ENGLISH 971: Seminar in Theory--Theories of Affect

Discussions of the history of 20th- and 21st-century critical thought often proceed by delineating an itinerary of schools (new criticism, structuralism, poststructuralism, new historicism, new materialism, neo-formalism, etc.) and 'turns': the linguistic turn, the religious turn, the ethical turn, the ontological turn, the spatial turn, the rhetorical turn, the medial turn, and of late the so-called 'affective turn'.   Focusing on this last 'turn', we will attempt to articulate why, and in what ways, the concept of 'affect' might be relevant to contemporary theoretical, cultural, and political debates.   Rather than reading a given text by applying 'affect', however, we will be more interested in examining how 'affect' might not only usefully add to our existing critical toolbox for the analysis of literature, film, the visual arts, music, or the socio-political realm but also de facto constitutes the ontological grounding for the very operations of any theory or critical act of response and, as a result, directly impacts how we do theory and criticism.   Rather than privileging one or two particular theorists or a given academic discipline, this course will afford students to gain a broad survey of the work done on and inspired by the concept of affect; the survey-like aspect of the course will be complemented, however, by our deep and rigorous theoretical, critical, and practical immersion in the course's central concept.

Requirements: 1 final, scholarly research paper (20+ pages) working with the concept of affect; 1 discussion-prompt paper based on a text of your choosing that is not on our reading list (you will post the paper, which will inform us of the text's main arguments and features, on Blackboard and then lead discussion in class for about 20-30 minutes; the rest of the class will be asked to prepare questions in advance based on your discussion-prompt paper); and regular participation.

Tentative Reading List: I don't yet have a finalized reading list.   However, we likely will be reading a range of texts that tend to function for contemporary discussions of affect as the philosophical/theoretical backbone, including Gilles Deleuze, Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation ; excerpts from Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus ; as well as the psychoanalytic writings of Sigmund Freud and the neurobiological ideas popularized by Antonio Damasio, Looking for Spinoza .   Other texts I might assign include Brian Massumi's Parables for the Virtual ; Steven Shaviro, The Cinematic Body ; Rey Terada, Feeling in Theory ; Jean Luc Nancy, Corpus and excerpts from The Ground of the Image ; Jacques Rancière, The Politics of Aesthetics ; Patricia Ticineto Clough (ed.), The Affective Turn ; Marco Abel, Violent Affect: Literature, Cinema, and the Critique of Representation ; Sianne Nagai, Ugly Feelings ; John Protevi, Political Affect ; excerpts from Antonio Negri's work; and Sara Ahmed's The Cultural Politics of Emotion .   Once I have the finalized reading list I will contact enrolled students via Blackboard.