Prolegomena to the Writing of Affect

Coelen, Marcus (2016): Prolegomena to the Writing of Affect. In: Filozofski Vestnik, Vol. 37, No. 1: pp. 119-129

Abstract

The article is a critical discussion of the concepts of "affect" in some of those positions of contemporary political theory that are based in (a critique of) psychoanalysis. Freud's definition of "identification" the key notion in his Group Psychology and the Analysis of Ego as both a psychic mechanism and an affect helps to elucidate the aporetic status of affects (and mechanisms) in psychoanalysis and thus in psychoanalytically informed political theory. Instead of providing a link or shuttle between psychoanalysis and political thought and practice, affect, understood as the fundamental "Hilsfslosigkeit", and as the enigma of identification, severs psychoanalysis from the political. This cleavage is a place of incalculable invention: writing might be a name for it.

• Item Type: Journal article
• Faculties: Languages and Literatures > Department 1
• Subjects: 400 Language > 400 Language
• ISSN: 0353-4510
• Language: English