A politics of affect: Re/assembling relations of class and race at the museum. (May 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Mulcahy, Dianne
• Is Part Of: Emotion, space and society. Volume 39(2021)
• Publication Date: 2021-05
• Subjects: Affect -- Politics -- Assemblage -- Class -- Race -- Materialist analysis -- Affirmative thinking; Emotions -- Periodicals; Spatial behavior -- Periodicals; Space perception -- Periodicals; 152.4
• DOI: 10.1016/j.emospa.2021.100773
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1755-4586

Abstract

Abstract: This article takes as its focus a politics of affect and its potentially transformative effects. Drawing on feminist new materialism and the process philosophy of Deleuze, I map moments in which this politics is enacted as school children encounter museum exhibits designed to address issues of class and race. Taking affect to be a matter of the capacity of bodies to affect and be affected, I attend to how the body's power of acting is increased or diminished through these encounters. Affect emerges as central to negotiations around issues relating to class and race, with some assemblages produced being particularly able to effect changes in capacities. Politics presents as a process of affective encounter through which dominant cultural norms of class and race can be contested and their exclusions 'undone'. The argument is made that a politics of affect has the potential to unsettle normative power relations and address issues of social inequality and do so in an affirmative way. And, that attending to affect extends identity-based framings of class and race by bringing the constitutive role and contribution of the material, the micropolitical and the radically relational into view. Highlights: Affect is central to negotiations around classism and racism Attention to affect extends identity-based framings of class and race Dominant cultural norms can be contested through practising a politics of affect Affective politics critically, yet positively, addresses major social issues A politics of affect prompts substantial reconsideration of identity politics