ENG 971 (Seminar in Theory): Theories of Affect
(Spring 2010)
The Basic Idea
Discussions of the history of 20th- and 21st-century critical thought often proceed by
delineating an itinerary of schools (new criticism, structuralism, poststructuralism, new
historicism, new materialism, neo-formalism, etc.) and ‘turns’: the linguistic turn, the
religious turn, the ethical turn, the ontological turn, the spatial turn, the rhetorical turn,
the medial turn, and of late the so-called ‘affective turn’. Focusing on this last ‘turn’, we
will attempt to articulate why, and in what ways, the concept of ‘affect’ might be relevant
to contemporary theoretical, cultural, and political debates. Rather than reading a given
text by applying ‘affect’, however, we will be more interested in examining how ‘affect’
might not only usefully add to our existing critical toolbox for the analysis of literature,
film, the visual arts, music, or the socio-political realm but also de facto constitutes the
ontological grounding for the very operations of any theory or critical act of response
and, as a result, directly impacts how we do theory and criticism. Rather than privileging
one or two particular theorists or a given academic discipline, this course will afford
students to gain a broad survey of the work done on and inspired by the concept of affect;
the survey-like aspect of the course will be complemented, however, by our deep and
rigorous theoretical, critical, and practical immersion in the course’s central concept.
Mandatory Books (I ordered them through the University Bookstore. Obviously you
may purchase them wherever you want to; check out sites such as www.amazon.com,
www.half.com, www.campusbooks.com):
Abel, Marco. Violent Affect: Literature, Cinema, and Critique after Representation.
Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007.
Ahmed, Sara. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. New York: Routledge, 2004. [If
unavailable I will provide a PDF copy via Blackboard.]
Clough, Patricia Ticineto, ed. The Affective Turn. Durham: Duke UP, 2007.
Damasio, Antonio. Looking for Spinoza. New York: Harcourt, 2003.
Deleuze, Gilles. Francis Bacon: Logic of Sensation. Trans. Daniel W. Smith.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota P, 2004.
Massumi, Brian. Parables for the Virtual. Durham: Duke UP, 2002.
Nancy, Jean-Luc, Corpus. Trans. Richard A. Rand. New York: Fordham UP, 2008.
Ngai, Sianne. Ugly Feelings. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2005.
Protevi, John. Political Affect. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota P, 2009.
Rancière, Jacques. Politics of Aesthetics. Trans. Gabriel Rockhill. New York:
Continuum, 2004.
Shaviro, Steven. The Cinematic Body. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota P, 1993.
Terada, Rei. Feeling in Theory. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2001.
Additional books (I did not order these book through the University Bookstore. To find
them, check out sites such as www.amazon.com, www.half.com, or
www.campusbooks.com):
Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus. Trans. Brian Massumi.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota P, 1987.
Rancière, Jacques. Aesthetics and Its Discontent. Trans. Steven Corcoran. Malden, MA:
Polity, 2009.
Additional reading assignments that are not based on these books will be made
available as PDF files through Blackboard; in a few cases, texts will be available online
(via hyperlink).
Course Schedule (subject to change; numbers in [brackets] denote total page numbers)
What is Affect? Some conceptual directions
1/12 *Patricia Ticineto Clough, The Affective Turn: “Foreword” (by Michael Hardt) [5]
and “Introduction” [33]
*Eric Shouse, “Feeling, Emotion, Affect” [4]
*Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari, What is Philosophy?, “Percept, Affect, and
Concept” [40]
*Gilles Deleuze, “Spinoza” [16; download PDF or rtf version]
*Antonio Damasio, Looking for Spinoza, chapters 1, 2, 3, & 5 [170; note: this is a
‘popular’ science book, so it won’t take you too long to read these chapters]
1/19 *Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, “The Desiring Machines” [50]
*Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, chapters 4, 10, & 11
[155]
*Félix Guattari, “Ritornellos and Existential Affects” [14]
1/26 *Rei Terada, Feeling in Theory [190]
2/2
*Jean-Luc Nancy, Corpus [170]
*Jean-Luc Nancy, “The Image—the Distinct” [15]
2/9
Catch-up date (?)
Proposal for final project due.
2/16 No class meeting
What can one do with Affect?
