New volume out now: »Affective Transformations. Politics – Algorithms – Media« (meson press 2020)

November 11, 2020

Publication — We are pleased to announce that our new volume »Affective Transformations. Politics – Algorithms – Media«, edited by Bernd Bösel und Serjoscha Wiemer (meson press 2020) is now available.

The open access version of this volume is available here: https://meson.press/books/affective-transformations/

Has the Affective Turn itself turned sour? Two seemingly contradictory developments serve as starting points for this volume. First, technologies from affective computing to social robotics focus on the recognition and modulation of human affectivity. Affect gets measured, calculated, controlled. Second, we witness a deeply concerning rise in hate speech, cybermobbing, and incitement to violence via social media. Affect gets mobilized, fomented, unleashed. Politics has become affective to such an extent that we need to rethink our regimes of affect organization. Media and Affect Studies now have to prove that they can cope with the return of the affective real.

»Affective Transformations. Politics – Algorithms – Media« is based on the conference of the same title that took place at the University of Potsdam in November 2017. It sums up the results of the scientic network »Affect- and Psychotechnology Studies« that was funded by DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft). The volume received additional funding by ZeM – Brandenburgisches Zentrum für Medienwissenschaften.

Table of Contents

Affective Transformations: An Introduction
Bernd Bösel

Affect: On the Turn
Paul Stenner

Algorithm Awareness: Towards a Philosophy of Artifactuality
Gabriele Gramelsberger

Affective Media Regulation: Or, How to Counter the Blackboxing of Emotional Life
Bernd Bösel

From Social Data to Body Data to Psy Data: Tap, Tap, Tap
Oliver Leistert

Affective Milieus: Intensive Couplings, Technical Sentience, and a Nonconscious In-between
Marie-Luise Angerer

Synhaptic Sensibility
Pierre Cassou-Noguès

Encoding Proximity: Intuition in Human-Robot Collaborations
Dawid Kasprowicz

Autonomous Dwelling: Smart Homes and Care IT
Irina Kaldrack

Happy, Happy, Sad, Sad: Do You Feel Me? Constellations of Desires in Affective Technologies
Serjoscha Wiemer

Mediated Humanitarian Affect
Andrew A. G. Ross

Affection and Dividuation
Michaela Ott

Attuning to What? The Uncanny Revival of the Aestheticization of Politics
Mathias Fuchs

Witnessing the Dismantlement of a Proven Structure of Belief: The Challenge of Populism and Alternative Facts to Liberal Democracy
Jean Clam

Alien Thinking: On the Return of the Sublime as an Affective Medium
Markus Rautzenberg

Link: https://meson.press/books/affective-transformations/