Intensities of feeling: towards a spatial politics of affect
TL;DR: In this article, the authors take the politics of affect as not just incidental but central to the life of cities, given that cities are thought of as inhuman or transhuman entities and that politics is understood as a process of community without unity.
Abstract: This paper attempts to take the politics of affect as not just incidental but central to the life of cities, given that cities are thought of as inhuman or transhuman entities and that politics is understood as a process of community without unity. It is in three main parts. The first part sets out the main approaches to affect that conform with this approach. The second part considers the ways in which the systematic engineering of affect has become central to the political life of Euro‐American cities, and why. The third part then sets out the different kinds of progressive politics that might become possible once affect is taken into account. There are some brief conclusions.
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01 Jan 2006
TL;DR: Gibson and Graham as discussed by the authors describe a politics of possibility that can build different economies in place and over space, and argue that post-capitalist subjects, economies, and communities can be fostered.
Abstract: Is there life after capitalism? In this creatively argued follow-up to their book The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It), J. K. Gibson-Graham offer already existing alternatives to a global capitalist order and outline strategies for building alternative economies. A Postcapitalist Politics reveals a prolific landscape of economic diversity-one that is not exclusively or predominantly capitalist-and examines the challenges and successes of alternative economic interventions. Gibson-Graham bring together political economy, feminist poststructuralism, and economic activism to foreground the ethical decisions, as opposed to structural imperatives, that construct economic "development" pathways. Marshalling empirical evidence from local economic projects and action research in the United States, Australia, and Asia, they produce a distinctive political imaginary with three intersecting moments: a politics of language, of the subject, and of collective action. In the face of an almost universal sense of surrender to capitalist globalization, this book demonstrates that postcapitalist subjects, economies, and communities can be fostered. The authors describe a politics of possibility that can build different economies in place and over space. They urge us to confront the forces that stand in the way of economic experimentation and to explore different ways of moving from theory to action. J. K. Gibson-Graham is the pen name of Katherine Gibson and Julie Graham, feminist economic geographers who work, respectively, at the Australian National University in Canberra and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
1,561 citations
TL;DR: The authors discuss the general turn to affect, particularly the turn to the neurosciences of emotion, that has recently taken place in the humanities and social sciences, including history, political theory, human geography, urban and environmental studies, architecture, literary studies, art history and criticism, media theory, and cultural studies.
Abstract: In this essay I plan to discuss the general turn to affect, particularly the turn to the neurosciences of emotion, that has recently taken place in the humanities and social sciences.2 The rise of interest in the emotions among historians has been well documented.3 My concern is somewhat different. I want to consider the turn to the emotions that has been occurring in a broad range of fields, including history, political theory, human geography, urban and environmental studies, architecture, literary studies, art history and criticism, media theory, and cultural studies. The work of Daniel Lord Smail, who has recently inaugurated neurohistory by arguing for the integration of history and the brain sciences, including the sciences of emotion, is a case in point.4 But my inquiry will also consider the claims of those cultural critics and others who, even before historians ventured into this terrain, in such newly designated fields as neuropolitics, neuro-
852 citations
TL;DR: The authors identify three key areas of agreement: a relational ontology that privileges fluidity; a privileging of proximity and intimacy in their accounts; and a favouring of ethnographic methods.
Abstract: This paper seeks to examine both how emotions have been explored in emotional geography and also how affect has been understood in affectual geography. By tracing out the conceptual influences underlying emotional and affectual geography, I seek to understand both the similarities and differences between their approaches. I identify three key areas of agreement: a relational ontology that privileges fluidity; a privileging of proximity and intimacy in their accounts; and a favouring of ethnographic methods. Even so, there is a fundamental disagreement, concerning the relationship – or non-relationship – between emotions and affect. Yet, this split raises awkward questions for both approaches, about how emotions and affect are to be understood and also about their geographies. As importantly, mapping the agreements and disagreements within emotional and affectual geography helps with an exploration of the political implications of this work. I draw upon psychoanalytic geography to suggest ways of addressing certain snags in both emotional and affectual geography.
743 citations
TL;DR: The body and city: the passive body the plan of the book a personal note as discussed by the authors, is a survey of the body and its relationship to the city and its culture. But it does not discuss the relationship between the passive and active body.
