Reviews

Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Adam Frank

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sunhat_cloudbelt's review against another edition

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challenging informative medium-paced

4.0

adelineee_graceee's review against another edition

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5.0

one conversation with her would save me

rocionaval's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

4.75

casparb's review against another edition

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i've read a bunch of EKS in drips and so on but this ! is the first deep end. Slightly mishmashy selection of essays, but delightfully so. Absolutely a bunch are beyond me for the foreseeable. I promise I really set out to try with the Buddhist pedagogy piece, but it wasn't happening (did! love the way Eve was using her cat to lead this one out!!)

the big stand-out here is the henry james essay, which begins with 9/11 & leads us quite sharply thru fisting metaphors into the (murky) extravagant world of Mr james' bowel movements. v v v nice & an education in the narrative of an essay , with the bottoming twin of james' younger self amid the towers

ralowe's review against another edition

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5.0

my what a fun read! this is one of the most enjoyable things i've read in like forever. i've been curious about the hippest thing in theory right now, which is all this affect stuff, and a friend told me that eve sedgwick is the one that's done it the best. not only is this the clearest i've heard the ideas behind affect theory explained, but as the book is also very challenging i think it takes the ideas to the furthest places, from activism to literary theory to cybernetics to buddhism. she's builds on an idea that seems to have a genealogy in her earlier book "between men,"ќ and if you can understand affect is being like the unspoken and prohibited homosocial bond that occurs when the objectified bodies of women are transferred in patriarchy. this hermeneutics of desire is expanded upon in epistemology of the closet and in touching feeling, sedgwick focuses upon silvan tompkins' work in psychology on affect to describe that nigh-ineffable and performative element of communication from which understanding is derived that accompanies the text itself. sedgwick is a masterful writer. you kind of can't fuck with someone who has excellent ideas and is excellent at conveying them. there's nothing straightforward about this book and it feels reductionist to say that it's just about affect, because later on she uses affect theory as a point of departure to critique "theory"ќ itself. i'm starved for this kind of writing. if anyone knows anything else written like this, please tell me.