#Affect Theory

[solarpunkpresentspodcast]

Hope and Solarpunk

Hope is an affect (aka feeling that drives action) that I’ve been thinking about for a while, ever since I was a graduate student. “Hope” is a word that gives people warm fuzzy feelings when they read it or use it, but I’m not sure that it’s very well understood or theorized in this day and age. Because most people equate the concept of hope with that of naïve positivity and intentional ignorance of “reality”.

Following hot on the heels of last week’s discussion of naïveté in solarpunk, I want to address the idea of hope head-on. I’ve before quoted this same passage from the last episode of the podcast “Secret Feminist Agenda” but I’m gonna do it again because it is super relevant to the way I’m thinking about hope as coming in different types. In the episode, host Dr Hannah MacGregor is in conversation with Dr Eugenia Zuroski, and observes that uncritical expressions of hope “[come] so often packaged in … toxic positivity” that insists that “we are all in this together” and that “we will get through this terrible situation,” yet for many people (especially people of colour and queer people) “we don’t always get through this” (11:52-12:05). In response, Dr Zuroski makes a clear distinction between wishful thinking and “radical hope” as a hope that is earned: the kind of hope that marginalized people such as BIPOC, LGBTQ2S+ and disabled people have been “earning all along … just by living under conditions that are designed to deprive you of … hope for yourself … for your own survival, your own flourishing, and your own future” (13:52-15:25).

" you can’t just hope out of nowhere. You have to do the work of understanding… where we’ve come from, where we all are right now, where you are in the middle of all that, then you can start to…build your hope"  -- Dr Eugenia Zuroski

When I talk about hope as an expression of wishful thinking, I’m thinking of the example that Dr Zuroski gives in that same episode, of someone prefacing their opinion with the phrase “I hope this isn’t racist,” and then going and saying something egregiously racist (17:21). She points out how in this example the speaker’s terminology uses “hope” to express the wish that their statement were not racist, because they cannot recognize themselves as racist. But, as anyone who’s been a captive in that particular conversation can attest, that wish is contrary to the actual reality of the situation; as Zuroski says, “you can’t hope for realities not to exist” (17:21); hope is not an applicable word in this situation. Zuroski goes on to say that in order for marginalized people and their allies to access truly radical hope, it is necessary to dedicate time to “thinking about temporality … your relationship to histories [and] to the present …. and let that inform how you build a relationship to the future, which is what hope is…. hope is the name for relating to a future of some kind” and that “you can’t just hope out of nowhere. You have to do the work of understanding… where we’ve come from, where we all are right now, where you are in the middle of all that, then you can start to…build your hope” (18:03). Dr MacGregor agrees that positive change has to be intrinsically tied to will and to action, not an ephemeral wish for a better future to abstractly happen, somehow.*

I’m using the word “abstract” here as an intentional nod to the work of José Esteban Muñoz on queer utopias, who contrasts a concrete “queer” version of utopia with an abstract utopia, one that’s made up of unrealistic dreams that have no grounding in “reality.”** I think that most people assume that solarpunk hope is the abstract, wishful thinking kind.

I am of the opinion that that is very far from the truth of it, however. What draws me to solarpunk is the way it conceives of hope stripped of its naïveté: eyes open to the devastation of the climate crisis, institutionalized racism, violent misogyny, rapaciousness of capitalism, the fact we’re witnessing a genocide and even though we are lobbying our governments, attending protests, and organizing boycotts, we’re unable to make any tangible move towards stopping what is happening. Is this a result of an eye-for-an-eye worldview, cynical capitalist greed trumping any human compassion, corporate and governmental hypocrisy, the legacy of colonialism, the systemic long-standing disinformation about the reality of the situation, run-of-the-mill racism, or all of it at once? And does it matter what the origin of violence is when the violence is still ongoing? All of this can be overwhelming. It takes a lot out of one to have their senses wide open to what is happening in the world and still try to choose to do what is best in the situation.

((A word of caution, there is a type of hope that can trap one into a despairing situation. It’s what Berlant calls “stupid optimism”. It’s the dark side of hope, not an empowering or active type of hope, but another expression of wishful thinking in direct contrast to the reality of the world - in which you have no control over the sequence/flow of events. Instead, the more that you believe the world to operate otherwise, along these abstract, wishful lines and rules that have framed this situation for you in the imagination, the more trapped one becomes, succumbing to a powerlessness within a fantasy over which you once had complete control, as you are the one who made it.))

I’ve found that if I take a pickaxe to the solarpunk aesthetic and rip it back, underneath the best examples I find throbbing, raw hope, the ability to look at our current world and deliberately choose a better path, often to the detriment of the self. It takes a lot out of one to have their senses wide open to what is happening in the world (or even on the “small scale” of violence in their community) and still leave themselves open to further wounding, sometimes by the very people or systems within which the solarpunk individual is trying to help.

What this hope looks like is the choice to be positive. The drive to choose against all odds to work grimly towards the betterment of humanity even if that solarpunk feels that humanity doesn’t deserve it.*** To me, the best examples of the solarpunk aesthetic are artistic expressions of that hope-as-a-choice despite everything.

I’m not an art critic, but to humanities scholars, the world is a text to be analyzed, yadda yadda, so I can’t help but read it thusly. I don’t see the art of solarpunk as pure escapism but as a concrete expression of the belief that there are beautiful things in this world, they are worth celebrating and, most importantly, hope that future humans will have more time to incorporate making, appreciating, or simply existing around beautiful things in their lives.

Solarpunk art as an expression of hope in humanity’s ability to create and appreciate art not just in the present but in a future where art is much more ubiquitous is not abstract, to me. It directly relates to art programs in the present for kids in underfunded communities, for humanities education for community members, for encouraging art daycamps and in schools. It relates directly to the fight to preserve art that exists and art-making in the present, with an eye to the future.

As Marwan Makhoul writes,

In order for me to write poetry that isn't political, I must listen to the birds and in order to hear the birds ​the warplanes must be silent 

To me, the solarpunk version of hope can translate into direct action for peace. To me, that is not abstract. This type of hope - what I call a solarpunk hope - is a direct motivator of positive action.

