Working with Affect in Feminist Readings: Disturbing Differences

by Marianne Liljeström (Editor), Susanna Paasonen (Editor)

Overview

Affect has become something of a buzzword in cultural and feminist theory during the past decade. References to affect, emotions and intensities abound, their implications in terms of research practices have often remained less manifest. Working with Affect in Feminist Readings: Disturbing Differences explores the place and function of affect in feminist knowledge production in general and in textual methodology in particular. With an international group of contributors from studies of history, media, philosophy, culture, ethnology, art, literature and religion, the volume investigates affect as the dynamics of reading, as carnal encounters and as possibilities for the production of knowledge. Working with Affect in Feminist Readings asks what exactly are we doing when working with affect, and what kinds of ethical, epistemological and ontological issues this involves. Not limiting itself to descriptive accounts, the volume takes part in establishing new ways of understanding feminist methodology.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781134017881
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	03/08/2010
Series:	Transformations
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	216
File size:	523 KB

About the Author

Dr Marianne Liljeström is Professor of Women’s Studies at the University of Turku, Finland. She has published articles on Nordic and Soviet women’s history, and edited and written parts of three textbooks in Finnish on feminist theory and methodology. Her most recent publications include the co-edited anthology Models of Self. Russian Women’s Autobiographical Texts (2000), and the edited volume Feminist Knowing – Discussions on Methodology (in Finnish, 2004). Her latest monograph Useful Selves: Russian Women’s Autobiographical Texts from the Post-War Period was published in 2004.

Dr Susanna Paasonen is a research fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki. Her teaching and research interests include Internet research, feminist theory, pornography and popular culture. She is the author of Figures of Fantasy: Women, Internet and Cyberdiscourse (2005) as well as the co-editor of Women and Everyday Uses of the Internet: Agency & Identity (2002) and Pornification: Sex and Sexuality in Media Culture (2007). Her work has recently appeared in the journals Feminist Theory, The Velvet Light Trap and European Journal of Cultural Studies.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Feeling Differences – Affect and Feminist Reading 1. An Affective Turn? Reimagining the Subject of Feminist Theory Part 1: Affective Attachments 2. Creating Disturbance: Feminism, Happiness and Affective Differences 3. A Sense of Play: Affect, Emotion, and Embodiment in World of Warcraft 4. Disturbing, Fleshy Texts: Close Looking at Pornography 5. Expanding Laughter: Affective Viewing, Body Image Incongruity and Fat Actress 6. Daughters of Privilege: Class, Sexuality, Affect and the Gilmore Girls Part 2: Dynamics of Difference 7. Differences Disturbing Identity: Deleuze and Feminism 8. Nomadic Bodies, Transformative Spaces: Affective Encounters with Indian Spirituality 9. Hips don’t Lie? Affective and Kinaesthetic Dance Ethnography 10. Ethics of Empathy and Reading in Shani Mootoo’s Cereus Blooms at Night 11. Beyond Redemption? Mobilizing Affect in Feminist Reading 12. Crossing the East-west Divide: Feminist Affective Dialogues 13. Working with Affect in the Corporate University