Affect
During the last few decades, feminist affect studies have enunciated challenging epistemological and ontological questions based on numerous discussions and readings of affect as emotive intensities, intuitive reactions, and life forces. Affect has created a space for rethinking theoretical issues that range from the dualisms between body and mind to the critique of identity politics and critical reading. This theorizing has underlined the sensual qualities of being and the capacity to experience and understand the world in profoundly relational and productive ways. This chapter presents examples of the wide spectrum of contemporary feminist affect studies. It discusses the notion of “affective turn,” concentrating on the way it has been seen as a reaction and a challenge to alleged limitations of poststructuralism and deconstruction; describes definitions of affect; explores understandings of the linkages between epistemology and ontology, and offers some reflections on the feminist politics of affects.