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Biology's gift: interrogating the turn to affect

Papoulias, C.; Callard, F.

Authors

C. Papoulias

F. Callard



Abstract

This article investigates how the turn to affect within the humanities and social sciences re-imagines the relationship between cultural theory and science. We focus on how the writings of two neuroscientists (Antonio Damasio and Joseph LeDoux) and one developmental psychologist (Daniel Stern) are used in order to ground certain claims about affect within cultural theory. We examine the motifs at play in cultural theories of affect, the models of (neuro)biology with which they work, and some fascinating missteps characterizing the taking up of scientific literature. While neuroscience frames the affective as part of a system of regulation that makes both self and social coherence possible, in cultural theory’s narratives, by contrast, affectivity becomes a placeholder for the inherent dynamism and mutability of matter. The article interrogates the consequences of cultural theory’s strange borrowings from neuroscience and developmental psychology in their institution of a model of subjectivity preoccupied with a lived present in excess of the hold of habit and embodied history.

Citation

Papoulias, C., & Callard, F. (2010). Biology's gift: interrogating the turn to affect. Body & Society, 16(1), 29-56. https://doi.org/10.1177/1357034x09355231

Journal Article Type Article
Publication Date Mar 1, 2010
Deposit Date Mar 15, 2012
Journal Body and Society
Print ISSN 1357-034X
Electronic ISSN 1460-3632
Publisher SAGE Publications
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 16
Issue 1
Pages 29-56
DOI https://doi.org/10.1177/1357034x09355231
Public URL https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1479703