’ fear of the peace movement during the 1980s. Somehow, these examples suggest, feelings mattered, yet how precisely they mattered is rarely investigated. The essays in this special issue will address this question in order to enrich our understanding of protest movements, revolts and revolutions. Collectively, they intend to open a theoretical and methodological debate on the role of emotions in the politics of protest and resistance.

Revisiting space and emotion: New ways to study buildings and feelings

“…While architectural historians have often led the way in considering how a designer or architect envisioned emotional responses within a space (e.g., Godson & James‐Chakraborty, 2019; Hammond, 2022), these expectations can, and often are, transgressed, conflicted, and actively reacted to (e.g., Boddice, 2018; Ebrahimi & Maitland, 2022; Fama, 2022; Whyte, 2018). Pushing the field of architectural history forward, Sara Honarmand Ebrahimi's special forum on ‘Exploring Architecture and Emotions through Space and Place’ employs a diversity of emotional concepts to investigate the interplay between management of space and management of emotions (Ebrahimi, 2022).…”

“…However, the interplay between the history of emotions and the built environment has traditionally been overlooked in favour of a focus on what happens within the confines of a particular space. From this point of view, a built space is only the setting for emotional entanglements to take place within (e.g., Häberlen & Spinney, 2014).…”