Paper short abstract:

This joint paper undertakes a critical examination of the chiasmic roles of economies on affect and of affect on economy in an effort to complicate current scholarly understandings of the intersections of “affect" and systems of difference.

Paper long abstract:

In recent years, scholars have used the concept of affect to critique the long-held assumption in the social sciences that economic projects conflict with intimate, affective relationships in ways that render public and private or "inner" spheres opposite to one another. This joint paper proposes to examine an important connection not as well-made as it should be in current scholarship on affect: the chiasmic roles of economies on affect and of affect on economy. Drawing from key discussions during a yearlong experience as co-organizers of the New York-based working group "Economies of Affect", the paper asks: How can we find productive ways of understanding the complicating intersections of "affect" and systems of difference? Situating "affect" in the broader context of critical anthropological works on race, migration, and gender/queer theory, we are interested not only in complicating the long-held Western dichotomy between the "inner world" and material context, but to consider, specifically, what affect might contribute to our understanding of issues of inequality, subordination, and marginality in cases where personhood becomes uncertain, questionable, or under siege within unevenly distributed fields of power. While framed as a theoretical intervention and critique of recent scholarly renderings of affect as pre-social, our discussion also address the challenges behind empirical / ethnographic examinations of "affect" and consider methodologically productive ways to examine the intersection between what has traditionally been considered the world of "interiority" and larger political economies.