affect

Introduction: The emotional truth

To reveal the eco-system of feeling that produces the contemporary organisational paradox — where divergence and creativity are baked-into products while their premise often denied in organisational design — this note applies a Spinozian framework of affect. Here, affects are the, often unconscious, feelings that stick during encounters between bodies and other bodies and objects, informing the direction one moves in thereafter, and in their broadest sense represent ‘a sense of push in the world’ (Thrift, 2004: 64; Spinoza, 1996).

Introduction

Lisa Baraitser is Professor of Psychosocial Theory at Birkbeck, University of London. In her research, she combines psychoanalytic and social theories to address the temporal, ethical and affective dimensions of care. In this interview, Prof. Baraitser helps us think through the temporal politics of COVID-19 and the ways in which pandemic conditions transform the affective dimensions of care work in Europe and US-America.

Introduction

Feminism is dead? Long live feminism!

Is it feasible to explore, dissect and live feminism within academia, a system that contributes and feeds into the very discrimination and violence denounced by feminism itself? And if so, what are the tools necessary to dismantle the master’s house to paraphrase Lorde (1984)? What is the role of activism and writing, and how can we incorporate these practices in feminism?

We lack creation. We lack resistance to the present!

(Deleuze and Guattari, 1994: 108)

Introduction

Introduction^[1]

…how to elaborate debt as embodied; i.e. what could be called, for the lack of a better word, “affective capitalism”, where the affect bit refers to the bodily and often non-cognitive states and excitations; of desires and impulsions; whether in the brain or in the gut. Could this be connected to the wider interest in brain sciences in the context of digital culture (interface design)? (Parikka, 2011: blogpost)