The First World War: Affective Turns and the Rearrangement of the Senses

The first part of the article explores the affective turns on the eve and during the course of the First World War. It discusses the question of how collective emotions—from exaltation to depression and devastating scepticism – were formed in historically and culturally specific places in Germany, France, and Great Britain. Various motives for collective enthusiasm at the beginning of the war are examined. The second part examines the problematised “wartime body” and the sensorium rearrangement of the combatants in the trenches. Sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste acquired new roles in the lifeworld of the combatants. The wartime body is a “nervous” body, modelled in its senses by moods hat swing with explosive suddenness. The third part asks how the attitudes of peacetime continued to act behind the stage of battles. This is most evident in the correspondence between soldiers and their families in the rear. The letters contain both the experience from the front and the peacetime attitudes of the soldiers. War correspondence, as a connection between the battlefield and the peacetime habitus, displays a kind of paradox – the language of people in the trenches is both impoverished and enriched.