What do you think, though? Am I going in the right direction, or off the beaten path entirely? How do you think of hope and solarpunk?

—

*I definitely ripped most of this section from a previous essay of mine published with the Science Fiction Review Association; I had solarpunk in mind when I was writing that piece though the argument was more about traditional ideas of utopia than the genre of solarpunk per se. So now I get to apply it to solarpunk, which is cool.

**For more of an explanation on why “reality” is in quotes here, I’d recommend a listen to our episode with Dr Joey Ayoub on what exactly is “realistic” when it comes to thinking about the future and incorporating solarpunk ideals into it.

***I know a few people who say they hate other humans and yet are some of the kindest, most gracious and generous humans in their interactions with others; imo they don’t hate other people, they hate the way that other people are forced to act under systems that have fucked them up so badly they cannot locate that graciousness in human interactions in themselves. I have begrudgingly come to realize that people are generally good, if you take away the trauma and shittiness they may have had to deal with throughout their lives that shapes them into cruel people or even rewards them for it. My Calvinist forbears are turning in their graves.

#hope #naive #Affect Theory #stupid optimism

[knifeeater]

Maurice Blanchot (1981) suggests that the image is not a representational substitute for the object so much as it is—like a cadaver—the material trace or residue of the object's failure to vanish completely: "The apparent spirituality, the pure formal virginity of the image is fundamentally linked to the elemental strangeness of the being that is present in absence" (p. 83). The image is not a symptom of lack, but an uncanny, excessive residue of being that subsists when all should be lacking. It is not the index of something that is missing, but the insistence of something that refuses to disappear. Images are banally self-evident and self-contained, but their superficiality and obviousness is also a strange blankness, a resistance to the closure of definition, or to any imposition of meaning. Images are neither true nor false, neither real nor artificial, neither present nor absent; they are radically devoid of essence. Empty simulacra, copies for which there is no original, they tend to proliferate endlessly, repetitiously, without hope of regulation or control. The fleeting insistence of weightless images, of reflections and projections, of light and shadow, threatens to corrupt all standards, to exceed all limits, and to transgress every law.

Steven Shaviro The Cinematic Body

#steven shaviro #the cinematic body #film theory #affect theory

[mswyrr]

#finally an explanation of affect theory that's clear and informed!! #affect theory #literary theory #us politics tag

[princessbabygirlforever]

An older trans woman once told me that she sits to pee, which occasionally results in her peeing on herself, because that’s how hard she’s worked to block out the fact that she’s still retained her original organ all of these years. That’s what girls do: we deal in affect–feelings, vibes, emotions, moods—to counteract dissonance. If you feel like a girl, you are a girl. Serving cunt is the law of assumption. Pussy-stunting is a mindset. Delusion is a lifestyle. And dissociation is effortless, unselfconscious, easy.

After white men, only white women and girls are afforded an unstudied ease, a universalizing, pedestalizing canvas-like blankness free of aesthetic assumptions, charged with authority and unburdened by race and gender. The rest of us are seen as open wounds. I used to try to fight how I am perceived by feigning a sense of aloofness, insouciance and smallness. I did so by tucking my hair behind my ear, wistfully, longingly staring off into the distance, dissociating from my body to temporarily transport to a place where I could write like a white girl.

I would conjure the white girl vibe instantaneously when I’d listen to music, especially if the music I am listening to is really loud, almost dulling my other senses and causing me to feel what can only be described as the opposite of embodied: void-like. There, I could exist as an empty, diaphanous vessel unfilled by anything at all. There’s no burden of “identity” in the club or the bedroom or the hammam or the garden or online as the avatar of your choosing–anywhere deemed a feminine space worth inhabiting. Online, especially, is where anyone can lay down their burdens—the thick coating of class and race, geography and gender–and escape the indignities of womanhood, blackness, otherness. No fat…no trauma…no spiritual heaviness…no intensity…only purity. A blank canvas no one can ascribe assumptions and project onto. You’re the default player in the game. A babygirl.

As a terminally concerned girl teeming with big, electrical emotions, presenting myself as an open wound–where the id is steering the ship despite societal expectations and pressures to the contrary to flatten and suppress– has never quite appealed to me because I know it doesn’t appeal much to anyone else. I think of myself in relation to others, in a sort of triangulation with the world. I don’t want to be a spectacle, if I can help it, because I know I already am, that there is an audience baked into my experience, mercilessly ascribing the same assumptions to me that they would someone engaging with hallucinations on a city bus. On a city bus, to witness someone mumbling to themselves, smiling exuberantly, screaming, singing terribly or sobbing loudly in public, is to have a front row seat to an undesired excess, intensity and earnestness. That person has unconsciously chosen to present themselves, to the subtly disciplinary gaze of surveilling strangers, like a spectacle to be gawked at. They’ve interrupted the homogenizing edicts of polite society in a manner considered vulnerable, neurotic, unusual, boundaryless, histrionic, unrefined, unserious, grotesque, eccentric, amoral, out of control, shameless and cringe-worthy. Their vivid displays of animatedness, too gauche for “normal” sensibilities, so we’d rather tuck them away like an unsightly pile of rags on the floor, undermining them like we do our own id in the company of others.

This image is commonly associated with the mentally ill and the homeless, whom the public bodies and perceptions of are heavily policed and politicized. States of animatedness, of excess, are also racialized and gendered. Femininity and blackness, its sincerest expressions, deemed maximalist, evidence of effort, and therefore, failure. Too much.

To transcend our animatedness, we must turn our disciplining gaze to ourselves, self-effacing to make space for whiteness and maleness, totally erase ourselves. This palimpsestic quality is achieved through minimalist attire (no garish, colorful clothes re: avant basic), eliminating girlish and black vocal tics, adapting middlebrow tastes, writing in 3rd person, muting one’s melanated state with black and white photography, aspirational thinness so there is less of you, and an attitude that communicates aloofness so severe that you don’t even care about yourself.

