politics of passion
In a series of three-days workshops, a group of German, Indian and European scholars from the areas of literary criticism, cultural studies, social anthropology, theatre studies, political science and postcolonial studies discussed the shifting perspectives on affect and emotion in a post-Cartesian and post-humanist environment: The demise of the modern self-centred subject does not engender a waning but a politicisation of affect: The site of passion is now no longer the individual’s interiority but the contact zone of intersubjective encounters. The public and political status of the emotions thus becomes apparent, making visible how affects are embedded in and shaped by discursive regimes. Neither spontaneous nor overdetermined, passion is therefore not the «other» of reason but a deeply social energy that fuels political, cultural and everyday practices. Workshop contributions and discussions combined theoretical reframings of affect and emotion in global modernity with analyses of concrete instances of politics of passion from above or from below. By including debates and struggles in Western, Asian and African contexts, the workshop series attended to the actual plurality of affective rationalities and politics beyond a Eurocentric framework. Select contributions to the three workshops have been published in “The Politics of Passion: Reframing Affect and Emotion in Global Modernity”, edited by Dirk Wiemann and Lars Eckstein.
Participants:
Anke Bartels (Universität Potsdam)
Lars Eckstein (Universität Potsdam)
Rüdiger Kunow (Universität Potsdam)
Shaswati Mazumdar (University of Delhi)
Jörg Meyer (Universität Hamburg)
Tania Meyer (Universität Potsdam)
Flaminia Nicora (Università di Bergamo)
Rajni Palriwala (University of Delhi)
Satish Poduval (English and Foreign Languages University Hyderabad)
Anja Schwarz (Universität Potsdam)
Madhumeeta Sinha (English and Foreign Languages University Hyderabad)
Dirk Wiemann (Universität Potsdam)
dirk wiemann 