1. Affect Theory and Literary Criticism
Dr. Györke Ágnes

2. Structure of the Lecture
The study of emotions, the notion of „affective societies”
Theories of emotion since the 19th century
More recent developments: the relationship between the textual turn and the affective turn
The difference between emotion and affect
Shame and empathy, some outstanding contributions

3. The study of emotions
Study of emotions: increasingly important in the past 3 decades primarily in Western Europe and the US
Vision of an „emotionalized” contemporary society vs. „Enlightenment modernity” and modern scientific knowledge (Max Weber, Norbert Elias); the civilizing process is based on „affective restraint” and self-control; emotion is associated with „the primitive”
 the affective turn challenges this claim

4. The study of emotions
„If the transition to modernity was grasped as a move from nature to society and from emotion to reason, it was also grasped in this way via forms of thinking and research which themselves valorized detached reason over the affective” (Monica Greco and Paul Stenner)
 Just like the textual turn, the affective turn challenges the superiority of „detached reason” and „objective observation”.
The affective turn does not simply mean that a novel subject matter was incorporated into an existing framework 
„An engagement with affective life has the potential to transform the ways in which social science dieciplines conceive their own way of knowing and their object of research” (Monica Greco and Paul Stenner)

5. Disciplines Sub-disciplines: sociology and anthropology of emotions
Other disciplines: history, literature, geography, cultural studies, politics, economics, legal studies, criminology, gender studies, media studies, etc.

6. Palgrave Studies in Affect Theory and Literary Criticism
Jean-François Vernay, The Seduction of Fiction: A Plea for Putting Emotions Back into Literary Interpretation (2016)
J. Brooks Bouson, Shame and the Aging Woman: Confronting and Resisting Ageism in Contemporary Women's Writings (2016)
Anna Magdalena Elsner, Mourning and Creativity in Proust (2017)

7. Affective society 1
We live in an „affective society”: emotions have become increasingly important in the forms of interaction that are typical of post-modern societies
In the criminal justice system: „restorative justice”, bringing victims face-to face with perpetrators
Business and management are also involved: proliferation of publications about emotions in the workplace (e.g. how to recognize and handle „toxic” emotions)

8. Victims face-to-face with potential perpetrators

9. Affective society 2
Politics: politicians sport caring facial expressions (vs. Looking stern and disciplined). Emotional appeal, e.g. images of politicians on holiday. Policies are taylored around „mass fears” and „mass hopes”.
Education became more child centered, stressing dialogue and emotional engagement over didactic instruction
Healthcare: patient centered, stressing choice and wellbeing over „doctor knows best” paternalism

10. Politicians on Holiday

11. Interpretations
+ The affective turn has led to a more human and civilized form of social order
- It is associated with a culture of selfish hedonism, emotions have become fetishised as consumable items
Though the affective turn is a recent phenomenon, the study of emotions is not: it goes back to the late 19th century.

12. Evolutionary Theories, 1870s
Charles Darwin: proposed that emotions evolved because they had adaptive value
E. g. fear evolved because it helped people act in ways that enhanced their chances of survival.

13. William James (1842-1910), „What is Emotion?” (1884)
American philosopher and psychologist
Proposed that the bodily changes follow directly the perception of the exciting fact  our feeling of the same changes as they occur is the emotion.
E. g. the raised heartbeat accompanies an encounter with a threatening animal
A physiological account grounded in the functioning of the nervous system

14. Carl Lange (1834-1900),  ”On Emotions: A Psycho-Physiological Study„ (1885)
Danish physician
Proposed that emotions are developed from, and can be reduced to, physiological reactions to stimuli.
In standard histories of psychology their contribution became known as the „James-Lange theory of emotion”
They developed their theories independently!

15. Walter Bradford Cannon (1871-1945)
American psychologist and professor
„fight or flight response”
The term is still used in psychological theories to describe nervous reactions (e. g. high-functioning anxiety)
Together with Philip Bard (1898–1977), they developed the Cannon–Bard Theory: the physiological changes and subjective feeling of an emotion in response to a stimulus are separate; arousal does not have to occur before the emotion. 

16. From a positive science of emotions to social constructionism
The recent neuroscientific experiments (FMRI techniques) have relied on the Cannon-Bard Theory; contemporary experimental psychologists define emotions as response systems.
Social constructionism: 1970s, 1980s  emotions do not only belong within the biological sciences, they are social and cultural entities.
Subjects of study:
Emotions in different historical periods
The role they play in the interactions amongst people from different cultural backgrounds
In literary works, how literature enhances empathy, etc.

