ABSTRACT
This chapter offers an in-depth synthesis of contemporary contributions to affect from across disciplines. Signalling the importance of the Spinoza-Nietzsche-Guattarian-Deleuzian historical lineage of affect, it critically reviews two distinct contemporary models of affect: Abstracting Affect, led by scholars content with privileging affect over emotion - a masculinist, technocratic, and distancing kind of affect that advances affect’s autonomy; and Localising Affect, a model that refutes this autonomy and critiques the privatisation of emotion. Specifically, it explores the first model through works by Brian Massumi, Derek McCormack, and Nigel Thrift, and the second model through feminist writers, Deborah Thien, Clare Hemmings, and Sara Ahmed. Both models of affect, while from different perspectives, break the boundaries of a rigid, contained space. Space through affect abruptly finds itself removed from its quiet transparency and comfortable reliability. Space of affect, no longer empty, is full of disturbing forms, including those of architecture and the city. Importantly, the chapter calls to attend to affect’s relationality, fluidity, and embodiment, particularly through Ahmed, who suggests affect as ‘sticky,’ forming attachments and orientations in between things, objects, and signs. The chapter seeks to extend Ahmed’s work to propose how affect as sticky arises through architectural practice and design processes.
