“Emotions in conservative intellectual production between 1890 and 1930. Two case studies: Leopoldo Lugones (Argentina) and Alberto Edwards (Chile)”
The project is framed within the field of the history of emotions, more specifically in the historical analysis of emotions and their role in politics. My doctoral thesis analysed the role of emotions in Chilean politics in the first half of the 19th century, concluding that these were not anecdotal issues in political practice, but rather that emotions constituted modern Chilean politics, that is, they shaped fundamental aspects of what we understand by politics. Thus, we cannot understand politics by ignoring one of its basic elements, such as emotions.
Taking the above into consideration, this research project delves deeper into Latin American history to analyse the use of emotions in intellectual practice, specifically in relation to two figures who played a fundamental role in Latin American conservative thought: the poet, writer and politician Leopoldo Lugones (Argentina), and the historian and lawyer Alberto Edwards (Chile).
Contrary to the idea that emotions are opposed to the use of rational arguments, this research is based on the premise that the act of thinking does not exclude the mobilisation of emotions. Moreover, historical documents from the 19th and 20th centuries show a greater complementarity between thinking and feeling. In this sense, this project draws on theoretical and methodological contributions from the history of emotions, as well as those from intellectual history, to formulate the following questions:
Did conservative intellectuals such as Lugones and Edwards have a particular view of emotions? Were the emotional repertoires of the fin de siècle period in Latin America different from those that existed at the beginning of the 19th century? What similarities can we find between the Argentine and Chilean cases during this period? These are some of the questions that this research attempts to address.
