Psychosocial Workshop
Starts: 5 March 2010
Understanding Affective Dynamics in the
Researching Affect and Affective
Communication Seminar Series
Researching Affect Through Rhythmic Communications
Cardiff University – 5th February 2010
The role of affective communications in binding communities together in ways which are more corporeal, emotional and non-cognitive has been recognised in mass psychology since the early twentieth centuries (Le Bon). This work often leaves us feeling cold and repugnant rather than engaging us in thinking about processes of change and transformation. Identity politics has fore-grounded the role of meaning-making and representational practices in the formation of identities. Recent work across the humanities has begun to explore the affective ties that bind individuals together and create different networks of relating and belonging. This shift to affect moves beyond meaning-making to explore the different practices, techniques, artefacts and human and non-human others that enable the co-ordination and doing of different subjectivities. This workshop will focus upon the staging of ‘unhappy affect’ and how we might research affective communication by focusing upon the concept of rhythm as developed in the work of the anti-psychiatrist, R.D. Laing and particularly his work on the knot. This workshop seeks to explore the different relationships established between text and audience in the work of the black, feminist playwright Debbie tucker green in light of Laing’s work. The workshop will also consider other forms of queer performance which deal with similar issues. One of the key aims of this workshop is to establish different methods for researching performance in light of this recent affective turn and to foreground affective communications as a centrally important yet neglected aspect of performance and theatricality.
Speakers for this event will include:
- Dr Lisa Blackman, Goldsmiths College
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Open To: Invitation Only