ABSTRACT
We can observe and define the different themes of the laughable precisely enough; it does not at all elude clear and distinct knowledge, methodical consciousness. In an introduction to a collection of essays by psychologist Silvan Tomkins, Eve Sedgwick and Adam Frank show how our theoretical currents treat affect “as a unitary category, with a unitary history, and with unitary politics”. By choosing not to differentiate between types of affect, claim Sedgwick and Frank, we rely on a binary formula composed merely of “the presence or absence of some reified substance called Affect”. To know the way power functions is to know what is to be taken seriously, when to respond to things and how to respond to them. To say that power can always be exercised in response to transgression is one thing; to say that such transgressions are never outside the play of power is quite another.
