The blush is an elusive expression, and one of the most intriguing. It is manifest in a wide range of emotions, even those that seem antithetical: a sign of shame or innocence, a vehicle of amorous attraction, a symptom of fear and danger. It is interrogated by a succession of disciplines, physiology, biology, sexology, and psychiatry, surviving as a reflex mechanism of self-attention, a pre-condition for the ritual of courtship, a product of sexual anxiety and objectification, and finally, a form of fear itself: erythrophobia. The narratological character of the blush is manifest in different forms (fiction, natural history, psychoanalysis). But this tendency to unfold as narrative coexists with another equally prevalent feature, namely its reduction to a purely physiological response, even one in which affect is entirely absent.
Listen to a recording of Paul White’s talk below:Share