The Evolution of Affect Theory
The Humanities, the Sciences, and the Study of Power

Reveals how affect theory can be used to analyse systems of power, drawing on both the humanities and life sciences.

Donovan O. Schaefer (Author)

9781108732116, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 30 May 2019

75 pages
23 x 15.3 x 0.5 cm, 0.13 kg

Across the humanities, a set of interrelated concepts - excess, becoming, the event - have gained purchase as analytical tools for thinking about power. Some versions of affect theory rely on Gilles Deleuze's concept of 'becoming', proposing that affect is best understood as a field of dynamic novelty. Reconsidering affect theory's relationship with life sciences, Schaefer argues that this procedure fails as a register of the analytics of power. By way of a case study, this work concludes with a return to the work of Saba Mahmood, in particular her 2005 study of the women's mosque movement in Cairo, Politics of Piety.

Introduction: music without words
1. The Deleuzian dialect of affect theory
2. Unbecoming: criticisms of the Deleuzian dialect
3. The animality of affect
4. Economies of dignity: reconsidering the mosque movement
Conclusion: the entertainment.

Subject Areas: Life sciences: general issues [PSA], History of ideas [JFCX], History [HB], Humanities [H]