2/23 *Brian Massumi, Parables for the Virtual, “Introduction: Concrete Is as Concrete
Doesn’t” [22]; “The Autonomy of Affect” [23]; & at least an additional 100 pages
[approximately 145]. Student-led discussions of individual chapters based on
“position papers.”
3/2
*Sara Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion [200]. Student-led discussions of
individual chapters based on “position papers.”
3/9
*Sianne Ngai, Ugly Feelings, “Introduction” [37]; “Afterword: on Disgust” [25];
& at least two additional chapters of your choosing [approximately 90], which can
include her essay, “Merely Interesting.” Student-led discussions of individual
chapters based on “position papers.”
3/16 Spring Break
3/23 *Patricia Ticineto Clough, The Affective Turn, at least 6 chapters of your choice
[approximately 120]. Student-led discussions of individual chapters based on
“position papers.”
3/30
4/6
*John Protevi, Political Affect [210]
*Antonio Negri, “Value and Affect” [12]
*Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire, “Part 1” [65]; “Postmodernization, or
The Informatization of Production” [24]
*Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude, “The Becoming Common of
Labor” [12]
*Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Commonwealth, “Metamorphoses of the
Composition of Capital” [20]
Cesare Casarino & Antonio Negri, “Vicissitudes of Constituent Thought” [25]
During this week we will have an additional evening session (date to be
determined) during which we will hold our “conference” at my house.
4/13 *Jacques Rancière, Politics of Aesthetics [60]
*Jacques Rancière, “The Aesthetic Dimension: Aesthetics, Politics, Knowledge”
[20]
*Jacques Rancière, Aesthetics and Its Discontents, “Introduction”; “Aesthetics as
Politics”; & “The Ethical Turn of Aesthetics and Politics” [67]
4/20 *Gilles Deleuze, Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation [160]
Complete version of article due for peer review process to start.
4/27 *Marco Abel, Violent Affect: Literature, Cinema, and Critique after
Representation [250]
Peer review comments due.
Conclusions
5/4 [?] *Steven Shaviro, The Cinematic Body, “Preface”; chapters 1 & 6; “Conclusions”
[125]
*Steven Shaviro, “The Cinematic Body Redux” [5]
*Marco Abel, “Intensifying Affect” [25]
Final paper (plus cover letter) due in class.
Assignments
1. Final Project
Your major project for the course will be an article length research paper (6,000 9,000 words) based on the course’s primary concept: affect. Because I believe that it is
imperative that graduate seminars also teach students aspects of “professionalization”
(including matters pertaining to conferencing and publishing), we are going to treat your
final project as the outcome of a series of steps that are typical for academic publications:
to wit, many articles are the result of various intermediary steps, specifically a proposal, a
presentation, a submission, and a revision based on reader comments. To this end, we
will do the following: (1) you will respond to the (hypothetical) call for papers (CFP; see
below) by submitting a 300-words proposal; (2) based on the (hypothetical) acceptance of
your proposal, you will write a conference paper (9-12 pages; under no circumstances
should the length of your presentation paper exceed 20 minutes of reading time); (3)
based on this presentation, and the feedback you will receive, you then expand the paper
into a full length (6,000 - 9,000 words), MLA-style article, which you will submit for
(hypothetical) publication based on the CFP; finally, (4) based on an anonymous peer
reviewer’s comments, you will revise your article in order to submit a final, clean version
of your article.
Call for Papers:
In the last decade, much debate has occurred with regard to the so-called “Affective
Turn.” Trying to take stock of the conversation provoked by the concept of “affect,” we
stage a conference on the “Affective Turn.” To this end we are soliciting proposals for
presentations. Based on the conference, we will then invite participants to expand their
presentations into full-length research articles (6,000 - 9,000 words) to be included in a
(hypothetically) proposed edited volume, “Wither the ‘Affective Turn’?: Interdisciplinary
Investigations Inspired by Affect Theory,” for which we have received (hypothetical)
preliminary interest from various university presses. You may contribute a purely
theoretical essay; you may write on literature, cinema, or any of the other arts; or you
may write on socio-political questions. In fact, we are open to almost any ideas—with
the exception of “creative writing” projects of any kind.
Proposal Due Date: February 9, 2009
The conference will take place during the week of April 5; the exact date is yet to be
determined. Location: Marco Abel’s house.
