Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, PerformativityA pioneer in queer theory and literary studies, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick brings together for the first time in Touching Feeling her most powerful explorations of emotion and expression. In essays that show how her groundbreaking work in queer theory has developed into a deep interest in affect, Sedgwick offers what she calls "tools and techniques for nondualistic thought," in the process touching and transforming such theoretical discourses as psychoanalysis, speech-act theory, Western Buddhism, and the Foucauldian "hermeneutics of suspicion." In prose sometimes somber, often high-spirited, and always accessible and moving, Touching Feeling interrogates—through virtuoso readings of works by Henry James, J. L. Austin, Judith Butler, the psychologist Silvan Tomkins and others—emotion in many forms. What links the work of teaching to the experience of illness? How can shame become an engine for queer politics, performance, and pleasure? Is sexuality more like an affect or a drive? Is paranoia the only realistic epistemology for modern intellectuals? Ultimately, Sedgwick's unfashionable commitment to the truth of happiness propels a book as open-hearted as it is intellectually daring. |
Contents
SHAME THEATRICALITY AND QUEER PERFORMATIVITY HENRY JAMESS The Art of the Novel | 35 |
AROUND THE PERFORMATIVE PERIPERFORMATIVE VICINITIES IN NINETEENTH CENTURY NARRATIVE | 67 |
SHAME IN THE CYBERNETIC FOLD READING SILVAN TOMKINS | 93 |
PARANOID READING AND REPARATIVE READING OR YOURE SO PARANOID YOU PROBABLY THINK THIS ESSAY IS ABOUT YOU | 123 |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
active affect already American analog apparently become body Buddhist called Chapter cognitive common concept consciousness continuing critical culture defining depressive position described discussion distinct drive Duke University example experience explicit fact feel figure force Freud gender given hand human identity important individual interest involved issue James James's kind language learning least less look marriage matter means motive move narrative nature negative never Novel object offer original paranoid particular pedagogy performative perhaps periperformative person position possible practice prefaces present Press productive queer question readers reading reference relation remains represents require scene seems sense sexual shame simply sound space spatial specific speech strong structure suggest suppose teaching texture theory things thought tion Tomkins Tomkins's Touching true turn understanding University utterances writing
Popular passages
Page 10 - But more important was the multiplication of discourses concerning sex in the field of exercise of power itself: an institutional incitement to speak about it, and to do so more and more; a determination on the part of the agencies of power to hear it spoken about, and to cause it to speak through explicit articulation and endlessly accumulated detail.
References to this book
Bibliographic information
| Title | Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity Series Q, ISSN 2691-2554 |
| Author | Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick |
| Edition | illustrated |
| Publisher | Duke University Press, 2003 |
| ISBN | 0822330156, 9780822330158 |
| Length | 195 pages |
| Subjects | › › Literary Collections / Essays Social Science / LGBTQ+ Studies / Gay Studies |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |