¹National Central University, Jhongli City, Taoyuan County, Taiwan

Correspondence: Lili Hsieh, Department of English, National Central University, No. 300, Jhongda Rd., Jhongli City, Taoyuan County, Taiwan. E-mail: lili.hsieh@gmail.com

Abstract

The paper is an in-depth review of two exemplary books on affect: Brian Massumi's Parables for the Virtual and Eve Sedgwick's Touching Feeling. I reconstruct the conceptualization of affect in these two books and show that although they seem to be operating on very different theoretical models, both of them depart from very similar premises. These premises, or "basic assumptions," are prevailing in post-structuralist "affect studies": the discontents with dualistic thinking, or structuralism, growing preoccupations with fluidity, multiplicity, and performativity, a melodramatic claim for politics, and an embedded "theological unconscious" that renders affect the "new divinity." The paper turns to the writings of J.L. Austin and Stanley Cavell and urges critics in post-structuralist affect studies to become truly schizophrenic, this time by incorporating rather than expunging ordinary language of the everydayness of emotions in order to come up with a more nuanced and materialist account of politics of affect.