‘Given it is all so remote from us’: family secrets, ancestral shames and the proximities of emotion
This article examines how families relate emotionally to their ancestors as they deal with the discovery of past family secrets. In response to Eduardo ) call for sociologists of emotion to pay closer attention to the ways that ‘emotional experiences happen over time’, I explore how families imagine and register the emotions of the past. To do this, I draw on concepts from the sociology of the family and personal life and cultural studies of affect and emotion. I use these concepts to examine what I term ‘emotional proximities’ within responses from a qualitative survey about intergenerational family secrets. The analysis explores how respondents locate emotions as both the cause and effect of family secrets, but crucially also the force that cuts or ties descendants to their ancestors. This study opens up our capacity to consider what work emotions do within families. I argue that attention to how families navigate the emotions that surround inherited secrets foregrounds the emotional labour that goes into sustaining family identities over time.
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