The Affect Theory Reader - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0822347768 ISBN 13: 9780822347767

Verlag: Duke University Press, 2010

Inhaltsangabe

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

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Melissa Gregg works in the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney in Australia. She is the author of Cultural Studies’ Affective Voices.

Gregory J. Seigworth is a professor in communication and theater at Millersville University in Pennsylvania.

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THE AFFECT THEORY READER

DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2010 Duke University Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8223-4776-7

Contents

Acknowledgments...........................................................................................................................................ixAn Inventory of Shimmers Gregory J. Seigworth & Melissa Gregg............................................................................................11 Happy Objects Sara Ahmed...............................................................................................................................292 The Future Birth of the Affective Fact: The Political Ontology of Threat Brian Massumi.................................................................523 Writing Shame Elspeth Probyn...........................................................................................................................714 Cruel Optimism Lauren Berlant..........................................................................................................................935 Bitter after Taste: Affect, Food, and Social Aesthetics Ben Highmore...................................................................................1186 An Ethics of Everyday Infinities and Powers: Flix Guattari on Affect and the Refrain Lone Bertelsen & Andrew Murphie..................................1387 Modulating the Excess of Affect: Morale in a State of "Total War" Ben Anderson.........................................................................1618 After Affect: Sympathy, Synchrony, and Mimetic Communication Anna Gibbs................................................................................1869 The Affective Turn: Political Economy, Biomedia, and Bodies Patricia T. Clough.........................................................................20610 Eff the Ineffable: Affect, Somatic Management, and Mental Health Service Users Steven D. Brown & Ian Tucker...........................................22911 On Friday Night Drinks: Workplace Affects in the Age of the Cubicle Melissa Gregg.....................................................................25012 Desiring Recognition, Accumulating Affect Megan Watkins...............................................................................................26913 Understanding the Material Practices of Glamour Nigel Thrift..........................................................................................28914 Affect's Future: Rediscovering the Virtual in the Actual Lawrence Grossberg (Interviewed by Gregory J. Seigworth & Melissa Gregg).....................309Afterword: Worlding Refrains Kathleen Stewart............................................................................................................339References................................................................................................................................................355Contributors..............................................................................................................................................381Index.....................................................................................................................................................385

Chapter One

HAPPY OBJECTS Sara Ahmed

I might say, "You make me happy." Or I might be moved by something, in such a way that when I think of happiness I think of that thing. Even if happiness is imagined as a feeling state, or a form of consciousness that evaluates a life situation achieved over time (Veenhoven 1984, 22-3), happiness also turns us toward objects. We turn toward objects at the very point of "making." To be made happy by this or that is to recognize that happiness starts from somewhere other than the subject who may use the word to describe a situation.

In this essay, I want to consider happiness as a happening, as involving affect (to be happy is to be affected by something), intentionality (to be happy is to be happy about something), and evaluation or judgment (to be happy about something makes something good). In particular, I will explore how happiness functions as a promise that directs us toward certain objects, which then circulate as social goods. Such objects accumulate positive affective value as they are passed around. My essay will offer an approach to thinking through affect as "sticky." Affect is what sticks, or what sustains or preserves the connection between ideas, values, and objects.

My essay contributes to what has been described by Patricia Clough (2007) as "the affective turn" by turning to the question of how we can theorize positive affect and the politics of good feeling. If it is true to say that much recent work in cultural studies has investigated bad feelings (shame, disgust, hate, fear, and so on), it might be useful to take good feeling as our starting point, without presuming that the distinction between good and bad will always hold. Of course, we cannot conflate happiness with good feeling. As Darrin McMahon (2006) has argued in his monumental history of happiness, the association of happiness with feeling is a modern one, in circulation from the eighteenth century onward. If happiness now evokes good feeling, then we can consider how feelings participate in making things good. To explore happiness using the language of affect is to consider the slide between affective and moral economies. In particular, the essay will explore how the family sustains its place as a "happy object" by identifying those who do not reproduce its line as the cause of unhappiness. I call such others "affect aliens": feminist kill-joys, unhappy queers, and melancholic migrants.

Affect and Intentionality

I do not assume there is something called affect that stands apart or has autonomy, as if it corresponds to an object in the world, or even that there is something called affect that can be shared as an object of study. Instead, I would begin with the messiness of the experiential, the unfolding of bodies into worlds, and the drama of contingency, how we are touched by what we are near. It is useful to note that the etymology of "happiness" relates precisely to the question of contingency: it is from the Middle English "hap," suggesting chance. The original meaning of happiness preserves the potential of this "hap" to be good or bad. The hap of happiness then gets translated into something good. Happiness relates to the idea of being lucky, or favored by fortune, or being fortunate. Happiness remains about the contingency of what happens, but this "what" becomes something good. Even this meaning may now seem archaic: we may be more used to thinking of happiness as an effect of what you do, as a reward for hard work, rather than as being "simply" what happens to you. Indeed, Mihly Cskszentmihyi argues that "happiness is not something that happens. It is not the result of good fortune or random choice, it is not something that money can buy or power command. It does not depend on outside events, but, rather on how we interpret them. Happiness, in fact is a condition that must be prepared for, cultivated and defended privately by each person" (1992, 2). Such a way of understanding happiness could be read as a defense against its contingency. I want to return to the original meaning of happiness as it refocuses our attention on the "worldly" question of happenings.

What is the relation between the "what" in "what happens" and the "what" that makes us happy? Empiricism provides us...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Duke University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2010
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0822347768
• ISBN 13: 9780822347767
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 402
• Herausgeber: Gregg Melissa, Seigworth Gregory J.
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Mare Nostrum Group B.V.; gpsr@mare-nostrum.co.uk; ; Doelen 72; Breda; 4831 GR; Niederlande