Simon Mussell
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781526105707
- eISBN:
- 9781526132253
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526105707.003.0002
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
Chapter 1 sets out the theoretical terrain on which the wider project is based. It begins by revisiting some of the founding tenets of critical theory in the context of the establishment of the ...
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Chapter 1 sets out the theoretical terrain on which the wider project is based. It begins by revisiting some of the founding tenets of critical theory in the context of the establishment of the Institute for Social Research in the early twentieth century. The chapter then discusses contemporary theories of affect that have emerged in the past couple of decades as part of the so-called ‘new materialisms’. Taking on board some of the key findings of this recent work on affect, the author also highlights the potential political deficiencies that accompany such accounts, particularly within a growing ‘post-critical’ context. The chapter closes with suggestions as to how early critical theory – read through an affective lens – might provide the social and political grounding that affect theory often lacks, while at the same time noting how theories of affect are invaluable in shedding light on the efficacy of the pre- or extra-rational, so often sacrificed on the altar of political philosophy.Less
Chapter 1 sets out the theoretical terrain on which the wider project is based. It begins by revisiting some of the founding tenets of critical theory in the context of the establishment of the Institute for Social Research in the early twentieth century. The chapter then discusses contemporary theories of affect that have emerged in the past couple of decades as part of the so-called ‘new materialisms’. Taking on board some of the key findings of this recent work on affect, the author also highlights the potential political deficiencies that accompany such accounts, particularly within a growing ‘post-critical’ context. The chapter closes with suggestions as to how early critical theory – read through an affective lens – might provide the social and political grounding that affect theory often lacks, while at the same time noting how theories of affect are invaluable in shedding light on the efficacy of the pre- or extra-rational, so often sacrificed on the altar of political philosophy.
Marta Figlerowicz
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781501714221
- eISBN:
- 9781501714245
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501714221.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Can other people notice our affects more easily than we do? Spaces of Feeling examines modernist novels and poems that treat this possibility as electrifying, as well as deeply disturbing. Their ...
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Can other people notice our affects more easily than we do? Spaces of Feeling examines modernist novels and poems that treat this possibility as electrifying, as well as deeply disturbing. Their characters and lyric speakers are undone by the realization that they depend on others to solve their inward affective conundrums—and that, to these other people, their feelings often do not seem mysterious at all. To a psychoanalyst, such realizations might sound like truisms. Spaces of Feeling shows that they become considerably weightier within the context of our contemporary approaches to affects as gateways into larger social conditions. Through close readings of works by Virginia Woolf, James Baldwin, John Ashbery, Ralph Ellison, Marcel Proust, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sylvia Plath, and Wallace Stevens, it highlights the diversity of aesthetic and sociopolitical contexts in which these affective dependencies become central to these authors’ representations of selfhood. By setting these novels and poems in conversation with the work of contemporary theorists, it also shows that the questions about subjectivity that these earlier works open remain pressing, and tantalizingly unanswered, in our present day.Less
Can other people notice our affects more easily than we do? Spaces of Feeling examines modernist novels and poems that treat this possibility as electrifying, as well as deeply disturbing. Their characters and lyric speakers are undone by the realization that they depend on others to solve their inward affective conundrums—and that, to these other people, their feelings often do not seem mysterious at all. To a psychoanalyst, such realizations might sound like truisms. Spaces of Feeling shows that they become considerably weightier within the context of our contemporary approaches to affects as gateways into larger social conditions. Through close readings of works by Virginia Woolf, James Baldwin, John Ashbery, Ralph Ellison, Marcel Proust, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sylvia Plath, and Wallace Stevens, it highlights the diversity of aesthetic and sociopolitical contexts in which these affective dependencies become central to these authors’ representations of selfhood. By setting these novels and poems in conversation with the work of contemporary theorists, it also shows that the questions about subjectivity that these earlier works open remain pressing, and tantalizingly unanswered, in our present day.
Andrew Thacker
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780748633470
- eISBN:
- 9781474459754
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748633470.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter introduces the overall methodology and theoretical approach taken in the book, explaining the significance of the idea of the outsider in modernism. It then outlines the idea of the ...
