We started off the lecture by discussing how independent emotions runs through a person and how emotions are part of the material world.
Baruch Spinoza, The Ethics, 1677 : "I shall consider human actions and desires in exactly the same manner, as though I were concerned with lines, planes and solids" - double aspect theory.
- Spinoza was an Atheist/heretic and excommunicated from the Jewish faith.
-Affect is often, but not exclusively, used as a synonym for passion, sentiment, mood, feeling and emotion.
-Two worlds: world of emotions- psychological, world of materiality- bodily
- wants world to be fundamentally creative
- 'felt' or studied scientifically
In media theory - psychology and philosophy intertwined: focus on transmission (artwork/media channels)
2 traditions - one, derived from Spinoza, insists on the interrelation of affect and cognition (thought). All activity including cognition produces and is produced by affect - Bergson: part or aspect of the inside of our bodies which mix with the image of external bodies - 'there is no perception without affection'
Affect theory - double aspect behaviour - affect as embodied force that influences mind
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Aristotle: "that which leads ones condition to become so transformed that his judgement is affected and which is accompanied by pleasure and pain"
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affect is an embodied condition that shifts our judgement
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media theories derived from this tradition focus upon imitation - tragedy: imitates actions with excite pity and fear
- music: music is distinguished by its imitation of human action.
Criticism
Marshall Mcluhan - Affect is a fundamental part of human cognition.
Frederic Jameson - the waning of affect in postmodernism
Greenberg - art which exists to produce emotional affect is 'kitsch'
