Resentment has a history. Paintings such as Gericault's Le Radeau de La Meduse, nineteenth-century women's manifestos and WWI war photographs provide but a few examples to retrace the changing physiognomy of this emotion from the second half of the eighteenth century up to our contemporary society. The essays in this collection attempt to shed light on the historical evolution of this affective experience adopting the French Revolution as a gravitational force, namely as a moment in which the desire to be other was politically legitimised by means of the ideal of a meritocratic society. From Adam Smith's definition as social passion linked with justice, to Nietzsche's interpretation of resentment as a pathological symptom, this emotion has also shaped a plethora of social movements forging their identity out of hatred mixed with fear and indignation. This volume seeks to provide new insights into the history of emotions by showing how resentment is a cultural experience that contributes to a better understanding of the differences between the past and the present world.
About the Author: Bernardino Fantini is Director of the Institute for the History of Medicine and Health, Geneva University, which is also a WHO Collaborating Centre for Historical Research on Public Health. He received his PhD in Humanities at the University of Paris Sorbonne. His main research subjects are the history of diseases and public health, infectious diseases, biology and the scientific bases of medicine, epistemology of biology and medicine, and history of the relationship between medicine, science and music. Dolores Martin Moruno, PhD, works at the Institute for the History of Medicine and Health, Geneva University, in a project entitled Romantic Feelings, which explores the relationships between Romantic sensibility and the emergence of affective diseases in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. She received a PhD in Philosophy from the UAM (Madrid) and in the History of Science from the Centre Alexandre Koyre (Paris). She has also been Visiting Research Fellow at the CRHST (Paris), The Bakken (Minneapolis) and the Queen Mary University of London. She is the author of various publications on Romanticism and the sciences and on the history of nursing in wartime. Javier Moscoso, PhD, is Research Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). Along with several monographs and many publications, he has also paid special attention to what is now called knowledge transfer and public engagement. He has been the curator of different exhibitions at the Spanish National Library in Madrid, at the Science Museum in London, and at the Wellcome Collection Gallery in London. His latest book, Pain: A Cultural History, was published in Spain, by Taurus, in 2011, with the English version, by Palgrave-Macmillan, following in 2012.