Affect—or feeling (after Leys)

Abstract

In recent years the 'affective turn' has permeated the arts, humanities, social sciences, and psychology, but like any influential academic movement has not escaped critique. We outline and agree in general terms with the critique by Leys (2011b), which emphasises the influence of the basic emotion paradigm; the dualisms that accompany its deployment; and concerns regarding intentionality and meaning. We then propose an alternate approach to affect and feeling, derived from the philosophies of Whitehead and Langer; demonstrate how this avoids the endorsement of cognitivism to which Leys critique succumbs; illustrate the strengths of this approach with respect to analyses of former U.S. President Reagan; and highlight two strengths of affect theory which are compatible with it. We conclude that our approach closes the intentionality gap that Leys identifies whilst retaining a fruitful emphasis upon the affective realm. Affect -or feeling? (after Leys)In recent years the 'affective turn' -a central concern with, and analytic focus upon, the phenomena designated by terms such as affect, emotion and feeling -has permeated the arts, humanities and social sciences, and is now influential within disciplines including literary studies, geography, history, cultural studies, sociology, criminology, social theory and political theory (for an introductory overview see Gregg & Seigworth, 2010). 1At the same time, the affective turn is becoming increasingly influential within psychology. With respect to theoretical psychology, Brown and Stenner (2001) discuss the relevance of Spinoza's ethics. His ethics of knowing posits that body and mind are two attributes of the same substance, and proposes that increasing the capacity of the body to both be affected and to affect others is the means by which the knowing subject progresses; Brown and Stenner utilise Spinoza's position to argue for a post-cognitive understanding of emotion.More recently, Falmagne (2011) has argued that the affective roots of thought are underemphasized in psychology, and that consequently the enmeshed biographical links between the affective life of the knowing subject and her/his 'mental' life -the personal, societal and transgenerational influences that affectively shape thought -require elaboration.Whilst Brown and Stenner (2001) and Falmagne (2011) have different starting points (and their writing is separated by a decade), they share a concern for re-thinking the relationship between what have traditionally been considered as separate psychological realms: feeling, emotion or the affective and thought, cognition or the mental. This concern, which frequently animates work associated with the affect turn, is one we also share.The turn to affect has also been taken up in social and critical psychology. Blackman and Cromby (2007) argued that affect theory provides a conceptual language for addressing embodied subjectivity, allowing (critical) social psychologists to move away from a focus solely on discourse and language, and affording opportuniti...

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