These attempts at minimization, of disciplining your public animated body, will allow you to enjoy a certain remove from the wider world. You’ll be cured, no longer teeming with niggerishness and schlepping the mantle of womanhood into every room you walk into for the rest of your life. You’ll be the babygirl again, who you were before you ever knew that you occupy a subordinate role in society, and before you were privy to the myths and ideologies that have been created around your image and identity.

Like a princess, your girlhood and daughterhood had a sense of prestige, making the fact of your consanguinity almost secondary, except as a matter of differentiation from the masses of non-princesses. There wasn’t yet a force larger than life requiring self-minimization as a necessary boon. You were presumed to be a pure, guileless blank canvas of a girl. You didn’t have to arm yourself with knowledge of that—or any truth—to feel a claim to safety and purity because the fact of it was informed by your singularity.

The babygirl, elegantly inert and slow, never had to run outside of the context of a freewheeling and uninterrupted playtime. She was never embarrassed into velocity. She never had to be strong or work hard. She’s never had to learn to self-preserve because her existence hadn’t called for that skill set. Self-preservation is the ministry of wounded girls. The babygirl has never been wounded.

The babygirl is light, buoyant with a feeling she belongs right where she is. She’s preternaturally interested and keenly aware, with an insatiable attention and curiosity for entertainment, her commodities, the objects in her bedroom. She prefers living in a rapt state, the romantic eye of her mind transporting her from her present surroundings and the inherent ennui of girlhood into her imagination.

The babygirl’s emotions don’t give the appearance of an overflowing volcano of lava curdling into evidence of effort and maintenance and failure and toxicity, clumps for other people to step over, ignore, forget, apply a disciplining gaze to. She is like the waves in the ocean crashing freely into each other, free to express the gamut of her emotions, whether sad, irritable, annoyed or enraged, without it sweeping up the rest of her image and identity until there’s nothing left of her but her feelings, in the unforgiving, cynical eyes of the strangers she will meet in the world who will, inevitably, only see animatedness.

What makes me a babygirl–and what unifies me with all the other babygirls online who’re so hotly debated and contested and disbelieved–is our sensitivity and an unrelenting over-identification with objects and other people. Babygirls are committed to the aesthetic reading and viewing of still images, films and the internet, which informs a girly canon of derealization ephemera not intended to be over-identified with: antiheroines, dreams, the moon, theory, book spines, social outcasts, fonts, hysterical and ribald women, “invalid” women who live in their beds, dolls, numbers, voids, the color pink, avatars on social media, God.

All that is ostensibly facile and self-explanatory, for the babygirl, is gleaned through persistent observation. The babygirl fills emptiness with a divine estuary from which an embodied and pillow-soft love audaciously converges with nature’s brutal architecture—pulsating alive with blood and flesh.

Being a babygirl is like the infinitude of the world contained in a pop song or the gaze of someone staring down the barrel of a gun; it stretches on and on forever. Anyone, then, who sees through people like they are vacant homes waiting to be occupied by her, who thinks they know others with the cultic conviction of a true believer, who is wildly and wholeheartedly alert, is a babygirl.

And I am Princess Babygirl.

I am novelty combined with appropriation like collage art, music sampling and recipes. My palimpsest quality is not an encryption of the self; but rather, an illuminating synthesis of my embodied experience. I have been the host to various narratives, epistemes, connections and dreams that I’ve neither fully abandoned nor refined. I’ve imprinted my affects and vibes forever–going on and on like the perfect pop song on repeat–so I can never be erased. Princess Babygirl is who I was before all of the sublimated tensions, marketplace competitions, traumas, vulnerabilities, anxieties, mimetic rivalries, delusions, dreams and violence of womanhood happened to me.

As Carl Jung foretold in his writings on the Age of Aquarius, human consciousness is moving toward a more feminine-centric paradigm. I want to represent the metamodern conditions of this moment in a blend of identity-critical autotheory and audiovisual stimuli exploring affects, aesthetics, taste, psychology, consumerism, the performance of womanhood and modern femininity.

#girls #girlhood #womanhood #gynocriticism #self-optimized girl #identity #cultural criticism #identity politics #girlblogger #writers #substack #vibes #affect theory #collage art #maximalism #minimalism #taste #aesthetics #princess babygirl #babygirl #princessbabygirlforever #autotheory #autofiction #esoteric #femininity #modern femininity #feminism #femcels #it girls #otessa moshfegh

[sp-epari-digitalmedia]

A Plague Tale: Innocence - An Ode to Affect Theory

BLOG 8: EMOTIONS FROM GAME CONTENT

Stories become my haven in the middle of my everyday life, providing a diversion from the monotony that is all around me. I have always been fascinated by stories and have found comfort and fascination in a variety of storytelling mediums. The world of video games is one medium in particular that has had a profound effect on me; the combination of gameplay and narrative elevates storytelling to new levels. Out of all of these, "A Plague Tale: Innocence" has distinguished itself as a shining example by crafting a story that has profoundly connected with me.

The narrative of A Plague Tale: Innocence has evolved from being merely a virtual journey to a place where I can engage in introspection and emotional connection while navigating the challenges of everyday life. The plot of this Asobo Studio game, with its highs and lows and a satisfying and heartfelt ending, has left a lasting impression on me.

About The Plague Tales Innocence

Let's pause to enjoy the game itself before getting into the scholarly analysis. A Plague Tale: Innocence, created by Asobo Studio, transports players to mediaeval France during the Black Death's devastating outbreak and harrowing journey through a deadly rat infestation. The relationship between Amicia and Hugo de Rune, two siblings, is at the center of the game as they make their way through a world tainted by death, trickery, and the paranormal.

