Affect theory

About: Affect theory is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 376 publications have been published within this topic receiving 16202 citations.

The Cultural Politics of Emotion

Abstract: This is a bold take on the crucial role of emotion in politics Emotions work to define who we are as well as shape what we do and this is no more powerfully at play than in the world of politics Ahmed considers how emotions keep us invested in relationships of power, and also shows how this use of emotion could be crucial to feminist and queer political movements Debates on international terrorism, asylum and migration, as well as reconciliation and reparation are explored through topical case studies In this textbook the difficult issues are confronted head on New for this edition: a substantial 15,000-word Afterword on 'Emotions and Their Objects' which provides an original contribution to the burgeoning field of affect studies; a revised Bibliography; and updated throughout

Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation

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.

Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity

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

The Affect Theory Reader

Abstract: This field-defining collection consolidates and builds momentum in the burgeoning area of affect studies. The contributors include many of the central theorists of affect—those visceral forces beneath, alongside, or generally other than conscious knowing that can serve to drive us toward movement, thought, and ever-changing forms of relation. As Lauren Berlant explores “cruel optimism,” Brian Massumi theorizes the affective logic of public threat, and Elspeth Probyn examines shame, they, along with the other contributors, show how an awareness of affect is opening up exciting new insights in disciplines from anthropology, cultural studies, geography, and psychology to philosophy, queer studies, and sociology. In essays diverse in subject matter, style, and perspective, the contributors demonstrate how affect theory illuminates the intertwined realms of the aesthetic, the ethical, and the political as they play out across bodies (human and non-human) in both mundane and extraordinary ways. They reveal the broad theoretical possibilities opened by an awareness of affect as they reflect on topics including ethics, food, public morale, glamor, snark in the workplace, and mental health regimes. The Affect Theory Reader includes an interview with the cultural theorist Lawrence Grossberg and an afterword by the anthropologist Kathleen Stewart. In the introduction, the editors suggest ways of defining affect, trace the concept’s history, and highlight the role of affect theory in various areas of study. Contributors Sara Ahmed Ben Anderson Lauren Berlant Lone Bertelsen Steven D. Brown Patricia Ticineto Clough Anna Gibbs Melissa Gregg Lawrence Grossberg Ben Highmore Brian Massumi Andrew Murphie Elspeth Probyn Gregory J. Seigworth Kathleen Stewart Nigel Thrift Ian Tucker Megan Watkins

The Turn to Affect: A Critique

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-