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This chapter introduces the overall methodology and theoretical approach taken in the book, explaining the significance of the idea of the outsider in modernism. It then outlines the idea of the geographical emotions of modernism (drawing upon a term first coined by the writer Bryher). This is articulated by combining theories of literary geography with work on affect theory, mood, and emotion. Theorists drawn upon here include Silvan Tomkins, Henri Lefebvre, Raymond Williams, and Martin Heidegger. It argues for an understanding of modernism in these four European cities in terms of a regional transnationalism, situating this approach within current debates on global modernism. The chapter illustrates these arguments by a reading of Mulk Raj Anand’s Conversations in Bloomsbury.Less
This chapter introduces the overall methodology and theoretical approach taken in the book, explaining the significance of the idea of the outsider in modernism. It then outlines the idea of the geographical emotions of modernism (drawing upon a term first coined by the writer Bryher). This is articulated by combining theories of literary geography with work on affect theory, mood, and emotion. Theorists drawn upon here include Silvan Tomkins, Henri Lefebvre, Raymond Williams, and Martin Heidegger. It argues for an understanding of modernism in these four European cities in terms of a regional transnationalism, situating this approach within current debates on global modernism. The chapter illustrates these arguments by a reading of Mulk Raj Anand’s Conversations in Bloomsbury.
Andrew Thacker
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780748633470
- eISBN:
- 9781474459754
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748633470.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This innovative book examines the development of modernism in four European cities: London, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna. Focusing upon how literary and cultural outsiders represented various spaces in ...
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This innovative book examines the development of modernism in four European cities: London, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna. Focusing upon how literary and cultural outsiders represented various spaces in these cities, it draws upon contemporary theories of affect, mood, and literary geography to offer an original account of the geographical emotions of modernism. It considers three broad features of urban modernism: the built environment of the particular cities, such as cafés or transport systems; the cultural institutions of publishing that underpinned the development of modernism in these locations; and the complex perceptions of writers and artists who were outsiders to the four cities. Particular attention is thus given to the transnational qualities of modernism by examining figures whose view of the cities considered is that of migrants, exiles, or strangers. The writers and artists discussed include Mulk Raj Anand, Gwendolyn Bennett, Bryher, Blaise Cendrars, Joseph Conrad, T. S. Eliot, Christopher Isherwood, Hope Mirlees, Noami Mitchison, Jean Rhys, Sam Selon, and Stephen Spender.Less
This innovative book examines the development of modernism in four European cities: London, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna. Focusing upon how literary and cultural outsiders represented various spaces in these cities, it draws upon contemporary theories of affect, mood, and literary geography to offer an original account of the geographical emotions of modernism. It considers three broad features of urban modernism: the built environment of the particular cities, such as cafés or transport systems; the cultural institutions of publishing that underpinned the development of modernism in these locations; and the complex perceptions of writers and artists who were outsiders to the four cities. Particular attention is thus given to the transnational qualities of modernism by examining figures whose view of the cities considered is that of migrants, exiles, or strangers. The writers and artists discussed include Mulk Raj Anand, Gwendolyn Bennett, Bryher, Blaise Cendrars, Joseph Conrad, T. S. Eliot, Christopher Isherwood, Hope Mirlees, Noami Mitchison, Jean Rhys, Sam Selon, and Stephen Spender.
Marta Figlerowicz
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781501714221
- eISBN:
- 9781501714245
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501714221.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
The conclusion presents some larger questions and opportunities raised by this argument. Spaces of Feeling revisits relatively old-fashioned subjective aspirations toward social exemplarity, ...
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The conclusion presents some larger questions and opportunities raised by this argument. Spaces of Feeling revisits relatively old-fashioned subjective aspirations toward social exemplarity, autonomy, and self-knowledge in order to suggest that, even in this post-human day and age, it still takes us much effort to shed them. Through fictionalized and lyricized models of introspective thinkers beset by doubts about the speed, range, and independence of their inward reflections, it reframes our cognitive and affective liabilities as new points of entry into what we mean by self-awareness, and what our stakes are in attaching (or refusing to attach) value to it.Less
The conclusion presents some larger questions and opportunities raised by this argument. Spaces of Feeling revisits relatively old-fashioned subjective aspirations toward social exemplarity, autonomy, and self-knowledge in order to suggest that, even in this post-human day and age, it still takes us much effort to shed them. Through fictionalized and lyricized models of introspective thinkers beset by doubts about the speed, range, and independence of their inward reflections, it reframes our cognitive and affective liabilities as new points of entry into what we mean by self-awareness, and what our stakes are in attaching (or refusing to attach) value to it.
Simeon Zahl
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- July 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198827788
- eISBN:
- 9780191866500
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198827788.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
This chapter gives a constructive account of saving encounter with divine grace, through the Spirit, in the context of embodied experience. It draws on the insights of affect theory and the “material ...
