Affecting feminism: Questions of feeling in feminist theory

Abstract

This special issue engages with the relationship between feminist theory and ‘the affective turn’. Through their analyses of a range of affective states, spheres and sites, the authors in this volume pose critical questions regarding feminist theoretical engagements with affect, emotion and feeling. They ask whether it is necessarily a positive move to put affect theory and feminist theory together, or whether there are inherent risks, for example of depoliticisation, or of an over-privileging of the individual; whether feminist theorists have made, or can make, distinctive contributions to conceptualising affect; and what particular insights feminist theory can bring to bear. In different ways, the authors featured here consider how we can understand the complex implications of the turn to affect in and for feminist theory, and how we might examine its potentialities for theoretical, political and social transformation.