ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides an overview of affect theory and the “affective turn.” It considers affect within the contexts of rhetorical theory and cultural studies. The book also considers the role of affect and affective appeals in the mass media. It focuses on how affective appeals were deployed in the 2016 US presidential election. The book argues that the burgeoning study of affect offers a potential node of interdisciplinary collaboration; yet, its heterogeneity can also undermine a coherent framework of analysis. It shows that the contemporary affective turn has been framed as a reaction against the discursive turn. The book analyzes white nationalism as rhetoric of nostalgia. It also shows how the mid-twentieth-century establishment of argumentation as an academic field conspicuously omitted any serious discussion of the emotions.
