{"id":1695,"date":"2020-01-30T17:39:01","date_gmt":"2020-01-30T17:39:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/?p=1695"},"modified":"2020-05-11T08:03:22","modified_gmt":"2020-05-11T08:03:22","slug":"sciencer-and-sentimentality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/?p=1695","title":{"rendered":"Science and Sentimentality"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Flusser translated the title of his essay \u201cGeste und Gestimmtheit\u201d as \u201cGesture and Sentimentality\u201d.  I didn\u2019t.  I found, and to some extent still find that particular word misleading at best. Its equivalence to “Gestimmtheit” is almost beside the point.  It is certainly the case that \u201csentimentality\u201d wasn\u2019t always so uncharitably associated with exaggerated, false, or inappropriate feelings as it is now.  In his novel Sentimental Education<\/em>, for example, Flaubert set out to write a “moral history” of his time. That term, too, has surely shifted meaning. “Sentimental,” in any case, seems to have made very broad and not especially judgemental reference to emotions, feelings, convictions, reactions, decisions, etc. that are not<\/em> logical. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m not surprised that an equivalent English word was far from obvious;  I chose \u201caffect\u201d as an equivalent in part because the various understandings that swirl about the word now carry something of the mystery, difficulty, complexity of human communication (\u201cGestimmtheit\u201d doesn\u2019t crop up a lot in everyday German speech either.) That is certainly at least one of the points Flusser is trying to make. The essay in question sets out to \u201cambush\u201d the term, he says. He clearly anticipated difficulties.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I must assume that Flusser chose \u201csentimentality\u201d based on its older, broader, and more honourable meaning, that is, roughly a psychological “other” to logical thought.  Given its use in a general introduction, however, it seems as if \u201clogic\u201d is subsumed under \u201csentiment\u201d (or, as I translated it, \u201caffect\u201d) after all. We necessarily understand others by \u201creading\u201d their gestures.  It is through gestures — complex, difficult, vulnerable to confusion and misunderstanding, that even the most stringent logic must be communicated. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Flusser translated the title of his essay \u201cGeste und Gestimmtheit\u201d as \u201cGesture and Sentimentality\u201d.  I didn\u2019t.  I found, and to some extent still find that particular word misleading at best. Its equivalence to “Gestimmtheit” is almost...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1696,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"index","bgseo_robots_follow":"follow","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[214,328,182],"tags":[7,310,311,312],"class_list":["post-1695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flusser","category-anglophones","category-translation","tag-flusser","tag-flusser-gestures","tag-gesture-and-affect","tag-sentimentality"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1695"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1804,"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1695\/revisions\/1804"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}