The Masses Are Revolting: Victorian Culture and the Political Aesthetics of Disgust

The Masses Are Revolting explores how nineteenth-century disgust shaped modern British society, focusing on writers and thinkers such as Charles Darwin, Charles Dickens, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Thomas Hardy, George Gissing, and Charlotte Brontë. It reveals new connections between social control, knowledge production, and infrastructural development.

Format: Hardback
Length: 342 pages
Publication date: 15 September 2021
Publisher: Cornell University Press

The Masses Are Revolting: Reconstructing a Pivotal Era in the History of Affect and Emotion

In his groundbreaking work, The Masses Are Revolting, Zachary Samalin delves into an archive of nineteenth-century disgust to explore its profound impact on the emergence of modern British society. By examining the emotion's socially productive role, Samalin highlights concrete scenes of Victorian disgust, ranging from sewer tunnels and courtrooms to operating tables and alleyways. He focuses on a diverse range of nineteenth-century writers and thinkers, including Charles Darwin, Charles Dickens, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Thomas Hardy, George Gissing, and Charlotte Brontë, whose works reflect on the shifting, unstable meaning of disgust across the period.

Samalin elaborates on this cultural history of Victorian disgust in specific domains of British society, including the construction of London's sewer system, the birth of modern obscenity law, and the development of literary realism. He also explores the emergence of urban sociology, the rise of new scientific theories of instinct, and the techniques of colonial administration developed during the Indian Rebellion of 1857. By bringing to light disgust's role as a public passion, The Masses Are Revolting reveals significant new connections among these seemingly disconnected forms of social control, knowledge production, and infrastructural development.

This seminal work not only sheds light on the historical significance of disgust but also offers valuable insights into the complex interplay between emotions, society, and the construction of knowledge. It is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of affect and emotion, as well as in the broader social and cultural dynamics of nineteenth-century Britain.

Weight: 28g
Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781501756467