gjss.org

The notion of affect has recently attracted much attention not only in philosophy and cultural theory, but also, increasingly, in the social sciences. Affect denotes a central register of human relationships and forces us to look at interactions and transactions between bodies prior to and in excess of consciousness and cognition. Conceptualised in a variety of ways—as a substratum of nonverbal and extracognitive communication between subjects, as corporeal capacities to affect and be affected, or simply as an umbrella category for emotion- focused topics in general—scholars are seeking to bring this neglected dimension of lived experience into academic discourse and dialogue. The multidisciplinary conversation is gradually coming to supplement psychoanalytically, psychobiologically or neuro-scientifically inspired approaches to understanding affect with insights drawn from the realms of social, political, and cultural theory...