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This chapter gives a constructive account of saving encounter with divine grace, through the Spirit, in the context of embodied experience. It draws on the insights of affect theory and the “material turn” in religious studies to argue for the ongoing experiential plausibility of the doctrine of sin in the contemporary world. The chapter demonstrates that theologians in recent decades have tended to follow Lindbeck and Stendahl, amongst others, in making assumptions about the plasticity of human experience through the instruments of language and discursive practice, and that these assumptions require substantial qualification. The second half of the chapter builds on these insights, together with the theology of Martin Luther, to describe Christian experience of grace in terms of an affective pedagogy effected by the Spirit through the instruments of the law and the gospel. It concludes by showing how this account of grace can make religious sense of a wide variety of experiences of affective plight in the contemporary world.Less
This chapter gives a constructive account of saving encounter with divine grace, through the Spirit, in the context of embodied experience. It draws on the insights of affect theory and the “material turn” in religious studies to argue for the ongoing experiential plausibility of the doctrine of sin in the contemporary world. The chapter demonstrates that theologians in recent decades have tended to follow Lindbeck and Stendahl, amongst others, in making assumptions about the plasticity of human experience through the instruments of language and discursive practice, and that these assumptions require substantial qualification. The second half of the chapter builds on these insights, together with the theology of Martin Luther, to describe Christian experience of grace in terms of an affective pedagogy effected by the Spirit through the instruments of the law and the gospel. It concludes by showing how this account of grace can make religious sense of a wide variety of experiences of affective plight in the contemporary world.
Marta Figlerowicz
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781501714221
- eISBN:
- 9781501714245
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501714221.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
The introduction lays out this book’s methodology and main thesis. Spaces of Feeling takes modernist poems and novels as illustrations of an attitude toward affective awareness that has become lost ...
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The introduction lays out this book’s methodology and main thesis. Spaces of Feeling takes modernist poems and novels as illustrations of an attitude toward affective awareness that has become lost from contemporary conversations about affect. By engaging with critics such as Lauren Berlant, Charles Altieri, Sianne Ngai, and Brian Massumi, as well as moral philosophers such as Martha Nussbaum, it also highlights reasons why this attitude should, once more, become important to us.Less
The introduction lays out this book’s methodology and main thesis. Spaces of Feeling takes modernist poems and novels as illustrations of an attitude toward affective awareness that has become lost from contemporary conversations about affect. By engaging with critics such as Lauren Berlant, Charles Altieri, Sianne Ngai, and Brian Massumi, as well as moral philosophers such as Martha Nussbaum, it also highlights reasons why this attitude should, once more, become important to us.
Lorri G. Nandrea
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780823263431
- eISBN:
- 9780823266623
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823263431.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
Misfit Forms re-interprets a series of choices that shaped the development of the British novel. Histories of the novel often situate the early nineteenth century as a culminating moment in the ...
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Misfit Forms re-interprets a series of choices that shaped the development of the British novel. Histories of the novel often situate the early nineteenth century as a culminating moment in the novel's “rise.” However, a look at the complicated junctions negotiated by the novel during the eighteenth century reveals not only achievements but also exclusions—paths less travelled. Pairing readings of novels by Defoe, Sterne, Gaskell, Hardy, and Charlotte Brontë with less familiar texts, including printer's manuals and grammar treatises, each chapter brings out an occluded mode. As argued in chapters 1 and 2, practices of typographical emphasis, and the correlated understanding of sensibility as sense-based communication of affect, offer different paradigms for relationship, desire, and pleasure than do the psychological idealizations of “transparent” typography and sympathetic identification. Chapter 3 shows that process-based cumulative narrative structures, declared primitive in relation to teleological plots, facilitate readerly pleasure in the representation of process, rather than subordinating means to ends. Chapter 4 argues that while most nineteenth-century novels privilege active curiosity and treat particulars as clues or signifiers, an alternative mode privileges passive wonder and presents particulars as singularities. Deleuze's theories of sexuality, minor language, singularity, and dynamic repetition help render these historical alternatives legible; they, in turn, invite us to reconstruct the novel's value as an arena for experience, as opposed to an epistemological tool.Less
Misfit Forms re-interprets a series of choices that shaped the development of the British novel. Histories of the novel often situate the early nineteenth century as a culminating moment in the novel's “rise.” However, a look at the complicated junctions negotiated by the novel during the eighteenth century reveals not only achievements but also exclusions—paths less travelled. Pairing readings of novels by Defoe, Sterne, Gaskell, Hardy, and Charlotte Brontë with less familiar texts, including printer's manuals and grammar treatises, each chapter brings out an occluded mode. As argued in chapters 1 and 2, practices of typographical emphasis, and the correlated understanding of sensibility as sense-based communication of affect, offer different paradigms for relationship, desire, and pleasure than do the psychological idealizations of “transparent” typography and sympathetic identification. Chapter 3 shows that process-based cumulative narrative structures, declared primitive in relation to teleological plots, facilitate readerly pleasure in the representation of process, rather than subordinating means to ends. Chapter 4 argues that while most nineteenth-century novels privilege active curiosity and treat particulars as clues or signifiers, an alternative mode privileges passive wonder and presents particulars as singularities. Deleuze's theories of sexuality, minor language, singularity, and dynamic repetition help render these historical alternatives legible; they, in turn, invite us to reconstruct the novel's value as an arena for experience, as opposed to an epistemological tool.
