Cultural Approaches to Disgust and the Visceral

This edited volume explores the cultural manifestations of disgust, investigating its diverse forms and functions across established and vernacular cultural practices. Contributors highlight the socio-cultural creation, consumption, reception, and experience of disgust, challenging the biological understanding of it as a danger reaction and base emotion. Through original case studies, the book examines disgust's aesthetic qualities, cultural and artistic appearances, and uses in visual and aural media, appealing to scholars in various disciplines.

Format: Hardback
Length: 228 pages
Publication date: 06 September 2022
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

This edited volume traces cultural appearances of disgust and investigates the varied forms and functions disgust takes and is given in both established and vernacular cultural practices.

Contributors focus on the socio-cultural creation, consumption, reception, and experience of disgust, a visceral emotion whose cultural situatedness and circulation has historically been overlooked in academic scholarship. Chapters challenge and supplement the biological understanding of disgust as a danger reaction and as a base emotion evoked by the lower senses, touch, taste and smell, through a wealth of original case studies in which disgust is analyzed in its aesthetic qualities, and in its cultural and artistic appearances and uses, featuring visual and aural media.

Because it is interdisciplinary, the book will be of interest to scholars in a wide range of fields, including visual studies, philosophy, aesthetics, sociology, history, literature, and musicology.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Dimension: 246 x 174 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781032063782