Special Issue: Affecting Feminism: Questions of Feeling in Feminist Theory

This special issue engages with the relationship between feminist theory and ‘the

affective turn’. Through their analyses of a range of affective states, spheres

and sites, the authors in this volume pose critical questions regarding feminist

theoretical engagements with affect, emotion and feeling.1 They ask whether it is

necessarily a positive move to put affect theory and feminist theory together,

or whether there are inherent risks, for example of depoliticisation, or of an

over-privileging of the individual; whether feminist theorists have made, or can

make, distinctive contributions to conceptualising affect; and what particular

insights feminist theory can bring to bear. In different ways, the authors featured

here consider how we can understand the complex implications of the turn to affect

in and for feminist theory, and how we might examine its potentialities for theoretical,

political and social transformation.