Academic Standpoint

Affect theory is fundamentally a contemplative mode of inquiry that draws our attention to the complex subtleties of the human condition. Affect theory explores how our interactions with the world are shaped by the subtle and implicit factors that affect our feelings and emotional reactions. Understanding cultural artefacts, like video games, requires a thorough consideration of affect; otherwise, a thorough analysis falls short. (Simecek, 2020)

Game's Relation to Affect Theory

Game Synopsis

Set in 1348, following a vicious attack on their family, Amicia and her sick brother Hugo manage to flee the clutches of the Inquisition. There is a deadly and enigmatic rat infestation known as the Bite all around them. The siblings forge alliances and overcome obstacles as they make their way through dangerous situations and discover Hugo's special powers. They set out to find a treatment for Hugo's illness, and in the process, they come across unexpected alliances, betrayals, and sacrifices. A number of challenges, such as breaking into a university and searching for a book known as the Sanguinis Itinera, are encountered throughout the story. They make allies along the way, including Mélie, Arthur, and Rodric, all of whom add nuance to their tale. The conclusion is marked by a confrontation with Grand Inquisitor Vitalis Bénévent. Hugo's skill at controlling the rats becomes crucial to their victory over their formidable foe. They suffer losses, including Rodric's sacrifice, but they manage to overthrow the Inquisition. After it is discovered that the rat plague has passed, things begin to return to normal. Even so, some of Hugo's friends continue to doubt his abilities. The story allows for contemplation on the significance of their experiences as they set out on a new adventure with an ailing Béatrice. "A Plague Tale: Innocence" is an intense and emotionally charged game that combines elements of suspense, betrayal, sacrifice, and the strength of familial bonds into a compelling narrative.

Cultural References and Inferences

The narrative backdrop of "A Plague Tale: Innocence" is drawn from the historical accounts of the Black Death, a catastrophic pandemic that wreaked havoc across Europe from 1347 to 1351. This deadly outbreak left a lasting legacy across the continent, killing more people than any known epidemic or war at the time. The Black Death's aftermath had a significant impact. At first, trade fell off sharply and wars were temporarily put on hold. The loss of laborers resulted in a significant decrease in cultivated land, which had a longer-lasting effect. Due to the lack of labor, many landowners were forced to adopt new strategies in order to retain their tenants, such as paying money rent or wages in lieu of labor services. This ultimately led to their downfall. Not to mention, the labor scarcity brought about important social shifts. Landlords started to deviate from conventional structures as a result of their struggle to find substitute labor arrangements, which resulted in the replacement of wages and the growth of money rents. Consequently, there was a general pay increase for artisans and peasants. As a result of these changes in economic dynamics, the previously inflexible social stratification became more flexible, changing the face of society. The depiction of a world devastated by the Bite, similar to the actual Black Death, in "A Plague Tale: Innocence," serves as a moving reminder of the significant societal changes that can occur following catastrophic events. The game explores the effects of a devastating pandemic on both an individual and societal level, encapsulating the essence of this historical era and fusing it into the narrative.

Other Contributors

Central to the gripping narrative of "A Plague Tale: Innocence" is the enigmatic Prima Macula, a curse rooted in ancient lore that poisons the blood of specific families. The Latin translation of "first spot," the Macula, reveals itself as a malevolent force with a self-awareness that adds an eerie dimension to its existence. The curse appears randomly and is first detected in a person's blood from birth; however, the cause of this discovery is still unknown. Hordes of rats appear in the surrounding areas as the Macula develops in the blood of its carrier, a sign of impending doom. These rats end up serving as the Bite's messengers, heralding in a catastrophic plague outbreak.

Overall Evaluation

The narrative of "A Plague Tale: Innocence" is a poignant exploration of death, portraying the demise of major characters that evokes a range of negative emotions such as sorrow, grief, and despair. The overarching theme of death permeates both the visual elements and the intricate plot, creating a compelling and emotionally charged experience for players. There are other emotions like shock, pain and agony too.

The game skillfully utilizes passive actors, such as those succumbing to the Bite (Bubonic Plague), to reinforce the central theme of death. This historical backdrop, rooted in the bleak reality of the Bubonic Plague, adds a layer of realism to the narrative, making it a powerful reflection on one of the most somber periods in our past.

The introduction of the Prima Macula as a supernatural element amplifies the emotional intensity of the story. It instills a palpable sense of fear and darkness, particularly for those with phobias related to rodents or rats. The Prima Macula serves as a catalyst for terror, contributing to the overall atmospheric tension that defines the game.

The game's narrative succeeds in encapsulating the essence of a historical event known for its depressive impact. It effectively elicits overwhelming emotions from the audience, creating an immersive experience that extends beyond mere gameplay.

Conclusion

In addition to being an engrossing video game, "A Plague Tale: Innocence" is a visceral exploration of the turbulent terrain of human emotion. Players can relate to the story's poignant and evocative experience because of its relentless exploration of death and historical basis in the Bubonic Plague. The emotional stakes are raised when the otherworldly Prima Macula is introduced. She adds a layer of darkness and fear. The game creates a tapestry of sorrow, grief, and despair through the interplay of masterfully rendered graphics, an engaging story, and deft storytelling, leaving a lasting impression on the player's emotional compass. "A Plague Tale: Innocence" is a testament to the power of video games as a medium for emotional storytelling, where the immersive narrative not only entertains but profoundly impacts the hearts and minds of those who embark on its haunting journey.

References

Simecek, K. (2020) '21Affect theory,' The Year’s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory, 28(1), pp. 414–433. https://doi.org/10.1093/ywcct/mbaa017.

PlayStation (2019) A Plague Tale: Innocence - Launch Trailer | PS4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtP6mNeN6yE.

#game #pc games #ps4 #game design #game art #game theory #video games #rpg #plague tale innocence #black death #affect theory #emotions #Youtube

[arielkroon]

Hi there, I'm Ariel Kroon, and this is my Tumblr thing. I'm an independent scholar and a freelance academic editor, and so I'm going to be crossposting from my blog (when I blog). I'm hoping this won't take me down too many rabbit holes, but you never know.

I did my dissertation on post-apocalyptic Canadian science fiction published between 1948-1989, so expect me to post about obscure SF as well as my Opinions on apocalyptic discourse, the apocalyptic imaginary, cyberpunk and solarpunk. I use an intersectional feminist lens, as well as thinking with ecocriticism, affect theory, queer theory and gender studies, and I have a weakness for/history in feminist philosophical thought and also (xtian, protestant, crc, dutch-settler) religion.