Kate Singer, Ashley Cross, and Suzanne Barnett (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781789621778
- eISBN:
- 9781800341463
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781789621778.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
Material Transgressions reveals how Romantic-era authors think outside of historical and theoretical ideologies that reiterate notions of sexed bodies, embodied subjectivities, isolated things, or ...
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Material Transgressions reveals how Romantic-era authors think outside of historical and theoretical ideologies that reiterate notions of sexed bodies, embodied subjectivities, isolated things, or stable texts. Essays examine how these writers rethink materiality, especially the subject-object relationship, in order to challenge the tenets of Enlightenment and the culture of sensibility that privileged the hegemony of the speaking and feeling lyric subject and to undo supposedly invariable matter, and representations of it, that limited their writing, agency, knowledge, and even being. In this volume, the idea of transgression serves as a flexible and capacious discursive and material movement that braids together fluid forms of affect, embodiment, and textuality. They offer alternative understandings of materiality that move beyond concepts that fix gendered bodies and intellectual capacities, whether human or textual, idea or thing. They enact processes—assemblages, ghost dances, pack mentality, reiterative writing, shapeshifting, multi-voiced choric oralities—that redefine restrictive structures in order to craft alternative modes of being in the world that can help us to reimagine materiality both in the Romantic period and now. Such dynamism not only reveals a new materialist imaginary for Romanticism but also unveils textualities, affects, figurations, and linguistic movements that alter new materialism’s often strictly ontological approach.Less
Material Transgressions reveals how Romantic-era authors think outside of historical and theoretical ideologies that reiterate notions of sexed bodies, embodied subjectivities, isolated things, or stable texts. Essays examine how these writers rethink materiality, especially the subject-object relationship, in order to challenge the tenets of Enlightenment and the culture of sensibility that privileged the hegemony of the speaking and feeling lyric subject and to undo supposedly invariable matter, and representations of it, that limited their writing, agency, knowledge, and even being. In this volume, the idea of transgression serves as a flexible and capacious discursive and material movement that braids together fluid forms of affect, embodiment, and textuality. They offer alternative understandings of materiality that move beyond concepts that fix gendered bodies and intellectual capacities, whether human or textual, idea or thing. They enact processes—assemblages, ghost dances, pack mentality, reiterative writing, shapeshifting, multi-voiced choric oralities—that redefine restrictive structures in order to craft alternative modes of being in the world that can help us to reimagine materiality both in the Romantic period and now. Such dynamism not only reveals a new materialist imaginary for Romanticism but also unveils textualities, affects, figurations, and linguistic movements that alter new materialism’s often strictly ontological approach.
J. F. Bernard
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781474417334
- eISBN:
- 9781474453752
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474417334.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
The concluding chapter charts out potential critical links between Shakespearean comic melancholy and modern conceptualizations of melancholia in the works of Freud, Butler and Ngai. It argues that ...
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The concluding chapter charts out potential critical links between Shakespearean comic melancholy and modern conceptualizations of melancholia in the works of Freud, Butler and Ngai. It argues that the comic philosophy of melancholy and of the melancomic, through its performative and affective dimensions, dovetails with the theoretical frameworks of all three writers. The chapter positions the representation of melancholy as a productive emotional marker akin to nostalgia in its conflation of sorrow and pleasure, as well as the artistic and creative repercussions that such a connection suggests over the years.Less
The concluding chapter charts out potential critical links between Shakespearean comic melancholy and modern conceptualizations of melancholia in the works of Freud, Butler and Ngai. It argues that the comic philosophy of melancholy and of the melancomic, through its performative and affective dimensions, dovetails with the theoretical frameworks of all three writers. The chapter positions the representation of melancholy as a productive emotional marker akin to nostalgia in its conflation of sorrow and pleasure, as well as the artistic and creative repercussions that such a connection suggests over the years.
David Leheny
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781501729072
- eISBN:
- 9781501729089
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501729072.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Asian Politics
How do emotions become meaningful in public life? Closely examining key episodes in Japanese politics, Empire of Hope examines the varied roles that feelings play in contemporary politics. They ...
