The body and affect have always been technological. Technologies of the body circulate affect, producing flows and forms of feeling that are economically and politically situated. Contemporary digital practices are inevitably corporeally enframed (Hansen), calling upon and creating bodily norms. People diversely experience new ‘configurations of bodies, technology and matter’ (Clough 2) that are accompanied by reworked public feelings (Stewart) and structures of feeling (Williams). Sticky affects glue together ‘ideas, values and objects’ and arrange boundaries between peoples and worlds (Ahmed 29). All too often the resulting inclusions and exclusions reinforce problematic structures of domination. At the same time affective technologies can be a site for challenging past marginalisations and reworking experiences and understandings of affect, as evidenced by creative and scholarly practices in this area.
This special issue of Transformations pays critical attention to the circulation of affect by bodily technologies. Demonstrating the centrality of affect to the cultural, critical and creative analysis of technologies, these papers explore affect’s movement in and through virtual reality, artificial intelligence, gaming, disconnection, drones, Facebook, blogging, and e-sports.
Works Cited
- Ahmed, Sarah. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004.
- Clough, Patricia. “Introduction.” The Affective Turn: Theorizing the Social. Eds P. T. Clough and J. Halley. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
- Hansen, Mark B. New Philosophy for New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004.
- Stewart, Kathleen. Ordinary Affects. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2007.
- Williams, Raymond. Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.