I'm a third-generation Dutch immigrant, settler scholar on the trad. territory of the Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe and Neutral peoples and it feels weird to disclose this because I'm also a millennial who grew up with LJ and non-anonymity online makes me feel really squeamish and vulnerable, but that's a privilege a lot of people don't get these days. Expect me to wrestle a lot with the discourse/idea of reconciliation in so-called Canada, cause I'm complicit as hell but I'm trying to do my best to be a conscientious race-traitor.

I also struggle with chronic fatigue, chronic pain, brain fog, short term memory issues, executive functioning, and I am on the road to figuring out what I suspect is the fact that I'm on the spectrum, so sometimes I don't really have the spoons or grace for being the best ally I can be. The discourse of the perfect activist is one I want to push back against, as someone with multiple disabilities; the excuse of being "too disabled" to ignore the suffering of others is, I think, a harmful myth that many of us - intentionally or not - tend to buy in to and I want to also push against that.

Disability studies isn't something I'm very familiar with at all, since my disabilities manifested after a car crash in 2019 (which exacerbated all the underlying issues I was busy masking / repressing while being in grad school, because I suddenly lost the ability to keep up my coping mechanisms). I look forward to learning more about pretty much all of these things, by the way.

Speaking of being very new to a field, I'm co-host of Solarpunk Presents Podcast (@solarpunkpresentspodcast); come along and learn with me and Christina De La Rocha about people doing their best in the present with an eye towards a better future world for all.

#ariel kroon #independent scholar #academia #scholarship #academic editor #freelance #blogger #ecocriticism #solarpunk #cyberpunk #science fiction #apocalypse #apocalyptic imaginary #intersectional feminism #affect theory #queer theory #gender studies #feminist philosophy #religion #millennial #settler scholar #Canada #LJ #livejournal #online anonymity #spoonie #spoonielife #actually disabled #disability studies #solarpunk presents podcast

[windsails]

spinoza defines consternation as “one whose desire to avoid an evil is restrained by wonder at the evil he fears” ethics, pg 111

he defines wonder as “an imagination of a thing in which the mind remains fixed because this singular imagination has no connection with others” ethics, pg 105

that’s a lot of people’s problem today. consternation

they’re simply gazing at disconnected problems rather than connecting to adequate solutions and adequate ideas

#spinoza #philosophy #consternation #wonder #doomscrolling #current events #affect #affect theory

[marmorenshud]

btw if you feel like you don't "get" a lot of modern art, look into affect theory. a good chunk of modern art is not as much about symbolism anymore and I think that's where a lot of people feel like they're failing to understand or 'overlook' clues, because theyre looking in the wrong places! and it's not really your fault bc in English class you do mostly get taught to analyse paintings and literature from before 1910, which was mostly symbolism. I was never taught how to analyse a performance or an installation or a video work (only if it was an ad), which are artforms that mostly came about after a huge cultural shift in the view on art in the 1980s. so if you feel like you don't 'get' it, don't think that there's something wrong with you. art is a specialised language, and you might just not have been taught the right tools. and certainly don't blame the art for being 'bad' for you misunderstanding it.

#caw #very passionate abt this #affect theory #modern art #art

[hussainrazadigitalmedia]

Academic Blog #2

Affect Theory using Fairy Tail

I will be analyzing affect theory using the scene above from A-1 Pictures’ anime, Fairy Tail.

Synopsis and Analysis:

Lucy Heartfilia is a celestial mage who can summon celestial spirits using magical keys. She possesses very rare zodiac keys that allows her to summon a zodiac from the celestial realm, the strongest among the celestial spirits. Lucy’s mother, who was known to be the strongest celestial mage, dies when Lucy is only a year old and at that time, she inherits her mother’s Aquarius zodiac key. Since her mother’s death, Lucy’s father commanded her to stay inside the house, for her safety. She calls upon Aquarius every time she is lonely. Even when Aquarius screams at her or bully’s her, Lucy would just be glad that there was someone who was giving her attention.

In this episode, she and her friends are fighting a guild of monsters who want to revive a demon and all of her friends have turned into stone except her. She tries to summon her spirits but they all fall fighting. When she was about to fall down as well, Aquarius jumps out to protect her. She tells her that she has to summon the celestial king. When Lucy mentions she does not have the key of the King, Aquarius tell her that the Celestial King has no Key. She then mentions to Lucy that in order to summon the Celestial King, she needs to break one of the zodiac keys she is most attached to. Lucy realizes that its Aquarius’ keys that means the most to her cause Aquarius was her best friend ever since her mom died. Aquarius then tells Lucy that she will be fine and will be glad to be away from Lucy after that. Despite the bullying, Lucy tells her that she is her best friend but Aquarius tells her that this was the right thing to do. When Lucy summons the celestial king and breaks Aquarius’ key, Aquarius starts crying and thanks Lucy for everything and being Aquarius’ friend, showing that Aquarius cares about Lucy more than Lucy ever knew.

We, the audience, watch Aquarius bully Lucy and call her names through out the series. We did not know why she did it but it was a funny aspect of the show. However, in this scene, when Lucy summons the celestial king, we are shown that Aquarius remembers every little thing she did with Lucy and that Aquarius always cared for Lucy but never wanted to show it until that moment because at this time, she knew this was the last time she will see Lucy. She cries and we even see her thanking Lucy for all memories she has given her.

Conclusion:

I believe the affect created throughout the Fairy tail series regarding Aquarius and Lucy’s relationship is the best example. As Gregg and Seigworth mentioned about affect “Affect is found in those intensities that pass body to body (human, nonhuman, part-body, and otherwise), in those resonances that circulate about, between, and sometimes stick to bodies and worlds, and in the very passages or variations between these intensities and resonances themselves”. (Gregg and Seigworth 2009: 1).

By showing how Aquarius hates Lucy all the show and then showing in this episode that she wants Lucy to sacrifice her so she and her friends can live. She displays her soft spot, her emotions and her love for Lucy because she knew this would be the last time, she would be seeing Lucy. Despite being mean to her, she wanted to thank her for being there and loving her and wanted her to know she is grateful. This left the audience with so much love for the show and characters.

References:

‘Tartaros Arc: Attack of the Celestials’ (2014) Fairy Tail, series 2, episode 73. Crunchyroll. 29 August.

