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
Introduction | 1 |
Interlude Pedagogic | 27 |
Henry Jamess The Art of the Novel | 35 |
Periperformative Vicinities in NineteenthCentury Narrative | 67 |
Reading Silvan Tomkins Written with Adam Frank | 93 |
4 Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading or Youre So Paranoid You Probably Think This Essay Is About You | 123 |
5 Pedagogy of Buddhism | 153 |
Works Cited | 183 |
| 189 | |
Common terms and phrases
Affect Imagery Consciousness affect system affect theory analog Austin bodhisattva body Buddhist Carker Chapter cognitive concept critical culture D. A. Miller deconstruction differential distinct Dombey Dombey and Son drive Edith emotion epistemologies essay Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick example explicit performative fond force Foucault Freud gender hermeneutics human identity illocutionary acts interest invoke James James's kind language learning less Mahayana marriage means motive narrative negative affect neural firing Novel offer one's paranoid particular pedagogy performative utterances periperformative pleasure positive affect possible practice prefaces psychology readers reading relation reparative representation represents repressive hypothesis scene seems sense sentences sexual shame Silvan Tomkins slave slavery Sogyal space spatial speech act strong theory structure suggest sutras teaching texture theatrical theoretical things thought Tibetan Tibetan Buddhism tion tive Tomkins's Touching Feeling Transcendentalists understanding University Press weak theory words writing York edition