Performing Hysteria: Images and Imaginations of Hysteria

by Johanna Braun (Editor), Elaine Showalter (Contributor), Dominik Zechner (Contributor)

Cross-disciplinary analysis of contemporary images and representations of hysteria
We seem to be living in hysterical times. A simple Google search reveals the sheer bottomless well of "hysterical" discussions on diverse topics such as the #metoo movement, Trumpianism, border wars, Brexit, transgender liberation, Black Lives Matter, COVID-19, and climate change, to name only a few. Against the backdrop of such recent deployments of hysteria in popular discourse--particularly as they emerge in times of material and hermeneutic crisis--Performing Hysteria re-engages the notion of "hysteria".

Performing Hysteria rigorously mines late 20th- and early 21st-century (primarily visual) culture for signs of hysteria. The various essays in this volume contribute to the multilayered and complex discussions that surround and foster this resurgent interest in hysteria--covering such areas as art, literature, theatre, film, television, dance; crossing such disciplines as cultural studies, political science, philosophy, history, media, disability, race and ethnicity, and gender studies; and analysing stereotypical images and representations of the hysteric in relation to cultural sciences and media studies. Of particular importance is the volume's insistence on taking the intersection of hysteria and performance seriously.

Genres: American History

264 pages, Paperback

Published November 3, 2020

About the author

Johanna Braun (1929 - 2008) was a German author who often co-wrote with her husband, Günter Braun.

Reviews

[Madelyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

“While Laura Mulvey coined “the male gaze” in 1975, one photo in Charcot’s collection provides a unique connection to horror film tropes: fifteen-year-old patient Augustine, lying on a bed with flowing hair, a nightgown partially revealing a bare shoulder, legs crossed exposing more skin (Regnard). What should be an academic recording of hysteria is disguised eroticism. As mentioned earlier, modern critics suspect she was posed, aware of the camera’s gaze upon her, and much like women in horror cinema she “evokes horror film visions of vulnerable, beautiful young women sleeping or fainted on their beds” like Lucy (Sadie Frost) in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), donning evening wear while a vampire snacks on her (Smith 167–168).”