A full draft (based on the presentation) is due April 20. The draft will be read,
anonymously, by one of your peers and handed back to you April 27. (The reviewer will
also hand in a copy of his or her comments to me. I leave it up to the reviewers to decide
whether or not they want to sign their reviews and thus identify themselves to the peer
whose essay they reviewed.) The revised, completely finished version (MLA style
required!) is then due May 4. The final version should be accompanied by a cover letter
explaining both the revisions you have undertaken and your reasoning for ignoring some
suggestions.
2. Discussion Paper
We have four books—in order: Parables for the Virtual, The Cultural Politics of
Emotion, Ugly Feelings, and The Affective Turn—that we will discuss by having course
participants post short “position papers” (750-1,000 words) on one or more assigned
chapters on the Monday preceding the class meeting (papers should be posted on
Blackboard by no later than 6:00 p.m.). Everyone is required to read these papers. In
class, the authors of the papers will briefly expand on their “positions” and then generate
class discussion of the book at large by finding ways of linking up the chapters with the
mandated readings from the book as well as with book chapters that not everyone will
have read. I.e., all of you have to read certain chapters, which are specified in the
syllabus; beyond these chapters, all of you are required to read additional chapters of
your choosing, which likely will result in the fact that not everyone will have read the
same chapters. The presenters, who should announce on which chapter(s) they will
present by no later than the Friday before their in-class presentation, are not responsible
for having read the whole book; they should, however, find ways of generating
conversations that will allow connections to be made between the mandated chapters, the
chapters on which they present, and others chapters that their peers, but not they
themselves, have read and want to address in conjunction with the discussion prompts
offered by the presenters.
The idea, here, is certainly to create a fairly structured way to generate class discussion,
but the main impetus for this assignment is to give everyone the chance to practice
teaching in a seminar environment.
Grades (% value of final grade):
• Final Project Proposal: 5%
• Presentation Paper: 25%
• Final, revised paper, with cover letter: 40% (In grading the final version of your
project I will take into consideration how well you respond to revision prompts.)
• Peer review comments: 10% (These are the comments you will offer to one of
your peers.)
• Position paper & discussion leader activity: 10% (5% + 5%)
• Class participation: 10%
This & That
Office Hours are T, 1:00 - 3:00 p.m. & by appointment. My office is in 215 Andrews.
Due dates for papers are non-negotiable! I do not give incompletes, as I think they are in
99.99% of the cases disastrous for everyone involved—and you should not operate under
the assumption that you are miraculously among the 0.01% for whom this does not hold
true.
Absences: I fully expect that you attend all classes and are on time. Missing one class
may lower your grade by a full grade; missing more than one class period will
automatically result in an ‘F’ for the course.
General expectations of student behavior are simple: act the part of a professional! I
fully expect you to be mentally present for the duration of our class meetings. Of course I
expect that you will be prepared for each class meeting, which means: you should do all
the assigned readings on time (and have notes that will allow you to be specific in your
contributions to discussions); not finishing readings is not acceptable. Please refrain
from doing anything that does not relate to what is going on in class: text messaging,
chatting online, sending emails, etc., etc. does not constitute acceptable graduate student
behavior and will therefore not be tolerated.
From the Legal Department
The university’s policy on academic honesty is stated in the Student Code of Conduct .
The policy prohibits plagiarism, cheating on examinations, unauthorized collaboration,
falsification, and multiple submissions. Violation of the policy will result in failing the
class, in addition to disciplinary sanctions.
Students with disabilities are encouraged to contact the instructor for a confidential
discussion of their individual needs for academic accommodation. It is the policy of the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln to provide flexible and individualized accommodation to
students with documented disabilities that may affect their ability to fully participate in
course activities or to meet course requirements. To receive accommodation services,
students must be registered with the Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD) office,
132 Canfield Administration, 472-3787 voice or TTY.
Last but not least
While there is no question in my mind that this will be a challenging class for all of us, I
sincerely hope that it will nevertheless be fun. I take great joy out of grappling with this
kind of material, even though such grappling often comes with frustrations (because one
doesn't ‘get’ it, etc.). I see it as my job to help you as best as I can to get your heads
around the various texts we cover in this course. You should consider it your job to give
me the chance to do so, not merely in class but also during office meetings. To this end I
encourage you to take advantage of my office hours and hope to see all of you with
regularity in my office. Needless to say, should at any time during the semester you have
any problem with anything going on in this course (including me & my actions) you
should talk to me about it rather than silently swallow it (and thus build up unproductive
internal resentment).