Philosophy Program and Dean of the College Present
"The Politics of Personal Feeling: On Teresa Brennan and the Future of Affect Studies"
4:45 pm EST/GMT-5
Lauren Guilmette, Ph.D.
Florida Atlantic University
This paper stakes out the ethical demand for an affect theory that can address the contemporary paradigm of ‘post-truth’ appeals to personal feeling. The increasing legitimacy of these appeals in politics, corporate and social media has led Oxford Dictionaries to name “post-truth” the 2016 Word of the Year (with a 2000% increase in usage over 2015), defined as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Oxford’s underscoring of this new term is politically salient and, I would argue, urgent. Yet, this sense of urgency will be fruitless—simply naming a new nihilistic reality—unless we can develop a theoretical means of engaging critically with these appeals to the emotional, understood as distinctly personal. To this end, I offer a brief overview of the recent ‘affective turn’ in continental philosophy, feminist theory and queer theory, and I argue that we might turn to feminist philosopher Teresa Brennan (1952-2003), whose posthumous work on affect transmission has not received the critical attention it deserves due to her untimely death, though her insights are more relevant than ever at this historical juncture.
For more information, call 845-758-7280, or e-mail [email protected].
Time: 4:45 pm EST/GMT-5
Location: Olin Humanities, Room 102