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How do emotions become meaningful in public life? Closely examining key episodes in Japanese politics, Empire of Hope examines the varied roles that feelings play in contemporary politics. They construct the boundaries of the national body, they inform and discipline appropriate expression, and they depoliticize messy problems that could quickly produce divisive questions about winners and losers. And most important, they work because they appear to be so natural: the simple and expected expression of how the nation shares feelings, even when they paper over the extraordinary divergence in how the nation’s members experience each incident. By emphasizing the embeddedness of emotional expression in national narratives, the book challenges recent arguments in the social sciences and humanities about role that emotions should play in political analysis. A unique array of case studies — from the medical treatment of two Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange to the global promotion of Japanese popular culture, and from a tragic maritime accident involving a US Navy submarine to the 2011 tsunami and nuclear disaster — illustrates the myriad ways in which political expression of feelings matter even as they are divorced from the messiness of people’s emotional lives.Less
How do emotions become meaningful in public life? Closely examining key episodes in Japanese politics, Empire of Hope examines the varied roles that feelings play in contemporary politics. They construct the boundaries of the national body, they inform and discipline appropriate expression, and they depoliticize messy problems that could quickly produce divisive questions about winners and losers. And most important, they work because they appear to be so natural: the simple and expected expression of how the nation shares feelings, even when they paper over the extraordinary divergence in how the nation’s members experience each incident. By emphasizing the embeddedness of emotional expression in national narratives, the book challenges recent arguments in the social sciences and humanities about role that emotions should play in political analysis. A unique array of case studies — from the medical treatment of two Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange to the global promotion of Japanese popular culture, and from a tragic maritime accident involving a US Navy submarine to the 2011 tsunami and nuclear disaster — illustrates the myriad ways in which political expression of feelings matter even as they are divorced from the messiness of people’s emotional lives.
Steven Hitlin and Sarah K. Harkness
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- December 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190465407
- eISBN:
- 9780190862435
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190465407.003.0007
- Subject:
- Psychology, Social Psychology
This chapter draws on the theoretical and methodological insights from Affect Control theory (ACT), a theory with decades of research and empirical support, to set up our cross-cultural analyses ...
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This chapter draws on the theoretical and methodological insights from Affect Control theory (ACT), a theory with decades of research and empirical support, to set up our cross-cultural analyses examing our theory of societal inequality. ACT is a formal mathematical theory used to examine how the various facets of social events (such as the identities and emotions) shape ongoing social action. ACT distills the representation of these various facets to their simplest, most universally recognized dimensions of meaning: evaluation (good vs. bad), potency (powerful vs. weak), and activity (fast vs. slow). ACT then provides a way of understanding and modeling social interactions so that it is possible to empirically compare the likely emotions resulting from the same types of interactions in various cultures. The chapter gives a broad overview of the theory so that the reader understands why it is useful and provides justification for the empirical analysis used in the book.Less
This chapter draws on the theoretical and methodological insights from Affect Control theory (ACT), a theory with decades of research and empirical support, to set up our cross-cultural analyses examing our theory of societal inequality. ACT is a formal mathematical theory used to examine how the various facets of social events (such as the identities and emotions) shape ongoing social action. ACT distills the representation of these various facets to their simplest, most universally recognized dimensions of meaning: evaluation (good vs. bad), potency (powerful vs. weak), and activity (fast vs. slow). ACT then provides a way of understanding and modeling social interactions so that it is possible to empirically compare the likely emotions resulting from the same types of interactions in various cultures. The chapter gives a broad overview of the theory so that the reader understands why it is useful and provides justification for the empirical analysis used in the book.
Lorri G. Nandrea
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780823263431
- eISBN:
- 9780823266623
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823263431.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
This chapter traces distinctions between three dynamics of feeling found in eighteenth-century literature and culture. “Sentimentality” emphasizes sameness and accord between parties. It can be ...
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This chapter traces distinctions between three dynamics of feeling found in eighteenth-century literature and culture. “Sentimentality” emphasizes sameness and accord between parties. It can be associated with the pleasurable “repetition of the same” that defines genre fiction. “Sympathy,” as analyzed by Adam Smith, centers on the imaginative identification of self with other. It became the dominant model of feeling; indeed, it underwrites mainstream models of subjectivity, sexuality, and desire that are rendered legible by psychoanalysis. “Sensibility,” misread by psychoanalysis but illuminated by Deleuze and Hume, presents an alternative to sympathy. In place of the desire for identity, sensibility embraces an attraction to difference and differing. In place of the “container model” that situates affect within the depths of an individual or text, sensibility's contagious, performative affective intensities move from surface to surface. Typographical effects allowed a page to communicate affect in this way, as demonstrated by pages from John Dunton, William Baker, Sterne, and Mackenzie. Printer's manuals by Joseph Moxon and John Smith provide further evidence supporting the coherence of the textual practice of sensibility. The chapter briefly discusses the long neglect of printing by literary critics, and the recent revival of interest among critics and novelists (e.g. Mark Danielewski).Less
This chapter traces distinctions between three dynamics of feeling found in eighteenth-century literature and culture. “Sentimentality” emphasizes sameness and accord between parties. It can be associated with the pleasurable “repetition of the same” that defines genre fiction. “Sympathy,” as analyzed by Adam Smith, centers on the imaginative identification of self with other. It became the dominant model of feeling; indeed, it underwrites mainstream models of subjectivity, sexuality, and desire that are rendered legible by psychoanalysis. “Sensibility,” misread by psychoanalysis but illuminated by Deleuze and Hume, presents an alternative to sympathy. In place of the desire for identity, sensibility embraces an attraction to difference and differing. In place of the “container model” that situates affect within the depths of an individual or text, sensibility's contagious, performative affective intensities move from surface to surface. Typographical effects allowed a page to communicate affect in this way, as demonstrated by pages from John Dunton, William Baker, Sterne, and Mackenzie. Printer's manuals by Joseph Moxon and John Smith provide further evidence supporting the coherence of the textual practice of sensibility. The chapter briefly discusses the long neglect of printing by literary critics, and the recent revival of interest among critics and novelists (e.g. Mark Danielewski).