Gregg, M. and Seigworth, G. J. (2009) The Affect Theory Reader. Durham: Duke University Press.

#Youtube #Fairytail #affect theory

[solarpunkpresentspodcast]

Hope, but not right away

This is more of a half-formed thought than a complete article, so bear with me, but I wanted to put it out there especially on this gloomsome spring day, where the sun is mostly hidden by clouds that will not resolve into anything so reliable as precipitation.

Spring is often a time of joy, full of bright pastels, celebrations of life, rebirth, renewal, the return of green things to our lives. I think part of the reason that we put the focus so much on these things is their singularity within a world that is more often full of mud, grey skies, and barren trees. The snow melts away to reveal a rotting corpse, as it were, for the first few weeks of spring, at least around here. Branches stab at the sky and are not so much full of potential as skeletal imagery.

The solarpunk lens of rumination on this would focus on the way that the rotting detritus of last fall is composting, pregnant with possibility, working to become the literal ground from which life will spring. But I worry that, in that focus, we too often skip over the dull feeling of drear that can come between the absence of snow and the advent of greenery.

Ugly feelings, to poach a phrase from theorist Sianne Ngai, are very valid and worth acknowledging. Especially when the world around me is ugly, I have some pretty ugly thoughts. I mourn the fact that the double-whammy of climate weirding and El Niño meant that we didn’t really get a winter at all in these parts. I resent the rawness of the wind, too cold when the sun isn’t shining, and still wet as hell and - it seems - tailored to produce the most amount of misery in the least amount of time. I am frustrated by the fact that every single one of my coats (ranging from heavy-duty winterwear to light rain jackets) are needed within the span of a week, and yet none of them are truly adequate for the weather conditions I walk through. I think dark thoughts about the humans of this city when I walk the trails and see the incredible amount of litter - plastic bags/bottles, old Timmies cups, cigarette butts, wrappers, and other detritus - on the sides of the path, now revealed by the melting of the snow.

These are all problems that I know will pass, or that at least my brain will skim over. Take climate weirding and El Niño for example - I can’t do anything about weather patterns, and I’m doing my best right now to tackle climate change and catastrophe given my situation; they’re not going to go away any time soon, and they are a reality that I can accept, like the shitty wind. Doesn’t mean I’m not going to change my behaviour or do something about them, but it’s not like I myself can just nip the problem in the bud. Given past experience, I know that temperatures will continue to climb, solving my multiple coats problems. The City has already emailed me and many others subscribed to its newsletter that it is time for an annual spring community clean-ups: and if one registers with a group, they will provide gloves, grabbers, and garbage bags for each person, along with a tips sheet about safety, especially with handling any sharps such as broken glass or discarded needles.

So I can pass pretty quickly on to feeling fairly okay about my immediate situation. As I’ve said before both here and on the podcast, I really do believe that solarpunk is about looking around at the detritus of the early twenty-first century, then choosing deliberately to roll up one’s sleeves and get to work making a better world using the materials at hand, despite all the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. However, moving rapidly away from negative feelings does them a disservice, and more importantly, may be doing solarpunk a disservice. Let me explain.

This is because solarpunk’s investment in optimism and hope is explicitly not a dismissal of badness, but instead a deliberately positive affective orientation arising from negative conditions, and so I am of the firm belief that there is room in the solarpunk movement to acknowledge and sit with the terrible truths of our existence.

I confess to being extremely inspired and deeply affected by JD Harlock’s conversation with Christina in our second season, especially the bit where he baldly states that he has no hope that the conditions in Lebanon will improve, and yet he still calls himself a solarpunk and works towards a better future anyways. It reminds me of an article I came across while doing research for my masters - this time explicitly about hope within the environmental movement, and the first part of the title says it all: “Hope, But Not for Us”.* It is by scholar Gerry Canavan and it came out in 2014, years before the Jonathan Franzen article. The basic gist is that yeah, there’s plenty of hope for people and animals in the future, even if we ourselves are stuck in this time of the Anthropocene, so we cannot see or access that future place of hope, but we can contribute now to making conditions better for beings we will perhaps never meet.**

If solarpunks were solely interpreted as liberal individuals fantasizing about a better world that they themselves will get to enjoy, the skeptical charge that solarpunk is naively optimistic would be pretty accurate. In that estimation, there is no room for negativity, for accepting the world as it is, for allowing for people to feel kinda crappy sometimes, for acknowledging that serious mental health struggles with depression can’t be cured by just getting a plant or going outside for a walk on the regular, et cetera. There’s no room for the actual reality of being human. The solarpunk strawman (strawperson, really), has zero nuance or grounding in the actual lived experience of being human in 2024.

That is why I am such an ardent proponent of holding space for negative emotions: whether that’s through seeing a climate grief counsellor or chaplain, attending climate grief circles, simply talking to friends and loved ones about fears about the climate, creating art about it, venting in a Discord channel, et cetera. Note they’re all community actions. Solarpunk is a deliberate reaction to and disruption of the status quo in which we are mired: pretending that we’re not experiencing terrible things is not going to get us anywhere, literally and intellectually.

I confess I don’t actually know how to end this. Academic articles tend to build towards a triumphant or at least neat conclusion and I’d like to leave you with more than just a mess. Perhaps it’s appropriate, though, since emotions, especially the negative ones, are messy and complicated.

Don’t feel bad for feeling bad, I guess? It’s from that ground that radical solarpunk action is grown.

*The full title is “Hope, But Not for Us: Ecological Science Fiction and the End of the World in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood” and given that my master’s major research was interpreting the MaddAddam trilogy through the lens of posthuman feminism, it was pretty much exactly up my alley. This also, sidenote to the footnote, was one of the articles instrumental in my feeling extremely alienated from my peers who weren’t also taking Masters courses in ecocriticism, because nobody around me / on the corners of the Internet that I frequented at that time seemed to be talking at all about climate breakdown, or even admitting that maybe global warming was a problem (except the environmental activists, of course). It was a weird, WEIRD time.

