Public Feeling in Global Contexts

Internally funded project


Start date : 01.04.2016


Project details

Scientific Abstract

Following a broader ‘turn to affect’ (Patricia Clough) in the humanities and the social sciences, this project seeks to investigate public feeling – as articulation, representation, and cultural and institutional practice – and the various functions it has in every-day life, in political communication, in allegedly private realms as well as in constructions of “intimate public spheres” (Lauren Berlant). We are interested in the changing cultural specificities and the global impact of “affective economies” (Sara Ahmed) and “feeling rules” (Arlie Hochschild) in a framework of transnational and comparative cultural studies. The project address phenomena such as a post-9/11 political culture and its repertoire of affects; strategies/processes of (political) inclusion and exclusion via affective protocols; fear, anger, and (romantic) love as, purportedly, global “structures of feeling” (Raymond Williams); the (re)turn to/of aesthetics and affect in contemporary (popular) culture and art; and the role of affect for contemporary protest movements and political opposition. It seeks tol shed light on topics such as the impact of  affects and emotions on individual and collective identity formation in the age of globalization; the entanglement of affect and feeling with cultural difference and constructions of otherness, and the political work they perform in every-day situations and in ‘states of exception’.

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Research Areas