Tarek El-Ariss
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780823251711
- eISBN:
- 9780823252800
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823251711.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
Focusing on the body as a site of rupture and signification, this book shifts the paradigm for the study of modernity in the Arab context from questions of representation and cultural exchange to an ...
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Focusing on the body as a site of rupture and signification, this book shifts the paradigm for the study of modernity in the Arab context from questions of representation and cultural exchange to an engagement with a genealogy of symptoms and affects. Trials of Arab Modernity traces a series of experiences and encounters arising from leaving home, aversion to food, disorientation, anxiety attacks, and physical collapse embodied in travelogues, novels, poetic fragments, and anecdotes from the nineteenth-century to the present. Tarek El-Ariss thus reframes Arab modernity [ḥadātha] as a somatic condition, which takes shape through accidents and events [aḥdāth] emerging in and between Europe and the Arab world, the literary text and political discourse. This study challenges the prevalent conceptualizations of modernity, both those that treat it as a Western ideological project imposed by colonialism, and others that understand it as a universal narrative of progress and innovation. Instead, El-Ariss offers a close reading of the simultaneous performances and contestations—or trials—of modernity staged in works by authors such as Rifa‘a al-Tahtawi, Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq, Tayeb Salih, Hanan al-Shaykh, Hamdi Abu Golayyel, and Ahmad Alaidy. In dialogue with affect theory, deconstruction, and psychoanalysis, this book reveals the unfolding of these trials as a violent and ongoing confrontation with and within modernity, decentering yet also redefining and producing it. El-Ariss's theoretical and comparative approach offers a new configuration of Arab modernity at the intersection of historical, cultural, and aesthetic frameworks.Less
Focusing on the body as a site of rupture and signification, this book shifts the paradigm for the study of modernity in the Arab context from questions of representation and cultural exchange to an engagement with a genealogy of symptoms and affects. Trials of Arab Modernity traces a series of experiences and encounters arising from leaving home, aversion to food, disorientation, anxiety attacks, and physical collapse embodied in travelogues, novels, poetic fragments, and anecdotes from the nineteenth-century to the present. Tarek El-Ariss thus reframes Arab modernity [ḥadātha] as a somatic condition, which takes shape through accidents and events [aḥdāth] emerging in and between Europe and the Arab world, the literary text and political discourse. This study challenges the prevalent conceptualizations of modernity, both those that treat it as a Western ideological project imposed by colonialism, and others that understand it as a universal narrative of progress and innovation. Instead, El-Ariss offers a close reading of the simultaneous performances and contestations—or trials—of modernity staged in works by authors such as Rifa‘a al-Tahtawi, Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq, Tayeb Salih, Hanan al-Shaykh, Hamdi Abu Golayyel, and Ahmad Alaidy. In dialogue with affect theory, deconstruction, and psychoanalysis, this book reveals the unfolding of these trials as a violent and ongoing confrontation with and within modernity, decentering yet also redefining and producing it. El-Ariss's theoretical and comparative approach offers a new configuration of Arab modernity at the intersection of historical, cultural, and aesthetic frameworks.
Simeon Zahl
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- July 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198827788
- eISBN:
- 9780191866500
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198827788.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
This book presents a fresh vision for Christian theology that foregrounds the relationship between theological ideas and the experiences of Christians. It argues that theology is always operating in ...
