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Transdisciplinary Theological Colloquia
Religion, Emotion, Sensation: Affect Theories and Theologies
Religion, Emotion, Sensation asks what affect theory has to say about God or gods, religion or religions, scriptures, theologies, and liturgies. Contributors explore the crossings and crisscrossings between affect theory and theology and the study of religion more broadly, as well as the political and social import of such work.
Bringing together affect theorists, theologians, biblical scholars, and scholars of religion, this volume enacts creative transdisciplinary interventions in the study of affect and religion through exploring such topics as biblical literature, Christology, animism, Rastafarianism, the women's Mosque Movement, the unending Korean War, the Sewol ferry disaster, trans and gender queer identities, YA fiction, queer historiography, the prison industrial complex, debt and neoliberalism, and death and poetry.
Contributors: Mathew Arthur, Amy Hollywood, Wonhee Anne Joh, Dong Sung Kim, A. Paige Rawson, Erin Runions, Donovan O. Schaefer, Gregory J. Seigworth, Max Thornton, Alexis G. Waller
Bringing together affect theorists, theologians, biblical scholars, and scholars of religion, this volume enacts creative transdisciplinary interventions in the study of affect and religion through exploring such topics as biblical literature, Christology, animism, Rastafarianism, the women's Mosque Movement, the unending Korean War, the Sewol ferry disaster, trans and gender queer identities, YA fiction, queer historiography, the prison industrial complex, debt and neoliberalism, and death and poetry.
Contributors: Mathew Arthur, Amy Hollywood, Wonhee Anne Joh, Dong Sung Kim, A. Paige Rawson, Erin Runions, Donovan O. Schaefer, Gregory J. Seigworth, Max Thornton, Alexis G. Waller
272 pages, Hardcover
Published December 3, 2019
53 people want to read
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 26, 2023
• [Introduction, by Karen Bray and Stephen D. Moore]
• This volume attempts to bring two slippery concepts into contact with each other. Affectivity, it seems, is no less elusive a concept than divinity. It slides, it shifts, it shimmers. Yet its serpentine, often subterranean, movements are anything but immaterial. 1
• Affect theory, on this account, might be considered the critical exploration both of what types of acts, knowledge, bodies, and worlds are produced in the capacious,3 intensely charged spaces of in-betweenness, beneathness, and alongsideness and of how we might better attend to affect’s roles in such pro- ductions. 2****
• At its most austere and abstruse, Deleuzian affect is purely processual; it is logically prior to structured sensory perception, conscious cognition, and linguistic representation. It is even prior to feelings. “Affects aren’t feelings,” Deleuze insisted; “they’re becomings that spill over beyond whoever lives through them (thereby becoming someone else).” 2
• Schaefer posits two primary currents in affect theory: a Deleuzian current, exemplified by such thinkers as Brian Massumi, Patricia Clough, and Erin Manning, and a phenomenological current, exemplified by such thinkers as Silvan Tomkins, Eve Sedgwick, and Sara Ahmed.16 (Too) simply put, the Deleuzian approach excludes emotions from its study of affect (as we have already noted), while the phenomenological approach includes them 5
• What (else) might affect theory, in any of the three modes we have distin- guished—the psychobiological, the prepersonal, or the cultural—have to say about God or gods, religions or religion, scriptures, theologies, or liturgies? What crossings, what crisscrossings, are possible between affect theory and theology and the study of religion more broadly? 6
• Affect theory impels us to read sacred texts, other classic religious texts, rituals, and doctrines not only for what they claim to be saying or doing, but also for how they feel, what emotions they reveal—and how such affective capacities might complicate such cognition-heavy scholarly endeavors as biblical scholarship, church history, constructive theology, or phi- losophy of religion. 6
• This volume attempts to bring two slippery concepts into contact with each other. Affectivity, it seems, is no less elusive a concept than divinity. It slides, it shifts, it shimmers. Yet its serpentine, often subterranean, movements are anything but immaterial. 1
• Affect theory, on this account, might be considered the critical exploration both of what types of acts, knowledge, bodies, and worlds are produced in the capacious,3 intensely charged spaces of in-betweenness, beneathness, and alongsideness and of how we might better attend to affect’s roles in such pro- ductions. 2****
• At its most austere and abstruse, Deleuzian affect is purely processual; it is logically prior to structured sensory perception, conscious cognition, and linguistic representation. It is even prior to feelings. “Affects aren’t feelings,” Deleuze insisted; “they’re becomings that spill over beyond whoever lives through them (thereby becoming someone else).” 2
• Schaefer posits two primary currents in affect theory: a Deleuzian current, exemplified by such thinkers as Brian Massumi, Patricia Clough, and Erin Manning, and a phenomenological current, exemplified by such thinkers as Silvan Tomkins, Eve Sedgwick, and Sara Ahmed.16 (Too) simply put, the Deleuzian approach excludes emotions from its study of affect (as we have already noted), while the phenomenological approach includes them 5
• What (else) might affect theory, in any of the three modes we have distin- guished—the psychobiological, the prepersonal, or the cultural—have to say about God or gods, religions or religion, scriptures, theologies, or liturgies? What crossings, what crisscrossings, are possible between affect theory and theology and the study of religion more broadly? 6
• Affect theory impels us to read sacred texts, other classic religious texts, rituals, and doctrines not only for what they claim to be saying or doing, but also for how they feel, what emotions they reveal—and how such affective capacities might complicate such cognition-heavy scholarly endeavors as biblical scholarship, church history, constructive theology, or phi- losophy of religion. 6
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