ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that writing as an affective practice unfolds between writer and written text, more specifically, between the writer’s body and the highly complex norms and rules of written language. If affect is always a matter of “affecting and being affected,” then writing affect is about writing and being written. The relational conceptualization of affect developed in this volume counters the strong notion of representation in literary studies: affect is not simply a result of writing, but a key part of the writing process itself. Moreover, affect is not only an element in the dynamic process of writing; affect might even change and transgress it in moments of flow in which corresponding words find each other. By analyzing “writing” as a key concept of affective societies, this chapter also emphasizes its entanglement in a number of fields, ranging from schooling, bodily techniques, and conceptions of spoken and written language to the invention of monolingualism and other processes of standardization.