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This book presents a fresh vision for Christian theology that foregrounds the relationship between theological ideas and the experiences of Christians. It argues that theology is always operating in a vibrant landscape of feeling and desiring, and shows that contemporary theology has often operated in problematic isolation from these experiential dynamics. It then argues that a theologically serious doctrine of the Holy Spirit not only authorizes but requires attention to Christian experience. Against this background, the book outlines a new methodological approach to Christian theology that attends to the emotional and experiential power of theological doctrines. This methodology draws on recent interdisciplinary research on affect and emotion, which has shown that affects are powerful motivating realities that saturate all dimensions of human thinking and acting. In the process, the book also explains why contemporary theology has often been ambivalent about subjective experience, and demonstrates that current discourse about God’s activity in the world is often artificially abstracted from experience and embodiment. The book culminates in a proposal for a new experiential and pneumatological account of the theology of grace that builds on this methodology. Focusing on the work of the Holy Spirit in salvation and sanctification, it retrieves insights from Augustine, Luther, and Philip Melanchthon to present an affective and Augustinian vision of salvation as a pedagogy of desire. In articulating this vision, the book engages critically with recent emphasis on participation and theosis in Christian soteriology and charts a new path forward for Protestant theology in a landscape hitherto dominated by the theological visions of Karl Barth and Thomas Aquinas.Less
This book presents a fresh vision for Christian theology that foregrounds the relationship between theological ideas and the experiences of Christians. It argues that theology is always operating in a vibrant landscape of feeling and desiring, and shows that contemporary theology has often operated in problematic isolation from these experiential dynamics. It then argues that a theologically serious doctrine of the Holy Spirit not only authorizes but requires attention to Christian experience. Against this background, the book outlines a new methodological approach to Christian theology that attends to the emotional and experiential power of theological doctrines. This methodology draws on recent interdisciplinary research on affect and emotion, which has shown that affects are powerful motivating realities that saturate all dimensions of human thinking and acting. In the process, the book also explains why contemporary theology has often been ambivalent about subjective experience, and demonstrates that current discourse about God’s activity in the world is often artificially abstracted from experience and embodiment. The book culminates in a proposal for a new experiential and pneumatological account of the theology of grace that builds on this methodology. Focusing on the work of the Holy Spirit in salvation and sanctification, it retrieves insights from Augustine, Luther, and Philip Melanchthon to present an affective and Augustinian vision of salvation as a pedagogy of desire. In articulating this vision, the book engages critically with recent emphasis on participation and theosis in Christian soteriology and charts a new path forward for Protestant theology in a landscape hitherto dominated by the theological visions of Karl Barth and Thomas Aquinas.
David Leheny
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781501729072
- eISBN:
- 9781501729089
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501729072.003.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Asian Politics
Taking its title from a line in the 2011 film We Can’t Change the World (But We Wanna Build a School in Cambodia), this chapter explores a recent fixation in Japan on rebuilding hope: first from the ...
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Taking its title from a line in the 2011 film We Can’t Change the World (But We Wanna Build a School in Cambodia), this chapter explores a recent fixation in Japan on rebuilding hope: first from the wreckage of the Bubble Economy and then from the debris of the 2011 tsunami. It uses this discussion to connect the expression of collective emotion to contemporary nationalism, and argues that this emotional language requires an exploration of the logic of narrative, as well as its consequences for the representation of a people’s feelings: of national sadness, or national pride, or national hope. Drawing heavily from recent debates about emotion and politics, the chapter introduces new ways of discussing narrative and its importance, particularly through Peter Brooks’s conception of “the melodramatic imagination.”Less
Taking its title from a line in the 2011 film We Can’t Change the World (But We Wanna Build a School in Cambodia), this chapter explores a recent fixation in Japan on rebuilding hope: first from the wreckage of the Bubble Economy and then from the debris of the 2011 tsunami. It uses this discussion to connect the expression of collective emotion to contemporary nationalism, and argues that this emotional language requires an exploration of the logic of narrative, as well as its consequences for the representation of a people’s feelings: of national sadness, or national pride, or national hope. Drawing heavily from recent debates about emotion and politics, the chapter introduces new ways of discussing narrative and its importance, particularly through Peter Brooks’s conception of “the melodramatic imagination.”
Steven Hitlin and Sarah K. Harkness
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- December 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190465407
- eISBN:
- 9780190862435
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190465407.003.0008
- Subject:
- Psychology, Social Psychology
This chapter provides a primer on ACT data and analysis strategies provided by Interact, the computerized version of ACT. First, it describes the data sources for the Interact simulations before ...
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This chapter provides a primer on ACT data and analysis strategies provided by Interact, the computerized version of ACT. First, it describes the data sources for the Interact simulations before discussing how these categories of moral emotions are differentially felt across our five cultures via EPA dictionaries located in Interact. Next, it walks through an analysis strategy for generating likely moral emotional reactions across these cultures. To do so, it describes how Interact simulates social interaction by using empirically grounded, culture-specific equations.Less
This chapter provides a primer on ACT data and analysis strategies provided by Interact, the computerized version of ACT. First, it describes the data sources for the Interact simulations before discussing how these categories of moral emotions are differentially felt across our five cultures via EPA dictionaries located in Interact. Next, it walks through an analysis strategy for generating likely moral emotional reactions across these cultures. To do so, it describes how Interact simulates social interaction by using empirically grounded, culture-specific equations.
