Working with Affect in Feminist Readings

Affect has become something of a buzzword in cultural and feminist theory during the past decade. References to affect, emotions and intensities abound, their implications in terms of research practices have often remained less manifest. Working with Affect in Feminist Readings: Disturbing Differences explores the place and function of affect in feminist knowledge production in general and in textual methodology in particular. With an international group of contributors from studies of history, media, philosophy, culture, ethnology, art, literature and religion, the volume investigates affect as the dynamics of reading, as carnal encounters and as possibilities for the production of knowledge. Working with Affect in Feminist Readings asks what exactly are we doing when working with affect, and what kinds of ethical, epistemological and ontological issues this involves. Not limiting itself to descriptive accounts, the volume takes part in establishing new ways of understanding feminist methodology.

Dr Marianne Liljeström is Professor of Women’s Studies at the University of Turku, Finland. She has published articles on Nordic and Soviet women’s history, and edited and written parts of three textbooks in Finnish on feminist theory and methodology. Her most recent publications include the co-edited anthology Models of Self. Russian Women’s Autobiographical Texts (2000), and the edited volume Feminist Knowing – Discussions on Methodology (in Finnish, 2004). Her latest monograph Useful Selves: Russian Women’s Autobiographical Texts from the Post-War Period was published in 2004. Dr Susanna Paasonen is a research fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki. Her teaching and research interests include Internet research, feminist theory, pornography and popular culture. She is the author of Figures of Fantasy: Women, Internet and Cyberdiscourse (2005) as well as the co-editor of Women and Everyday Uses of the Internet: Agency & Identity (2002) and Pornification: Sex and Sexuality in Media Culture (2007). Her work has recently appeared in the journals Feminist Theory, The Velvet Light Trap and European Journal of Cultural Studies.