This course assumes, with Spinoza, that affect is a modality of power. On this basis, it asks: How is affect involved in constituting, modulating and governing subjects? The seminar combines an affect theoretic framework in the tradition of Spinoza and Deleuze, also drawingon Foucault and Butler (among others), with work in social philosophy that focuses on the situatedness of habits, dispositions and capacities and on the ways that social domains, practices and institutions shape – often reductively or in coercive and manipulating ways – the agentive and reflective capacities of individuals. The seminar starts with an introduction to cultural affect theory more broadly, to convey a sense of the discursive universe that is subsumed under the wide scope of the term “affect”. Then there are two main parts to the course: First, we cover in some detail the Spinoza-Deleuze-Foucault strand of affect theory (before Christmas). Second, we consider work in critical phenomenology and Black studies that cover similar themes with a different orientation (January). At the end of the term, we discuss a recent forceful critique of affect theory from the vantage point of Afropessimism.

Last modified

• 05/26/2022

Creator

• Slably, Jan

DOI

• https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-djpg-9s31

Keyword

• Critical Race Studies

Rights statement

• In Copyright

License

• Creative Commons BY-NC Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International