On Flinching

On Flinching explores the cultural history of flinches, winces, cringes and starts in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Taking the flinches of scientific observers as its starting point, it likens scientific experiments to the emotional interactions between audiences and actors in the theatre of this period. In particular, it argues that while the late nineteenth century is usually associated with the rise of scientific objectivity, physiologists, neurologists and psychologists continued to perform acts of passionate and self-conscious spectatorship. In turn, the book opens out to consider how emotions, gestures and theatricality were all parts of the way Victorians thought and wrote about looking.