Affect theory

... His refusal to risk the range of positive and negative affect associated with sexuality robs any possible relationship of one of its best opportunities to work on the first two rules of either the Kelly or the Tomkins blueprint.

Emotion theory was originally written by psychologist Silvan Tomkins and was introduced in the first two volumes of his book Effects on Image Consciousness (1962).

This part is defined as "a wired, pre-programmed, genetically transmitted mechanism that exists within each of us" and causes "known biological patterns" when triggered.

Eve Sedgwick and Lauren Berlant have been called "affect theorists" who write from critical theory perspectives.

Affect theory is drawn from by Marxist autonomists including Franco Berardi, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, as well as Marxist feminists such as Selma James and Silvia Federici, who consider the cognitive and material manifestations of particularized gendered, performed roles including caregiving.

"[11] In line with these theorists, many scholars identify the role of affect in shaping social values, gender ideals, and collective groups.

Affect is also treated as central in capitalist systems, including people's attachment to commodities and "dreams" of class mobility.

[13] Scholars who explored affect theory as an approach to art include Ruth Leys and Charles Altieri.

[14] She maintained that there are no precognitive insights, nothing that acts as inhuman, presubjective, visceral forces, and intensities that shape our thoughts and judgments.

[17] This nonverbal mode of conveying feelings and influence is held to play a central role in intimate relationships.

[20] Aubrey Anable has also criticised affect theory for its imprecision, claiming that its "language of intensity, becoming, and in-betweenness and its emphasis on the unpresentable give it a maddening incoherence, or shade too easily into purely subjective responses to the world".