Affective Relations

Exploring the ambivalent grammar of empathy where questions of geo-politics and social justice are at stake - in popular science, international development, postcolonial fiction, feminist and queer theory - this book addresses the critical implications of empathy's uneven effects. It offers a vital transnational perspective on the 'turn to affect'.

It not only contributes to a growing body of scholarship on affect theory and neoliberal governmentality, but also problematises the ways in which empathy is mobilised by Western corporations, governments and humanitarian organisations. Affective Relations is a thought-provoking read that will appeal to a broad range of scholars, including those interested in postcolonial or transnational feminism, critical race theory and/or political anthropology. (Robin Valenzuela, feminist review, Vol. 116 (1), July, 2017)

Pedwell engages with the politics of empathy as a politics of emotion that is simultaneously material and discursive, relational and embodied, local and transnational. Due to its disciplinary breadth, Affective Relations has something to offer anyone studying emotion from a biological, cultural, and/or political perspective. (Nicole Laliberté, Emotion, Space and Society, Vol. 21, November, 2016)

Pedwell's rich study examines the diverse ways in which empathy is mobilised from political speeches that uphold neoliberalism, to postcolonial literatures that refuse certain forms of empathic connection. The framework of Affective Relations is strongly interdisciplinary, bringing literatures from feminism, postcolonialism, neuroscience, psychoanalysis and popular science into dialogue. This is an ambitious project that highlights how empathy materialises in different spheres, through different media, and through different types of encounter. (Amanda Rogers, societyandspace.org, April, 2015)

Auteur
Carolyn Pedwell is Senior Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at Newcastle University, UK. She is author of Feminism, Culture and Embodied Practice: The Rhetorics of Comparison and co-editor of 'Affecting Feminism: Questions of Feeling in Feminist Theory', a special issue of Feminist Theory.

Contenu
Introduction: Empathy, Emotional Politics and Transnationality 1. Economies of Empathy: Obama, Neoliberalism and Social Justice 2. Affective (Self-) Transformations: Empathy, Social Theory and International Development 3. Affect at the Margins: Alternative Empathies in A Small Place 4. Affective Translation: Empathy and The Memory of Love 5. Circuits of Feeling in The Age of Empathy Conclusions: Empathy and its Afterlives