Working with Affect in Feminist Readings

<p>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. <em>Working with Affect in Feminist Readings: </em><em>Disturbing Differences </em>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. <em>Working with Affect in Feminist Readings</em> 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.</p> <p>Introduction: Feeling Differences – Affect and Feminist Reading 1. An Affective Turn? Reimagining the Subject of Feminist Theory <em> </em><strong>Part 1: Affective Attachments</strong> 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 <em> </em><strong>Part 2: Dynamics of Difference</strong> 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 <em> </em>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 </p>