Paper short abstract:

This paper proposes an affective manifesto acknowledging the role of affect and emotion in creating a blurred space and boundary between human and non human.

Paper long abstract:

Recently the humanities and social sciences have seen both 'material' and 'affective' turns competing for headway in an already crowded theoretical landscape. In this manifesto we take a different tack calling for a plural, eclectic and almost promiscuous use of these approaches in order to create space for an understanding of how affects create blurred and fuzzy boundaries between human and non-human. The notion of the 'affective field' (proposed and utilised in Harris and Sørensen 2010) creates just such a space. Here though we go further. By taking an interdisciplinary approach we refute claims that we must chose between things as concrete only in their relations with humans, or as having prefigured properties. Instead taking an affective approach to materials forces us to consider how things change through their intertwining histories not just because of how people think or understand them, but because of how people and things come to feel through each other. These histories mean that materials are always both here and now, and somewhere else, evading the moment and evoking their past and futures. A manifesto that calls for approaches that transcend the boundaries between affect and things has the potential to make a significant contribution to our engagements with the geographies and temporalities of the world in both the present and the past, as well our understandings of presence and absence.

Harris, O.J.T and Sørensen T.F. 2010. Rethinking emotion and material culture. Archaeological Dialogues 17(2), 145-63.