Against Affect

Aug 7, 2026

Uploaded by Finn

Against Affect examines how affect theory elevates emotion and feeling as dominant cultural and academic norms while also enabling power to be exercised through cynicism. The book argues that privileging affect has produced authoritarian censoriousness and self-censorship, demanding critical challenge. Through a queer theoretical lens, it develops a sustained discussion of affective turn, empathy, vulnerability, and the rethinking of vulnerability in COVID-19 culture, concluding with a call for feminist neo-enlightenment.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages122

Reading Time5 h 7 min

AccessFree to download

Contents

Acknowledgments

Provocations

Introduction

1. Repairing What Wasn’t Broken: Queer Theory’s Affective Turn

2. Why Aren’t We Minding Our Own Shoes? On Empathy

3. Words as Weapons: The Tyranny of Vulnerability

4. If Reason Went Viral: Rethinking Vulnerability in COVID-19 Culture

Conclusion: For a Feminist Neo-Enlightenment

Notes

[OceanofPDF.com](OceanofPDF.com) Series editors · Marco Abel and Roland Végső Something in the world forces us to think. —Gilles Deleuze The world provokes thought. Thinking is nothing but the human response to this provocation. Thus, the very nature of thought is to be the product of a provocation. This is why a genuine act of provocation cannot be the empty rhetorical gesture of the contrarian. It must be an experimental response to the historical necessity to act. Unlike the contrarian, we refuse to reduce provocation to a passive noun or a state of being. We believe that real moments of provocation are constituted by a series of actions that are best defined by verbs or even infinitives—verbs in a modality of potentiality, of the promise of action. To provoke is to intervene in the present by invoking an as yet undecided future radically different from what is declared to be possible in the present and, in so doing, to arouse the desire for bringing about change. By publishing short books from multiple disciplinary perspectives that are closer to the genres of the manifesto, the polemical essay, the intervention, and the pamphlet than to traditional scholarly monographs, “Provocations” hopes to serve as a forum for the kind of theoretical experimentation that we consider to be the very essence of thought. [www.provocationsbooks.com](www.provocationsbooks.com) [OceanofPDF.com](OceanofPDF.com) Against Affect Lisa Downing University of Nebraska Press | Lincoln [OceanofPDF.com](OceanofPDF.com) © 2026 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska Cover designed by University of Nebraska Press. Author photo courtesy of the author. All rights reserved The University of Nebraska Press is part of a land-grant institution with campuses and programs on the past, present, and future homelands of the Pawnee, Ponca, Otoe-Missouria, Omaha, Dakota, Lakota, Kaw, Cheyenne, and Arapaho Peoples, as well as those of the relocated Ho-Chunk, Sac and Fox, and Iowa Peoples. For customers in the EU with safety/GPSR concerns, contact: [gpsr@mare-nostrum.co.uk](gpsr@mare-nostrum.co.uk) Mare Nostrum Group BV Mauritskade 21D 1091 GC Amsterdam The Netherlands Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data can be found at [search.catalog.loc.gov](search.catalog.loc.gov:)[:](search.catalog.loc.gov:)[ ](search.catalog.loc.gov:)[ISBN](ISBN 978-1-4962-4230-3)[ 978-1-4962-4230-3](ISBN 978-1-4962-4230-3) ([paperback](paperback)) The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content. [OceanofPDF.com](OceanofPDF.com) Contents Acknowledgments Provocations Introduction 1. Repairing What Wasn’t Broken: Queer Theory’s Affective Turn 2. Why Aren’t We Minding Our Own Shoes? On Empathy 3. Words as Weapons: The Tyranny of Vulnerability 4. If Reason Went Viral: Rethinking Vulnerability in COVID-19 Culture Conclusion: For a Feminist Neo-Enlightenment Notes [OceanofPDF.com](OceanofPDF.com) Acknowledgments The contribution and support of many individuals and organizations must be acknowledged here. Firstly, I am immensely grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for the award of a Leverhulme Research Fellowship in 2021 that enabled me to carry out a large part of the research for, and writing of, this book while staying at home and shielding from COVID-19. I like to think the Leverhulme kept me uninfected as well as giving me space and time to write. My referees for the Leverhulme Fellowship, Peter Cryle, Laura Doan, and Emma Wilson, are owed a particular note of gratitude. For kindly providing me with platforms and opportunities to present, share, and receive feedback on the ideas in Against Affect, thanks are due to Oliver Davis and colleagues at the University of Warwick; Stephen Forcerand colleagues at the University of Glasgow; Ben Nichols, Elliot Evans, and the AHRC-funded research network “Beyond Radical: Queer

FAQs

What central problem does Against Affect address?

It critiques how affect theory’s prioritization of emotion and feeling becomes a hegemonic norm that can be cynically used to exercise power, producing censoriousness and self-censorship that the book urges readers to challenge.

How does the book connect queer theory to emotion and affect?

It frames part of the argument around queer theory’s “affective turn,” including how repairing what wasn’t broken reveals the stakes of affective frameworks for nonnormative subjects.

Which themes are explored across the book’s main chapters?

The chapters develop interconnected issues including empathy, vulnerability as a form of tyranny, and how vulnerability is rethought within COVID-19 culture, ending in a conclusion oriented toward feminist neo-enlightenment.

Aug 7, 2026

Uploaded by Finn

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