Verbal and visceral: Connections and cracks between expression and experience

This panel seeks to explore the entanglements that bind and the fissures that separate affect and discourse. For many proponents of the affective turn in the social sciences and humanities, affect is an ‘extra-discursive’... [ view full abstract ]

This panel seeks to explore the entanglements that bind and the fissures that separate affect and discourse. For many proponents of the affective turn in the social sciences and humanities, affect is an ‘extra-discursive’ (i.e. beyond discourse) phenomenon or instance of intense feeling (e.g. Massumi 2002). In conceptualizing affect as a pre-discursive phenomenon, scholars can examine social realities through a non-representational framework. That is, rather than focusing on how objects and phenomena are represented, the focus becomes the objects and phenomena themselves. Opponents of this view, however, contend that affect and discourse are not easily (or productively) unentangled. For example, Wetherell (2013), synthesizing empirically driven psychological research and research in the humanities, argues that affective practice is better understood as a continuum of meaning-making and that incorporating a discourse analytic framework more effectively produces rich analyses of social life. This panel seeks to contribute to this debate by addressing the role of discourse (if any) in affect studies and the application of affect theory to the understanding of meaning-making.