Theorising Affect
Contact ben.anderson@xxxxxxxxxxxx
10/11 January 2007
Department of Geography, Durham University
A two day conference organized by the Social/Spatial Theory research cluster
on affect within the social sciences, cultural studies and humanities.
Call For Papers
Over the past decade affect has emerged as a distinct object of inquiry in
the humanities and social sciences. From the micro-political geographies of
everyday life, through to the media and military strategies deployed in the
'war on terror', it is increasingly recognized that affect is a constitutive
element in almost all social and cultural practices. Emerging from a range
of partially connected literatures, and resonating with a parallel attention
to emotion and feeling, the emergence of affect and affectivity as objects
of inquiry raises a series of questions about what social and cultural
theory is, about its general field of inquiry, about the composition of its
object(s) and subject(s) and about the nature and status of its accounts and
claims.
This two day conference aims to provide a forum to think through the
problems, and questions, that animate social and cultural theory's
entanglements with affect. Drawing into conversation a range of work and
writing on affect and affectivity, a range which could include feminism,
queer theory, Deleuze, Tomkins, psychoanalysis, deconstruction,
phenomenology, literary and performance studies, and social science
engagements with bio and neuro sciences, the conference seeks to develop and
establish affect as a major cross-cutting object for social and cultural
reflection, investigation and action.
Abstracts are sought on topics such as:
1: What difference(s) do theories of affect make? What does it mean to offer
a theory of affect(s)? What, thereafter, do such theories promise for the
social sciences and humanities? And what, thereafter, could or do such
theories fail to do?
2: What is the relation between affect and .
a) Other modalities of the more-than or less-than rational, such as
mood, feeling, emotion, or passion.
b) Modalities of the body, such as memory, imagination, perception,
sensation, language, and the senses.
c) Different types of human and non-human collectives and associations.
d) Non-humans e.g. artefacts, objects, technologies, animals, complex
heterogeneous systems, natures.
3: How to develop a theoretical vocabulary and grammar specific to affect
and/or affects? What could such a vocabulary be composed of?
a) How could such a vocabulary and grammar relate to the striations and
differences that pattern the social and cultural, including, for example,
the classic categories of social thought, relations between humans and
non-humans, the technological and natural, or the fictive and the factual?
b) How does such a vocabulary and grammar redescribe social and
cultural processes? i.e., the dynamics of social and cultural change and
stability, the dissemination of the new, the historicity of forms and
practices?
c) How does such a vocabulary and grammar reconfigure the nature of
subject, of, for example, self-awareness, consciousness, reflexivity,
agency, habit and skill?
4: What are the relations between theories of affect and the political and
the ethical?
a) Given events such as the enrolment of certain affects in the
strategies of the new right, or the disclosure of an intimate public sphere,
how could or how should a social and cultural theory of affect respond and
engage with the contemporary political moment?
b) How to theorize the relation between affect and the political, around,
for example, rethinking conceptions of power, resistance, the political
decision, sovereignty, ideology or hegemony?
c) How to theorize the relation between affect and the ethical, around,
for example, (in)justice, responsibility or alterity.
We welcome proposals for 20 minute papers (to be followed by 10 minutes for
discussion/questions) that address these and any other relevant questions or
problems around affect. Papers can work through these questions/problems in
multiple forms, for example through theoretical work, through empirical
work, or through performance. 200 word abstracts to be sent to Ben Anderson
(ben.anderson@xxxxxxxxxxxx) by 1st August 2006.
Conference organising committee:
Dr Ben Anderson
http://www.dur.ac.uk/geography/staff/geogstaffhidden/?mode=staff&id=985
Dr Paul Harrison
http://www.dur.ac.uk/geography/research/researchclusters/?mode=staff&id=341
Dr Rachel Colls
http://www.dur.ac.uk/geography/staff/geogstaffhidden/?mode=staff&id=2712
Dave Bissell http://www.dur.ac.uk/d.j.bissell/
Dan Swanton
http://www.dur.ac.uk/geography/postgrad/students/?mode=staff&id=2280
Dr Stuart Elden
Reader in Political Geography
Academic Director, International Boundaries Research Unit
Geography Department
Durham University
Durham, DH1 3LE
https://www.dur.ac.uk/geography/staff/geogstaffhidden/?mode=staff&id=932