"Feeling the Body". Subjectivity and Politics in Spanish Mass Society (1890-1936)

Abstract

The article reflects on the forming conditions of the subjects in political action assuming the centrality of the body as a tool for the analysis. We assume the hypothesis that the language of politics needs a body to materialize. There are two substantial parts. In the first part of the article, more theoretical, we revise some of the key milestones for the renewal of the concepts and its consequences for the formation of subjectivity. We propose a Spinozist concept of body understanding the body as a set of emotions, as an affected space in which emotions are materialized and, at the same time, as an active space in the production of meaning. In the second part we analyze a case study. The thesis is that the self-consciousness of “national degeneration” that surrounded the political environment at the end of Nineteenth century in Spain was formed on the fear of the contaminated body, the dissemination of the feelings of disgust, or the shame and stigma of poverty. They were emotions that shaped the political bodies of the XX century mass society. More concretely, the socialist movement that broke into the political scene in 1890 as a mass movement is the result of the politicization of the abject body, the workers body, as a receiving and creating instance of signs and meanings.