**I imagine that this is how society as a whole used to think about doing noble things like building housing and implementing social policies for the sake of future generations, which seems to have largely exited the concern of the majority political discussion these days around everything except perhaps climate change, since it forces people to think according to a scale of deep time. (I’m aware of the fact that most Indigenous groups on Turtle Island tend to have a tradition of thinking/principle about how actions taken now will reverberate seven generations into the future, but settler society isn’t exactly taking that cue up)

#Affect Theory #negative emotions #climate grief #climate anxiety #hope

[burntheupholstery]

Argenti is walking affect theory

#fuck #i love him #help #hsr #hsr argenti #affect theory

[ellie-bygrave]

Affect Theory and The Outer Wilds

**MILD SPOILERS FOR THE OUTER WILDS AHEAD**

What is Affect Theory?

Affect theory is a complex and detailed topic. It focuses on how emotions can physically affect us without our conscious knowledge, influencing our actions and relationships (Figlerowicz, 2012). It aims, in part, to explore the link between unconscious affect and the resulting emotions and actions. Tomkins (1962) categorised 9 primary affects by whether they cause positive, neutral, or negative physiological expression. For instance, the positive affect of joy/excitement creates a physiological reaction in which the person smiles. Conversely, a negative affect such as anger will cause frowning and a clenched jaw. These physiological reactions to the affect can inadvertently display how we are feeling to others and can then influence the situation we find ourselves in.

Tomkins goes on to discuss that the ideal way to live is to maximise the positive affect in our lives and minimise negative affect where possible. Kelly (1996) echos this sentiment, stating that intimate and successful relationships require working towards maximising positive affect and eliminating negative affect. Additionally, Kelly theorises that such relationships should involve the members to express affect to one another in order to see progress within the relationship.

Anable (2018) applies the concept of affect specifically to video games, demonstrating that, rather than allowing us to escape from reality, they in fact force us to confront our emotions. Anable discusses how video games make us feel differently towards failure and how that can influence our everyday life.

The Outer Wilds

The Outer Wilds (2019) is an Annapurna Interactive action-adventure game set in a fictional world where the Hearthians, inhabitants of a small planet, have mastered space travel. The unnamed player character sets off on their maiden voyage out into space, only to realise they're stuck in a 22 minute repeating time loop, in which they are they only person who remembers the previous loops. Each loops ends in a devastating but beautiful collapse of the solar system's Sun as it goes supernova.

The game is non-linear, with the playing having to travel to multiple different planets in order to piece together the mysteries of the solar system and put an end to the time loop. The gameplay is unique in that, if the player knows the correct sequence of actions required, they can complete the game within just one time loop. However, the game is one which undoubtedly rewards the player for exploration, with the true story unraveling through the exploration of the world. The end goal only really holds meaning once the journey has been completed to its fullest potential.

Affect in The Outer Wilds

As this game is played from the first-person perspective of a silent protagonist, there is no influence on the player from an emotional point of view of the player character. This by no means negatively influences the emotional impact this game has.

Firstly, this game has an incredible way of making the player feel lonely, despite the opportunity to interact with others on every planet. Aside from one other person, no one but you is aware of the time loop. Speaking with each character when you hold the weight of the terrible thing about to happen to the whole solar system is eye opening, and the charming and unique personalities of each character increase the sense of responsibility you have to the people of your planet. Usually a lonely feeling would come under Tomkins' negative classification of affect and cause negative physiological reactions, but instead it subconsciously increases the drive one has to solve the mystery and prevent the destruction of the solar system. There is one other character who is also aware of this time loop, but they seem to be ambivalent about the situation. This is slightly shocking - despite the calm and collected disposition being fairly common across the Hearthians, and, again furthers that internal drive to solve the mystery.

Throughout the whole game, failure is painted in a different light to in normal life, and even compared to the norm in video games, as Anable (2018) discussed. There is no real failure in this game, as everything the player does can further the plot in some way. Even dying simply restarts the cycle with no penalties and any information discovered during a cycle gets logged for you, so there is no real sense of failure. This lack of consequences unconsciously drives the player towards a more reckless style of play, with the voice in our head that would normally promote caution instead saying "why not try it and see?".

Whilst not heavy on horror elements, the game certainly plays on fear. One planet requires you to drift through misty caverns following lights and signals to your goal. This area is also home to giant angler fish, who will swallow your ship whole, causing the cycle to start over. Through exploration, the player eventually learns that they are completely blind and can only locate you if you attempt to speed through the area, creating lots of noise with the ship thrusters. The next time entering the planet is a whole new experience. The distant noises of the angler fish combined with the misty atmosphere and looming shadows of the fish creates tension, the need for silence especially so. This undoubtedly causes a physiological response, with the player mirroring the need for silence as they play.

To Conclude

Although video games can sometime create affect that we would usually associate with the negative, the lack of real-world consequences to this can be used to drive compelling and thrilling stories. Whilst the events in the game are not real, the emotions and responses created by games very much are.

References

Anable, A. (2018). Playing with Feelings: Video Games and Affect. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press.

Figlerowicz, M. (2012). Affect Theory Dossier: An Introduction. Qui Parle, 20(2), 3–18. https://doi.org/10.5250/quiparle.20.2.0003

Kelly, VC. (1996). Affect and the redefinition of intimacy, in Nathanson, DL (ed.), Knowing feeling: Affect, script, and psychotherapy, New York: W.W. Norton, pp. 55–104

#sources and significance #affect theory #SourcesAndSignificance

[fanboy-feminist]

Ohhh!!! So the feeling of being an anachronism and depressive/angry queer affect both stem from repeated instances of feeling isolated and out of feelings of isolation and out-of-place-ness!