Steven Hitlin and Sarah K. Harkness
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- December 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190465407
- eISBN:
- 9780190862435
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190465407.003.0010
- Subject:
- Psychology, Social Psychology
The book concludes with this chapter summarizing the general argument, hopefully more compelling in light of our empirical support. Ultimately, we call for researchers to adopt alternate empirical ...
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The book concludes with this chapter summarizing the general argument, hopefully more compelling in light of our empirical support. Ultimately, we call for researchers to adopt alternate empirical approaches to test our argument that societal inequality is linked to culturally shaped moral codes and emotions. Gathering the data within a country to assess these interactional moral processes is almost prohibitively expensive, so it is difficult to replicate our ideas within a wider array of countries and methodological techniques. However, if this theory has merit, we hope others will pick up on the broad links between macro and micro to refine, or argue with, this admittedly ambitious thesis.Less
The book concludes with this chapter summarizing the general argument, hopefully more compelling in light of our empirical support. Ultimately, we call for researchers to adopt alternate empirical approaches to test our argument that societal inequality is linked to culturally shaped moral codes and emotions. Gathering the data within a country to assess these interactional moral processes is almost prohibitively expensive, so it is difficult to replicate our ideas within a wider array of countries and methodological techniques. However, if this theory has merit, we hope others will pick up on the broad links between macro and micro to refine, or argue with, this admittedly ambitious thesis.
Steven Hitlin and Sarah K. Harkness
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- December 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190465407
- eISBN:
- 9780190862435
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190465407.003.0009
- Subject:
- Psychology, Social Psychology
Chapter 9 presents our empirical results. The chapter begins with a description of the competing theories’ predictions for how the countries under analysis (the United States, China, Germany, Japan, ...
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Chapter 9 presents our empirical results. The chapter begins with a description of the competing theories’ predictions for how the countries under analysis (the United States, China, Germany, Japan, and Canada) should differ by their moral reactions. We then present results demonstrating that the negative self-sanctioning and other-sanctioning moral emotions are far more common in the United States and China—countries with high levels of inequality. Conversely, the self-transcendent, communal moral emotions, like compassion and praise, are more often experienced in Germany, Japan, and Canada—countries with much lower inequality. This is consistent with our theoretical predictions.Less
Chapter 9 presents our empirical results. The chapter begins with a description of the competing theories’ predictions for how the countries under analysis (the United States, China, Germany, Japan, and Canada) should differ by their moral reactions. We then present results demonstrating that the negative self-sanctioning and other-sanctioning moral emotions are far more common in the United States and China—countries with high levels of inequality. Conversely, the self-transcendent, communal moral emotions, like compassion and praise, are more often experienced in Germany, Japan, and Canada—countries with much lower inequality. This is consistent with our theoretical predictions.
David Leheny
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781501729072
- eISBN:
- 9781501729089
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501729072.003.0007
- Subject:
- Political Science, Asian Politics
This short conclusion uses two recent Japanese comedy movies — Bubble Fiction: Boom or Bust and The World Sinks Except Japan — to consider how images of Japan’s past, present, and future are made ...
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This short conclusion uses two recent Japanese comedy movies — Bubble Fiction: Boom or Bust and The World Sinks Except Japan — to consider how images of Japan’s past, present, and future are made emotionally meaningful. Both films target, with varying levels of sympathy, the emotional frames surrounding a dominant narrative of postwar Japan, and the chapter focuses especially on the ways in which generational change affects the resonance of these frames. The chapter considers the lenses through which even post-Bubble Japan can be re-envisioned – for example, as a “problem pioneer,” to use the term of the distinguished political scientist Kawashima Shin — as a global leader, if largely for its early discovery of and responses to the malaises likely to befall other great powers in the coming years.Less
This short conclusion uses two recent Japanese comedy movies — Bubble Fiction: Boom or Bust and The World Sinks Except Japan — to consider how images of Japan’s past, present, and future are made emotionally meaningful. Both films target, with varying levels of sympathy, the emotional frames surrounding a dominant narrative of postwar Japan, and the chapter focuses especially on the ways in which generational change affects the resonance of these frames. The chapter considers the lenses through which even post-Bubble Japan can be re-envisioned – for example, as a “problem pioneer,” to use the term of the distinguished political scientist Kawashima Shin — as a global leader, if largely for its early discovery of and responses to the malaises likely to befall other great powers in the coming years.