We live in an era of experimentation – both if we look at the broader social world of politics, media and art and at the narrower context of academic knowledge production. This collection consists of 14 chapters by leading scholars in affect studies. They explore the affective dimensions of experimental practices related to, for example, activism, the COVID-19 pandemic, populism, sustainability, patient communities, music streaming, Jamaican dancehall, gangs, leadership, tourism and minority youth cultures. Experiments are understood as intentionally crafted milieus aimed at (re)presenting unnoticed aspects of the world, as non-linear processes with unpredictable outcomes, and as ways of giving the future a provisional form. The collection responds to a pressing need to understand the intersection between affect, experimentation and sociocultural change by offering empirical strategies to explore how, and with what consequences, experimentation is affective.
Author(s): Britta Timm Knudsen, Mads Krogh, Carsten Stage
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 319
City: Cham
Contents
Notes on Contributors
List of Figures
Chapter 1: Introduction: Methodologies of Affective Experimentation
The Time to Experiment?
The History and Politics of Experimentation
Analysing Affective Experimentation
Experimentation Aims at (Re)presenting Unrecognized Aspects of the Social
Experimentation Engages with the Non-linear and Unpredictable
Experimentation Produces Scenes of Provisional Future-Making
Structure of the Book
References
Part I: Understanding Affective Experimentation as a Method of the Social
Chapter 2: Affect as Disruption: Affective Experimentation, Automobility, and the Ecological Crisis
The Iron Grip of Affect
A Nation of Automobility: On Affective Arrangement and Affective Milieus
The Automobile Supremacy
The Automobile Arrangement
The Automobile Milieu
Disruption
Disrupting the Automobile Supremacy
Affect as Disruption
Outlook
References
Chapter 3: Populism as Para-politics: Play, Affect, Simulation
Just Playing
Not Playing Nice
Simulating the Alternative
Beyond Collusion?
References
Chapter 4: Interspecies Pedagogies: More-than-Human Experiments with Leadership in/of the Anthropocene
Outline of the Chapter
New Kinds of Non-human-Centred Leadership
Interspecies Leadership Pedagogies
Interspecies Companionship: Peregrines Versus Horses
Amplifying the Sensorium and Opening the Body
Emphasizing Mutual Entanglement
An Almost Cellular Experience
Learned Lessons
Experiences and Implications
Interspecies Ethics
References
Chapter 5: Engines of Affect: Experimenting with Auditory Intensities in the Jamaican Sound System Session
Workshops of Affect
Sound Affects and Sound Fx
Phonomorphic Techniques
The Affective Space of the Session
Conclusion: Bodies of Affect
References
Chapter 6: Experimentation in and with the Stream: Music, Mood Management and Affect
What Is Affective About Music Streaming?
Affective Experimentation
Experimentation in and with the Stream
In Conclusion
References
Chapter 7: Experimentations in Pandemic Boredom
Flattened Out
Boredom and Historical Context
Rescues from Boredom
Networked Frivolity
Ambiguities of Boredom
Conclusion: Thinking with Ambiguity
References
Part II: Understanding Affective Experimentation as a Research Method
Chapter 8: Worlding with Glitter: Vibrancy, Enchantment and Wonder
Methods as Worlding
Worlding Futures
Worlding with Glitter
Conclusion: Ethics and Worlding
References
Chapter 9: Affective Writing Experiments
The Writing Workshop as Affective Assemblage
Online Groups as Assemblages
Therapeutic Potentials and Limits
Writing Experiments and Alternative Knowledge Production
What Kinds of Data and Data Analysis?
Analysing Co-constructed Data
Analysing Creative Data
Conclusion: An Ethics of Change
References
Chapter 10: Problematizing Shame: Affective Experimentation on Social Media
Research as Experimental Problematization
Problematizing Shame
Failing Bodies and Slow Shame
Shame as the Shadow of Loving Attachment
Deindividualizing and Contesting Shame
Conclusions
References
Chapter 11: Affective Experiments: Card Games, Blind Dates and Dinner Parties
Methods
Eye-Rolling and Yawning: Embodying Criticality
Performative, Convivial Encounters
Intersubjective, Affective Encounters
Conclusions
References
Chapter 12: Wind as an Elementary Attraction: An Avant-Garde Experiment on the West Coast of Jutland, Denmark
Ringkøbing-Skjern: A Tourist Destination
Multiple Methods
Wind as a Signifier
The Infra-Ordinary and Omnipresent Wind
Assembling the Experience of the Omnipresent but Infra-Ordinary Wind
Concluding Remarks
References
Chapter 13: The Tombstones that Cried the Night Away: An Allegory
Ethnographic Allegory as Affective Experiment
Ethnographic Allegories as Method
Ethnographic Allegory as a More-than-Human Way of Sharing Knowledge
Conclusion: Ethnographic Allegory as Experiments in Sharing Affective Responsibility
References
Chapter 14: Activating Limit as Method: An Affective Experiment in Ethnographic Criminology
Affect, Limit, and Crime in Particular
Outside-Out: Witnessing the Making of Crime
Outside-In: Reading Censorship
Inside-Out: Movement in and of the Field
Practical Speculative Affirmation
References
Index
