How Emotions Work

420 Pages·1999·219.891 MB·English

by  Jack Katz

How
Work
KATZ
JACK
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
CHICAGO AND LONDON
JACK KATZ is professor of sociology at the University of
California, Los Angeles, and author olPoor People's
Lawyers in Transition (1982) and Sed.atctions of Critne:
Moral and Sensual Attraaions in Doing Euil (19881.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60537
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
@ t999 by Jack Katz
AII rights reserved. Published 1999
Printed in the United States of America
08 07 06 05 04 03 02010099 123 4 5
ISBN: 0-22642599-1 (cloth)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kau,lack, 1944-
How emotions work / Jack Katz.
p.
cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-226-42599-1 (cloth: alk. paper)
1. Emotions-Social aspects, L Title.
BF531.K38 1999
752.4-dAt
99-32675
CP
@ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum
requirements of the American National Standard for
Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed
Library Materials, ANSI 239.48-1992.
To my chi.ld.ren,
in the order in which they began shaping
the emotions of my everyday life:
Zac, ktty, Ric, and Alex.
And n Elena,
with whom, for trventy years now,
the metamorphoses have never
been mundane.

Ve think of ourselves as so intimately entwined in bodily life that
a man is a complex unity-body and mind. But the body is part
of the external world, continuous with it. In fact, it is just as much
part of nature as anything else there-a river, or a mountain, or
a cloud. Also, if we are fussily exact, we cannot define where a
body begins and where external nature ends.
North l7hitehead, Science and the Modern World
-Alfred
[E]ven questions about gods saving us can be brought down to
earth and must finally be settled . . . by looking to the extraordi-
narily subtle and varied way our everyday practices actually work
to give us an understanding of what it means for us and everything
else to be.
Dreyfus and Harrison Hall, Heidegger: A Critical
-Hubert
Reader
The object . . . [is] to describe the animation of the human body,
not in terms of the descent into it of pure consciousness or reflec-
tion, but as a metamorphosis of life, and the body as the "body
o/the spirit" (Val6ry).
Merleau-Ponty, Tbetnes from the Lectures at the
-Maurice
Collige de France, 1952-1950

CONTENTS
Acknoutledgments xl
Introduction
1
L.A.
one Pissed Off in 18
Mirrors
two Families and Funny 87
Moments
three Shameful 142
Crying?
tour What Is 175
tog and tugue An Introduaion to Two Cryings 223
Whining
t ive An Episode of 229
six Crying in the Whirlpool 274
A Murderer Breaks Down und.er
Police Interrogation
seve n Mundane Metamorphoses 309
Nofes 345
References 381
lnd.ex 393
tx
t
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Questions from audiences, some anticipated and some unexpected,
some uttered and others emphatically implied through polite but la-
bored restraint, were indispensable for sustaining and repeatedly redi-
recting this proiect over a period of many years. My perspective on
emotions was first worked out in interaction with students in seminar
discussions. I am very grateful for the patient collaboration of several
cohorts of Ph.D. students at UCLA, and to Prof. Alain Coulon, who,
after wandering into my seminar in Los Angeles, set up a seminar
course at the University of Paris VII! where I first tried out a format
for this book. For other challenging opportunities, I would like to
thank Keith Oatley and a session in l(tirzburg, Germany, of the Inter-
national Society for Research on Emotions; George Psathas and a
meeting of the M.I.D.A.S. society at Harvard; Martin Jay and the "Ex-
perience" group of the German and European Study Center at Berke-
iey; and several sessions organized through the University of Lund,
Sweden, by Malin Akerstrom, Kaisa Ekholm Friedman, and Jonathan
Friedman.
I was fortunate to receive comments on drafts of one or more sec-
tions from Howard S. Becker, Alain Coulon, Jeff Coulter, Lori Cro-
nyn, Mitchell Duneier, Robert M. Emerson, Michael Flaherty, Robert
Garot, Calin Goina, John Heritage, David Johnson, Gail Kligman,
Margarethe Kusenbach, Melvin Lansky, Richard Leo, Dan Marks,
Aundra Saa Meroe, Keith Oatley, Melvin Pollner, Fred Prichard, Su-
zanne Retzinger, Ted Sarbin, Thomas Scheff, Melvin Seeman, Lakshmi
'sracquant
Srinivas, and Diane Vaughan. Loic digested the whole
manuscript and offered extraordinarily incisive criticism and very us-
able advice. I thank Ricardo Halpern for producing the video images
in chapter 2; Scott Galbraith for the illustrations in chapter 5, which
he made from video stills; and both scott Galbraith and Naomi Fuji-
moto for cheerful and painstaking research assistance. The Academic
xl
xn
Acknowledgments
senate at ucLA helped with modest bur essential research funds. Be-
cause of Doug Mitchell's enthusiasm, Michael Koplow,s attention to
detail, and Martin $7hite's work on the index, it has been a pleasure
to make the book with Chicago.
My appreciation for contributions of data is expressed in the chap-
ters, but because of the need to make the subjects anonymous, my
biggest debt cannot be properly paid. In a sense my job has been simply
to haul barriers of artificial ideas and inappropriate methods o,ri of
the way so that we can see the intimate innovations that peopre make
in their everyday lives. This book fails if it is not obvious that its cre-
ativity has been ripped off from its subjects.
For permission to reprint parts of chapters 2 and 3 that were previ-
ously published, I thank, respecively, the American Journal of Sociol-
ogy andAnalytic Press. For permission ro use rhe photograph by Andr6
Kert6sz in chapter 2, I thank the Kert6sz estate and its curator, Robert
Gurbo.