Critical Affect: The Politics of Method

177 Pages·2020·0.75 MB·English

by  Ashley Barnwell

Critical Affect
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Critical Affect
The Politics of Method
Ashley Barnwell
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Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We
publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities
and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial and
production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more
information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com
© Ashley Barnwell, 2020
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
The Tun – Holyrood Road, 12(2f) Jackson’s Entry, Edinburgh EH8 8PJ
Typeset in 10.5/13 Bembo by
IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd, and
printed and bound in Great Britain.
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 4744 5132 1 (hardback)
ISBN 978 1 4744 5135 2 (webready PDF)
ISBN 978 1 4744 5134 5 (epub)
The right of Ashley Barnwell to be identifi ed as the author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and the
Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).
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Contents
Acknowledgements vi
Introduction 1
1. Enduring Divisions 17
2. Evidence in Flux 54
3. The Crisis of ‘Non-Representation’ 83
4. Ordinary Paranoia 108
5. The Life of Genre 129
Bibliography 149
Index 164
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Acknowledgements
During the process of writing this book I have been supported and
encouraged by mentors, colleagues and friends. First and foremost,
Vicki Kirby has been an invaluable mentor to me. It is diffi cult to
convey the extent of my gratitude to her – she has inspired me to be
curious, to be loyal to my questions, to take intellectual work seriously
and to write a decent sentence. The unwavering acuity, richness and
honesty of her guidance made this project possible. I am also grateful
to academics at UNSW where I began this project as a PhD student,
including Melanie White, Helen Pringle and Ursula Rao. Andrew
Metcalfe, a generous mentor and friend, has pushed me in good ways
and shown me faith. The Mull reading group has been a rich space
for nutting out ideas; I thank especially the 7th Day Afternoonists –
Florence Chiew, Will Johncock and Jac Dalziell – for fi ve years of
whatsapp smarts and jokes. Fellow denizens of ‘the Lab’ kept me
afl oat with their friendship – extra thanks to Rosemary Grey, Beck
Pearse, Emilie Auton, Scott McBride, Lorraine Burdett, and Patricia
Morgan. With a strange magic, Kate Bush’s wintery album 50 Words
for Snow created a sonic haven in which to write; I listened to it over
and over, no doubt its rhythms turn up in the text.
I am grateful to my colleagues @unimelbsoc, especially my
partner-in-schemes Signe Ravn for her daily support and com-
radery. Special thanks to Geoff Mead for reading chapters of this
book as I revised them, off ering erudite and kind comments and
politely correcting my French. The School of Social and Political
Sciences at the University of Melbourne provided valuable research
leave which allowed me time to think and write. My thanks to
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acknowledgements vii
Amy Vanderharst for her research assistance, and her inside scoop
on the latest conspiracy theories. In fruitful conversations, Jennifer
Mason, Chris Healy and Daniel McCarthy have also helped me
think about the parameters and aims of this project. I thank Mary
Holmes for her intellect and humour and for hosting me at the
University of Edinburgh in early 2019, aff ording me much needed
time to immerse myself in the manuscript. Walking past the archi-
tectural mash-up of the Quarter Mile every day affi rmed for me
how the old and the new can work together. Many thanks to Carol
Macdonald and Kirsty Woods at EUP for their professionalism and
support, and to EUP’s anonymous reviewers for valuable feedback.
Finally, my greatest debt is to my mother, Maree, and my family
for their support and pride in my eff orts, and to Joe for his care,
patience and love.
A version of Chapter 3 is published as ‘Entanglements of evidence
in the turn against critique’, in Cultural Studies, 2015, 30: 6, 906–25,
and republished with permission of Taylor & Francis. Chapter 5
appears as ‘Creative paranoia: Aff ect and social method’, in Emotion,
Space & Society, 2016, 20, 10–17, reprinted with permission from
Elsevier. A few sections from Chapter 1 appear in ‘Enduring divi-
sions: Questions of method and value in the sociology of literature’,
in Cultural Sociology, 2015, 9: 4, 550–66, and are reprinted with per-
mission from Sage.
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Introduction
Following the rising interest in aff ective aspects of social experi-
ence, there has been a rush to set aside poststructural critique and
embrace methods that are seen to be more in touch with emotional
truths and embodied sensations. The central claim is that critique
has become routinely suspicious, always searching for hidden
motives or seeking to debunk false consciousness, and is therefore
unable to read people’s everyday beliefs for ‘what they are’. Bruno
Latour (2004), for example, argues that critique has now ‘run out of
steam’ and likens the critic to a conspiracy theorist, obsessed with
unveiling hidden motives. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (1997) similarly
writes that critics are stuck in a cycle of ‘paranoid reading’ and need
to adopt more ‘reparative’ approaches to read cultural texts. Inspired
by these infl uential arguments, a variety of methods associated with
aff ect, non-representational and actor-network theories have been
promoted as the way forward (Law 2004; Thrift 2007; Liljeström
and Paasonen 2010; Felski 2015). Though this is framed as a new
turn in theory and method, Critical Aff ect argues that the perceived
split between poststructural critique and aff ect theory reiterates an
enduring, interdisciplinary debate about which genre best captures
the emotional complexity of social life, a debate that remains pro-
vocative and unresolved.
Scientists, sociologists, novelists, auto/biographers and journal-
ists have all grappled with the question of whether the verifi ability
of fact or the emotional truth of fi ction can most accurately cap-
ture the dynamic and intricate nature of social experience. From
the ‘two cultures’ debate between scientists and literary scholars
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