Abstract: Introduction - body and city: the passive body the plan of the book a personal note. Part 1 Powers of the voice and eye: nakedness - the citizen's body in Perikles' Athens the cloak of darkness - the protections of ritual in Athens the obsessive image - place and time in Hadrian's Rome time in the body - early Christians in Rome. Part 2 Movements of the heart: comunity - the Paris of Jehan de Chelles \"each man is a devil to himself\" - the paris of Humbert de Romans fear of touching - the Jewish ghetto in Renaissance Venice. Part 3 Arteries and veins: moving bodies - Harvey's revolution the body set free - Boullee's Paris urban individualism - E.M. Forster's London. Conclusion: civic bodies - multi-cultural New York.
669 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors describe a single day's walking along the South West Coast Path in North Devon, England, focusing on the distinctive ways in which coast walking patterns into refracting orderings of subjectivity and spatiality, into sensations of anxiety and immensity, haptic enfolding and attenuation, encounters with others and with the elements.
Abstract: This paper tells the story of a single day's walking, alone, along the South West Coast Path in North Devon, England. Forms of narrative and descriptive writing are used here as creative and critical means of discussing the varied affinities and distanciations of self and landscape emergent within the affective and performative milieu of coastal walking. Discussion of these further enables critical engagement with current conceptualizations of self–landscape and subject–world relations within cultural geography and spatial-cultural theory more generally. Through attending to a sequence of incidents and experiences, the paper focuses upon the distinctive ways in which coast walking patterns into refracting orderings of subjectivity and spatiality – into for example, sensations of anxiety and immensity, haptic enfolding and attenuation, encounters with others and with the elements, and moments of visual exhilaration and epiphany.
615 citations
References
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Book•
01 Jan 1872
TL;DR: The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals Introduction to the First Edition and Discussion Index, by Phillip Prodger and Paul Ekman.
Abstract: Acknowledgments List of Illustrations Figures Plates Preface to the Anniversary Edition by Paul Ekman Preface to the Third Edition by Paul Ekman Preface to the Second Edition by Francis Darwin Introduction to the Third Edition by Paul Ekman The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals Introduction to the First Edition 1. General Principles of Expression 2. General Principles of Expression -- continued 3. General Principles of Expression -- continued 4. Means of Expression in Animals 5. Special Expressions of Animals 6. Special Expressions of Man: Suffering and Weeping 7. Low Spirits, Anxiety, Grief, Dejection, Despair 8. Joy, High Spirits, Love, Tender Feelings, Devotion 9. Reflection - Meditation - Ill-temper - Sulkiness - Determination 10. Hatred and Anger 11. Disdain - Contempt - Disgust - Guilt - Pride, Etc. - Helplessness - Patience - Affirmation and Negation 12. Surprise - Astonishment - Fear - Horror 13. Self-attention - Shame - Shyness - Modesty: Blushing 14. Concluding Remarks and Summary Afterword, by Paul Ekman APPENDIX I: Charles Darwin's Obituary, by T. H. Huxley APPENDIX II: Changes to the Text, by Paul Ekman APPENDIX III: Photography and The Expression of the Emotions, by Phillip Prodger APPENDIX IV: A Note on the Orientation of the Plates, by Phillip Prodger and Paul Ekman APPENDIX V: Concordance of Illustrations, by Phillip Prodger APPENDIX VI: List of Head Words from the Index to the First Edition NOTES NOTES TO THE COMMENTARIES INDEX
9,342 citations
Book•
01 Jan 2002
TL;DR: Parables for the Virtual as discussed by the authors is an interesting combination of cultural theory, science, and philosophy that asserts itself in a crystalline and multi-faceted argument, and it can be seen as an alternative approach for the wedding of scientific and cultural theory.
Abstract: Although the body has been the focus of much contemporary cultural theory, the models that are typically applied neglect the most salient characteristics of embodied existence—movement, affect, and sensation—in favor of concepts derived from linguistic theory. In Parables for the Virtual Brian Massumi views the body and media such as television, film, and the Internet, as cultural formations that operate on multiple registers of sensation beyond the reach of the reading techniques founded on the standard rhetorical and semiotic models.
Renewing and assessing William James’s radical empiricism and Henri
Bergson’s philosophy of perception through the filter of the post-war French philosophy of Deleuze, Guattari, and Foucault, Massumi links a cultural logic of variation to questions of movement, affect, and sensation. If such concepts are as fundamental as signs and significations, he argues, then a new set of theoretical issues appear, and with them potential new paths for the wedding of scientific and cultural theory. Replacing the traditional opposition of literal and figural with new distinctions between stasis and motion and between actual and virtual, Parables for the Virtual tackles related theoretical issues by applying them to cultural mediums as diverse as architecture, body art, the digital art of Stelarc, and Ronald Reagan’s acting career. The result is an intriguing combination of cultural theory, science, and philosophy that asserts itself in a crystalline and multi-faceted argument.
