The productivity of ‘negative emotions’ in postcolonial literatures
updated:
Tuesday, November 8, 2022 - 9:35am
Isabelle Wentworth / University of New South Wales
deadline for submissions:
Thursday, December 1, 2022
Emotions, affect, and moods do not happen to us. Rather, we are our emotions: they configure our manner of relating to, and existing within the world. Ontologies of emotion—in their embodied and symbolic dimensions—alter our perceptions, experiences, and predictions of ourselves and our environment in ways which problematize inside/outside and mind/body dualities. This is also true of the so-called ‘negative emotions’. Studies of negative affect abound in the humanities, from Aristotle’s fear and pity, Heidegger’s angst, and Robert Burton’s melancholy, to Sartre’s nausea, Germaine Greer’s rage, Kristeva’s disgust, and, more recently, Sianne Ngai’s “ugly feelings.”