ABSTRACT
Affect is the theme of Silvia G. Dapía’s article. In this essay, rather than engaging with the distinction between pre-reflective affect and culturally circumscribed emotion, Dapía prefers to think of affect and emotion as operating on a fluid line of continuity. Following Susanne Langer, a true precursor of the “affective turn,” for whom feeling is nothing other than a “phase,” a “mode of appearance,” of the body under certain conditions, Dapía provides a close reading of Gombrowicz’s short story. A focus on feeling therefore allows her to avoid the problems of intentionality associated with certain restricted conceptions of affect and thus permits her to develop here a more thorough and nuanced analysis of the felt or affective dimensions of human interaction as it appears in this story.
