ABSTRACT
The theoretical density of both trauma studies and affect theory has made both of them vulnerable to charges of conceptual confusion. Many studies that trace the affect in specific cultural contexts – novels, film, and politics – also tend to loosen the distinction between affect and emotion, mood and feeling. The differentiation between affect and emotions has led to what some critics call the affect-emotion gap, as a way of signalling the break with a tradition of research that sees emotions as enhancing rational thought. The turn to materiality and the body marked by affect theory has been possible against the backdrop of technologies that make the body into a visible domain, observable and measurable. Ruth Leys’s observation that affect theorists and the neuroscientists share a commitment to anti-intentionalism comes as an indictment of both the method – use of experimental findings – and of the ontological premises of affect theory.
