The Affect Theory Reader

The Affect Theory Reader

  • Author: Gregg, Melissa; Seigworth, Gregory J.; Ahmed, Sara; Massumi, Brian; Probyn, Elspeth; Berlant, Lauren
  • Publisher: Duke University Press
  • ISBN: 9780822347583
  • eISBN Pdf: 9780822393047
  • Place of publication:  Durham , United States
  • Year of digital publication: 2010
  • Month: November
  • Pages: 416
  • DDC: 152.4
  • Language: English
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

  • Contents
  • Acknowledgments
  • An Inventory of Shimmers / Gregory J. Seigworth & Melissa Gregg
  • One. Impingements
    • 1. Happy Objects / Sara Ahmed
    • 2. The Future Birth of the Affective Fact: The Political Ontology of Threat / Brian Massumi
    • 3. Writing Shame / Elspeth Probyn
  • Two. Aesthetics and the Everyday
    • 4. Cruel Optimism / Lauren Berlant
    • 5. Bitter after Taste: Affect, Food, and Social Aesthetics / Ben Highmore
    • 6. An Ethics of Everyday Infinities and Powers: Félix Guattari on Affect and the Refrain / Lone Bertelsen & Andrew Murphie
  • Three. Incorporeal/Inorganic
    • 7. Modulating the Excess of Affect: Morale in a State of "Total War" / Ben Anderson
    • 8. After Affect: Sympathy, Synchrony, and Mimetic Communication / Anna Gibbs
    • 9. The Affective Turn: Political Economy, Biomedia, and Bodies / Patricia T. Clough
  • Four. Managing Affects
    • 10. Eff the Ineffable: Affect, Somatic Management, and Mental Health Service Users / Steven D. Brown & Ian Tucker
    • 11. On Friday Night Drinks: Workplace Affects in the Age of the Cubicle / Melissa Gregg
    • 12. Desiring Recognition, Accumulating Affect / Megan Watkins
  • Five. After Affect
    • 13. Understanding the Material Practices of Glamour / Nigel Thrift
    • 14. Affect's Future: Rediscovering the Virtual in the Actual / Lawrence Grossberg (Interviewed by Gregory J. Seigworth & Melissa Gregg)
  • Afterword: Worlding Refrains / Kathleen Stewart
  • References
  • Contributors
  • Index

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