17. From a positive science of emotions to social constructionism
In the context of the textual turn emotions came to be considered as discursive, dialogical phenomena
Positivist accounts were criticised for being reductionist
The textual turn was the precondition of the more recent affective turn
Most important critics: Brian Massumi, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Clare Hemmings  feminist cultural studies and historiography

18. From the Textual to the Affective Turn
Both the textual and the affective turn share non-representational epistemology: the notion that discourse and knowledge are not simply about reality, but constitute an active part of it
The affective turn is a turn against the privileging of text and discourse as the key theoretical touchstones
Stressing the „pitfalls of writing the body out of theory” (Hemmings)
Drawing attention to the „residue or excess that is not socially produced, and that constitutes the very fabric of our being” (Hemmings)
Renewed dominance of biology, psychology

19. From the Textual to the Affective Turn
 Reconnection with issues of materiality and embodiment, yet the affective turn is by no means a return to positivism!
The relationship between natural sciences and the humanities/social sciences is no longer construed in terms of opposition and critique
Draw on post-positivist forms of biology and psychology, e. g. Silvan Tomkins
Philosophy: Gilles Deleuze is an important influence
 The affective turn deepened social constructivism, it did not abandon it

20. The affective turn as extension
„The constructivist notions of power, performativity and activity which have value to the concept of discourse in the textual turn have been extended beyond the socio-cultural domain to include pre-conscious and pre-discursive forms of existence”  The concept of affect has become a marker of this extension

21. Emotion and Affect Emotion Affect Biological impluse
Conscious feeling of affect + memory of similar feelings
Subjective experience (Brian Massumi)
More superficial and conscious (Barry Richards)
Associated with the individual person and with a certain fixity of meaning
Used in the humanities, often interchangeable with affect
The term emotion came into common currency amongst speakers of English in the 19th century (before: affections, passion, sentiments), linked to early scientific psychology
Biological impluse
Materiality and corporeality (Brian Massumi)
Deep and often unconscious processes (Barry Richards)
Not reducible to the personal quality of emotion
Used in biological sciences
Silvan Tomkins’ affects: shame, anger, fear, excitement, joy, distress
Deleuze and his followers prefer affect

22. Affective Life and Relations of Power
Studies also explore the link between affective life and relations of power: how emotions are manipulated by discourse of power
Seems to be a return to the debates that predate the historical attempt to explain emotion scientifically: prior to these attempts, sentiments and affects had been at the centre of all great moral, ethical and religious discourses on what constitutes a good life. E.g. ethics and passion in Aristotle, or the seven cardinal sins in Christian morality.
Modernity: Enlightenment thinkers explored systems of ethical and moral governance (Spinoza, Hobbes, Hume, Rousseau, etc.)
It was only in the 19th century, when the study of emotion as a scientific discipline was established, that the link between emotion and politics and ethics disappeared from view

23. Silvan Tomkins

24. Silvan Tomkins, Affect, Imagery, Consciousness (1962 – 1991)
Had a great impact on the affective turn
1962: vol. 1, the positive affects
1963: vol. 2, the negative affects
1991, volt. 3, the negative affects, anger and fear
Distinguished 9 affects, out of which 6 are „basic affects”: interest, excitement-joy, surprise-startle, distress-anguish, anger-rage, fear-terror.
+ shame-humiliation evolved later
+ final two: „dissmell” and disgust

25. Donald L. Nathanson, „Shame Affect & Compass of Shame”

26. Elspeth Probyn

27. Shame 2: Elspeth Probyn, Blush: Faces of Shame (2005)
Influenced by Tomkins and Deleuze
Focuses on the embodiment, the materiality of shame
Not only shame but also shaming
Claims that the affect-emotion divide should be bridged: the human scientist’s emotion and the biologist’s affect are not exclusive notions
Place and embodiment: „the physiological experience of shame intersects with the physicality of place. The color, the place, the history of bodies all come alive in shame” (Probyn)
Role of interest in shame: shame is not simply a negative affect it is productive (Foucauldian approach: power is productive). It adds, rather than takes away; „when we feel shame it is because our interest has been interfered with but not cancelled out” (Probyn)

28. Suzanne Keen

29. Empathy 1: Suzanne Keen, Empathy and the Novel (2010)
Reflection on the empathic effects of narrative on readers; narrative ethics
Interdisciplinary project: literary studies, neuroscience, psychology
Challenges the simple claim that imaginative engagement with literary works helps us become more empathic and more ethical
More complex and subtler account of emotional response to literary works
Her thesis: the perception of fictiveness increases the likelihood of the readers’ empathy by releasing them from the guarded response necessitated by the demands of real others

30. Empathy 1: Carolyn Pedwell, Affective Relations: The Transnational Politics of Empathy (2014)
How empathy expressed at the margins of our geo-political imageries disrupts dominant discourses
In literary works, e.g. Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place (1988)
How history, power and violence shape the meanings and effects of empathy
Emotions are not only sources of (or solutions to) complex social and political problems but also tell us a lot about the affective workings of power in the transnational world
Post-truth age

31. Thank you for your attention! 