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Feelings without Structure: A Cultural Materialist View of Affective Politics
- Author(s):
- Harald Pittel (see profile)
- Date:
- 2018
- Group(s):
- Cultural Studies, History, Philosophy, Political Philosophy & Theory, Sociology
- Subject(s):
- Refugees, Alternative für Deutschland (Political party), Williams, Raymond, Merkel, Angela, 1954-, Political science, Sociology
- Item Type:
- Article
- Tag(s):
- Affective Politics, affect, Affective Turn, affect studies
- Permanent URL:
- https://doi.org/10.17613/6gzv-wk27
- Abstract:
- The term ‘affective politics’ is sometimes used to dismiss political strategies as being directed merely at affects at the expense of rational analysis (Massumi 2015: 65f). While such uses are meant to criticize certain politics, appeals to the affects – and consequently, forms of propaganda or populism – do not have to be bad at all. The point here is that affects not only play a role for manipulative governments or populist movements, but are a crucial factor for the political in general, which in a post-modern world can no longer be naïvely understood as being grounded in nature or reason (Massumi 2015: VIIIf). So, if politics are always entangled with affects, when do political affects become problematic? This article will suggest that cultural materialism offers a few concepts that we can draw on to differentiate acceptable from harmful kinds of affective politics. More specifically, I am going to encourage a new reading of Raymond Williams’ concept of the structure of feeling and the way it is transformed in his later appropriation of Gramsci’s theory of hegemony.
- Metadata:
- xml
- Published as:
- Journal article
- Status:
- Published
- Last Updated:
- 2 months ago
- License:
- Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
- Share this:
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feelings-without-structure.pdf