Periodic Reporting for period 1 - EMOPractices (Emotions as Practice in the early modern Jesuit missions in the Asia-Pacific)
Reporting period: 2021-10-01 to 2023-09-30
To address the lack of research on the role of emotions in the early emergence of stereotypes in the context of the first modern contacts between European and Asian people, EMOPractices analyses manuscript texts by key actors and cultural brokers in these exchanges, the Catholic missionaries of the Society of Jesus. Asserting the higher rationality of Christianity, Jesuits strove to present it as the basis of their policies. Still, the analysis of Jesuit textual production shows that the emotional dimensions of missions were not less essential and could sensibly impact missionary policies and the image of the Other produced by missionary literature. EMOPractices approaches Jesuit enterprises through the lens of emotions to reveal the previously disregarded role of Jesuit emotional practices and their impact on the creation of stereotypes of peoples of the Asia-Pacific region.
(Image: Cleveland Museum of Art, "Arrival of the 'Southern Barbarians'," detail, c. 1600; Japan, Momoyama period (1573-1615))