[csaa-forum] Affect in cultural studies

[Greg Noble]

Thanks for pointing out this work Anna - of course, my comments were 
aimed at the field generally, not at any particular individual or 
project - and certainly not your work. Indeed, I was originally going 
to quote your critical comments about the poor use of affect in CS in 
a short piece you wrote for Continuum a couple of years ago, as well 
as Elsepth's comments.

I still believe CS uses affect poorly, despite the good work done by 
you and others. And I think it is particularly needing more empirical 
work. Grossberg's work seemed to me a case in point.

Re your brain project - sound great - but one project on the brain 
does not a summer of studies make!

But of course my main intention was to provoke discussion on these 
important issues - your response is important to this discussion. So, 
thanks.


cheers
greg


greg

>Dear All,
>
>reading the CSAA newsletter, I was surprised to see that Greg Noble 
>has decided that affect is something Cultural Studies is 'crap at', 
>although at least he seems to make an exception for Elspeth's work. 
>Perhaps he is unaware of the work which has actually been happening 
>in this area since the late nineties, including by colleagues at his 
>own institution, who have long been working with theories of the 
>discrete affects, as well as on wider theories of affectivity.
>
>With my UWS colleagues Virginia Nightingale and Maria Angel, I am a 
>member of the Affect-image-Media Research Group at UWS which we set 
>up  after I started a clinical training in 1998 in which affect 
>theory played a large part and it became clear that it could be used 
>in empirical as well as theoretical projects in media and cultural 
>studies.
>
>Our major, internally funded, project is on Horror Images and 
>Negative Affects. Virginia Nightingale and I gave a joint paper on 
>this research at the Internet, Media and Mental Health Conference in 
>Brisbane in May this year. I presented another paper that grew out 
>of this work at the Gender Studies seminar at Sydney University in 
>August. An earlier paper of mine - 'Disaffected' - speaking to the 
>group's program was presented to the CSAA conference in Tasmania as 
>part of our group's symposium on affect and was subsequently 
>published in Continuum.
>
>Maria and I were members of the Interinstitutional Silvan (not 
>'Sylvan') Tomkins' Research Group which included academics from UWS, 
>Sydney University, UTS and Macquarie. It was an interdisciplinary 
>group: Melissa Hardie was the  other member who worked in Cultural 
>Studies. We organised a symposium ('Between the Clinical and the 
>Cultural') on the different understandings of affect in different 
>fields. This group also presented a symposium on Tomkins' work at 
>the Millennium Conference in Critical Psychology at UWS in 1999, and 
>in March that same year, Maria and I organised an interdisciplinary 
>conference on Darwin's work ('Darwin Undisciplined') at which there 
>were several papers dealing with Darwin's work on affect.
>
>In 2001 my paper on Pauline Hanson and the contagion of distress was 
>published in the Australian Humanities Review. I continue to work in 
>the area of public emotion and am working on a linkage application 
>to this effect currently. I have also presented papers on other 
>aspects of affect at the Cultural Studies conference in Boston this 
>year, at the CSAA conference in Christchurch, and at various 
>Psychoanalytic and Writing conferences in both Australia and 
>overseas, all of which will soon appear in print.
>
>Greg also mentions research on the brain in cultural studies: I am 
>currently working on a book about mimicry and affect which deals - 
>among other things - with the role of mirror neurons in human 
>mimicry.  Maria has also done work on the brain in the context of 
>her research on Face, and she has also recently had a major paper 
>about affect theory accepted for publication. Elspeth Probyn has 
>also recently written a paper that deals with the neural 
>organisation of the stomach.
>
>There are many other people working on affect in cultural studies 
>all over the place  - in the last couple of years it has really been 
>a strong focus which has produced a lot of good research, some of it 
>in the form of as yet unpublished PhD theses both in mainstream 
>Cultural Studies and in Writing, of which I have supervised several 
>and examined others. More are in the pipeline.
>
>In fact, I think Cultural Studies is finally getting good at affect, 
>seven or eight years after we first started thinking seriously about 
>it.
>
>Anna G
>
>
>
>--
>Dr Anna Gibbs
>Affect-Image-Media Research Group
>School of Communication, Design and Media
>University of Western Sydney
>Locked Bag 1797
>Penrith South DC
>NSW 1797
>AUSTRALIA
>tel (612) 9852.5412
>fax (612) 9852.5424
>--
>Dr Anna Gibbs
>Affect-Image-Media Research Group
>School of Communication, Design and Media
>University of Western Sydney
>Locked Bag 1797
>Penrith South DC
>NSW 1797
>AUSTRALIA
>tel (612) 9852.5412
>fax (612) 9852.5424
>_______________________________________
>
>csaa-forum
>discussion list of the cultural studies association of australasia
>
>www.csaa.asn.au


-- 
Dr Greg Noble

School of Humanities            	ph:     (02) 47 360 365
University of Western Sydney
C Bldg, Kingswood campus
Locked Bag 1797                    	email: g.noble at uws.edu.au
Penrith South DC
NSW 1797
Australia

Researcher, Centre for Cultural Research
Parramatta Campus, UWS

Co-author of Bin Laden in the Suburbs: Criminalising the Arab Other 
(Sydney Institute of Criminology, 2004)