#can you tell I’m taking a queer theory class and it has taken over my brain? #queer theory #affect theory #queer #affect #theory #vagueposting #anachronism #anachronism posting

[whatdoeschronicevenmean]

The Pursuit of Happiness- Black Women, Diasporic Dreams, and the Politics of Emotional Transnationalism

Because Black women’s lives demonstrate the dynamism of race and gender and speak to issues of power and privilege, their experiences are cru-cially important for understanding the tensions and exchanges that emerge in this transnational, increasingly globalized world. However, the experiences and narratives of Black women, particularly Black American women, are scarce in transnational studies.7 Moreover, scholars and journalists who do address the lives of Black American women often limit their analyses and representations in three ways: (1) they present narratives that constrain these women’s experi-ences to the national borders of the United States, neglecting to understand how their lives are influenced by transnational processes and various forms of mobility; (2) they discount the differently racialized and gendered experiences Black women have when engaging these transnational processes; and (3) they frequently offer a one-dimensional view of these women’s struggles within spaces of institutional and social oppression, presenting them simply as sad, depressed women without also engaging their desires and ability to experience pleasure, leisure, and happiness.

They arrive to see a sea of Black people they believe look like them and have experienced the same burdens of racism; yet frequently Girlfriends have their diasporic dream shattered or at least disrupted by their American privilege and hegemonic understandings of Blackness.

These African American women find themselves deeply located in the enigma of American Blackness — a space where their race, nationality, and pursuits of happiness converge. Their ability to travel (by obtaining a passport and having access to “disposable” income) signifies a certain achievement of the American dream. However, these particular Americans are traveling specifically because it seems that successfully accomplishing their pursuit of happiness is almost impossible within U.S. borders. The gendered and racialized contours of their lived experiences are often what trigger the tracks of their tears. In Jamaica, their Blackness ushers them into new networks of relationships, even if these rela-tionships are at times tense with power differentials linked to their nationality. Their Americanness continually gets in the way, disrupting these friendships and the fulfillment of their diasporic dreams. In the end, they seem “Black” enough but too “American” to be situated comfortably within the diasporic relationships they seek with Jamaicans. Furthermore, their experiences with historical and contemporary racism make them too “Black,” and arguably too much “woman,” to exhale comfortably within the embrace of American society. Perhaps these contradictions, ambiguities, and mistranslations are embedded in being Black, woman, and American. And perhaps it only gets more complicated if you have the audacity to try to be Black, woman, American, and happy.

...In her research on second-generation Filipinos, Wolf defines emotional transnationalism as the process of sustaining transnational connections through emotions and ideologies.  “Emotional transnationalism” conceptualizes the am- biguities and contradictions embedded in the Girlfriends’ pursuit of happiness in the context of global racisms and patriarchies. This group’s understanding of their racialized and gendered subjectivities is not contained by, or simply attached to, their nation-state, but rather is deeply connected to their partic-ipation in transnational processes and an engagement in what they envision as a diasporic community. These women’s choices about whom to love, how to relax, and where to find personal acceptance and community tie together countries and cultures using technologies that are different from those of the past. New technologies often result in new forms of connectivity and belonging that link to historical racialized and gendered ideologies. As I observed their emotions and tracked their tears from the United States to Jamaica and back, I wondered what led Girlfriends to use these technologies and seek leisure experi-ences. The concept of emotional transnationalism offered a theoretical lens that enabled me to answer two central research questions: First, why do people like the Girlfriends seek out transnational and diasporic experience, and how might their desire for such experience reflect nationally specific affective and political economies of race and gender? Second, how might our understandings of the racialized, gendered, and emotional aspects of transnationalism shift if we place Black women at the center of our research?

Emotional transnationalism is important for understanding how these women have created a transnational emotional social field — a field that includes two countries that are geographically bounded but also constructed emotionally, culturally, and virtually. Researchers interested in transnationalism and global-ization have theorized the fascinating ways goods, ideas, and people increas-ingly cross national borders and geographic boundaries. However, less atten-tion has been paid to the transnational dynamics of emotions — how people carry emotions with them as they move, experiencing them individually and collectively and across time and space.

Anderson describes the nation-state as a unique form of political community shaped by historical forces and imaginings of commonality. He argues that a “community is imagined if its members will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the mind of each lives the image of their communion.”5 Community is often imagined “because, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship.”

I aim to frustrate particular notions about diasporic community by high- lighting some of the power differentials within diasporic formations. By an-alyzing how affective transactions influence the creation and maintenance of diasporic relationships, particularly those in which national, economic, and gendered differences frequently become marked, I am using gft as a lens to investigate diasporic diversity. Additionally, instead of anchoring the notion of diaspora in prevalent histories of pain and suffering, this book shows how people use leisure, laughter, and the pursuit of happiness to construct diaspora.

#The Pursuit of Happiness_ Black Women Diasporic Dreams and the Politics of Emotional Transnationalism #bianca c williams #USAmerican culture #winx diaspro #black feminist thought #affect theory

[girls-room]

Midwest: A Conversation with Kate Zambreno and Sofia Samatar

A conversation with two prominent authors, Kate Zambreno and Sofia Samatar, published April 18, 2023 in The New Inquiry. 

“SS: Recently, I was reading Space and Place by the geographer Yi-Fu Tuan. “What is a place?” he asks. “What gives a place its identity, its aura?” He goes on to quote a 1924 letter from Niels Bohr to his fellow physicist, Werner Heisenberg, written at Kronborg Castle in Elsinore. Bohr writes to Heisenberg, “Isn't it strange how this castle changes as soon as one imagines that Hamlet lived here? ...Suddenly the walls and ramparts speak quite a different language.”

As a humanistic geographer, Yi-Fu Tuan is interested in that language: the way objects become invested with the symbolic. For him, this is what transforms an abstract space into a human cultural place. It's an entanglement of the human and the nonhuman, a haunting, a romance. I love that he quotes a letter between two physicists to express this. It speaks to something fundamental about the experience of place, which is so inescapably physical, sensory, and quotidian, and at the same time so steeped in personal and collective dreams. 

How would we begin to describe the aura of the Midwest?“ 

Read more here. 

#Midwest #The New Inquiry #New Inquiry #kate zambreno #Sofia Samatar #literature #suburbs #lauren berlant #affect theory #horror #books #segregation #race

[arielkroon]

Have an old meditation of mine on dread. It's still relevant, honestly. And I've been handling this dread since like ... 2016? Interesting to think with, but life would be so much nicer without this beast on my back...

#affect theory #anxiety #bad metaphors #climate breakdown #epistemology #mary manjikian #ontology #politics #dread #climate anxiety #doomerism #literary theory