Our Emotional Makeup

Broken hearts, edgy nerves, tightened throats—our emotions grab and take hold of us. But if our emotions appear obvious to us, are they necessarily real or universal? This, of course, is what researchers in physiology and psychology assert, but they will ultimately be disappointed.

Vinciane Despret sets out in this book to show how some of our emotions, precisely those we thought were a natural part of our make-up, do not exist unless they have been inscribed in our subjectivity through the...