Parables for the Virtual will interest students and scholars of continental and Anglo-American philosophy, cultural studies, cognitive science, electronic art, digital culture, and chaos theory, as well as those concerned with the “science wars” and the relation between the humanities and the sciences in general.
3,175 citations
Book•
05 Jun 2012TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss the need and recognition of emotions as judgments of value, and the need for human beings to recognize their need for love and need to express it.
Abstract: Part I. Need and Recognition: 1. Emotions as judgments of value 2. Humans and other animals: the neo-stoic view revised 3. Emotions and human societies 4. Emotions and infancy Interlude: 'things such as might happen' 5. Music and emotion Part II. Compassion: 6. Tragic predicaments 7. Compassion: the philosophical debate 8. Compassion and public life Part III. Ascents of Love: 9. Ladders of love: an introduction 10. Contemplative creativity: Plato, Spinoza, Proust 11. The Christian ascent: Augustine 12. The Christian ascent: Dante 13. The Romantic ascent: Emily Bronte 14. The Romantic ascent: Mahler 15. Democratic desire: Walt Whitman 16. The transfiguration of everyday life: Joyce.
2,371 citations
Book•
01 Jan 2003
TL;DR: In this article, the authors bring together, for the first time, the various strands of inquiry and latest research in the scientific study of the relationship between the mechanisms of the brain and the psychology of the mind.
Abstract: This volume brings together, for the first time, the various strands of inquiry and latest research in the scientific study of the relationship between the mechanisms of the brain and the psychology of the mind. In recent years, scientists have made considerable advances in understanding how brain processes shape emotions and are changed by human emotion. Drawing on a wide range of neuroimaging techniques, neuropsychological assessment, and clinical research, scientists are beginning to understand the biological mechanisms for emotions. The book is divided into ten sections: Neuroscience; Autonomic Psychophysiology; Genetics and Development; Expression; Components of Emotion; Personality; Emotion and Social Processes; Adaptation, Culture, and Evolution; Emotion and Psychopathology; and Emotion and Health.
1,961 citations
"Intensities of feeling: towards a s..." refers background in this paper
...This is unfortunate since this work is now going beyond the crude behaviourism of the past, but incorporating it would have necessitated not just a supplement but a complete new paper (cf. Davidson et al, 2003)....
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Book•
01 Jan 2003
TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss Shame, Theatricality, and Queer Performativity: Henry James's The Art of the Novel and the Cybernetic Fold: Reading Silvan Tomkins (written with Adam Frank) 93 4. Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading, or, You're So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Essay Is About You 123 5. Pedagogy of Buddhism 153 Works Cited 183 Index 189
Abstract: Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1 Interlude, Pedagogic 27 1. Shame, Theatricality, and Queer Performativity: Henry James's The Art of the Novel 35 2. Around the Performative: Periperformative Vicinities in Nineteenth-Century Narrative 67 3. Shame in the Cybernetic Fold: Reading Silvan Tomkins (Written with Adam Frank) 93 4. Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading, or, You're So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Essay Is About You 123 5. Pedagogy of Buddhism 153 Works Cited 183 Index 189
1,932 citations
"Intensities of feeling: towards a s..." refers background in this paper
...The second kind of affect is associated with psychoanalytic models of affect of the kind produced by Tomkins and is an attempt to move outside ‘the relentlessly self-propagating, adaptive structure of the repressive hypothesis’ (Sedgwick, 2003, p. 12)....
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...In another sense it is an attempt to move beyond it by valorising what Sedgwick (2003) calls the ‘middle ranges of agency’....
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...(Tomkins cited in Sedgwick, 2003, p. 21) Significantly, for Tomkins, it is the face that is the chief site of affect: ‘I have now come to regard the skin, in general, and the skin of the face in particular, as of the greatest importance in producing the feel of affect’ (Tomkins cited in Demos,…...
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...Sedgwick (2003) gives the example of enjoyment of a piece of music leading to wanting to hear it over and over again, listening to other music or even training to become a musician oneself....
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...It is no accident that so many authors have turned to Buddhism for inspiration (cf. Varela, 1999; Sedgwick, 2003)....
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