Course Description
The critical focus of contemporary theory seems to shift from representation, language and signification to sensation, object and matter. Theories of affect have thus emerged as a challenging site of political mobilization and critical concern, delineating a new trajectory of “in-human,” “non-signifying,” “pre-subjective,” and even “visceral” forces and intensities. This course will explore the increasing significance of affect as a trans-disciplinary field across philosophy, cultural studies, queer politics, biopower and neuroscience. Questions of subjectivity, embodiment, gender, labor, action will be reexamined in light of “the affective turn.”