Clare Hemmings

INVOKING AFFECT: Cultural theory and the ontological turn

This article interrogates the contemporary emergence of affect as critical object and perspective through which to understand the social world and our place within it. Emphasising the unexpected, the singular or the quirky over the generally applicable, the turn to affect builds on important work in cultural studies on the pitfalls of writing the body out of theory. More importantly for this article, the contemporary interest in affect evidences a dissatisfaction with poststructuralist approaches to power, framed as hegemonic in their negativity and insistence of social structures rather than interpersonal relationships as formative of the subject. The article focuses on the recent contributions of Brain Massumi and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick in particular, unpacking their celebration of the difference that affect makes. The authors critique of the affective turn focuses on both the illusion of choice that it offers the cultural critic, and its rewriting of the recent history of cultural theory to position affect as ‘the new cutting edge’. While affect may constitute a valuable critical focus in context, it frequently emerges through a circular logic designed to persuade ‘paranoid theorists’ into a more productive frame of mind - for who would not prefer affective freedom to social determinism? Yet it remains unclear what role affect may have once this rhetoric has worked its persuasive magic. In addition, and more worryingly, affective rewriting flattens out poststructuralist inquiry by ignoring the counter-hegemonic contributions of postcolonial and feminist theorists, only thereby positioning affect as ‘the answer’ to contemporary problems of cultural theory.

Telling feminist stories

This article identifies and analyses the dominant stories that academics tell about the development of Western second wave feminist theory. Through an examination of recent production of interdisciplinary feminist and cultural theory journals, I suggest that despite a rhetorical insistence on multiple feminisms, Western feminist trajectories emerge as startlingly singular. In particular, I am critical of an insistent narrative that sees the development of feminist thought as a relentless march of progress or loss. This dominant approach oversimplifies the complex history of Western feminisms, fixes writers and perspectives within a particular decade, and repeatedly (and erroneously) positions poststructuralist feminists as ‘the first’ to challenge the category ‘woman’ as the subject and object of feminist knowledge. Rather than provide a corrective history of Western feminist theory, the article interrogates the techniques through which this dominant story is secured, despite the fact that we (feminist theorists) know better. My focus, therefore, is on citation patterns, discursive framings and some of their textual, theoretical and political effects. As an alternative, I suggest a realignment of key theorists purported to provide a critical break in feminist theory with their feminist citational traces, to force a concomitant re-imagining of our historical legacy and our place within it.

Affective solidarity: feminist reflexivity and political transformation

This article seeks to intervene in what I perceive to be a problematic opposition in feminist theory between ontological and epistemological accounts of existence and politics, by proposing an approach that weaves together Elspeth Probyn’s conceptualisation of ‘feminist reflexivity’ with a re-reading of feminist standpoint through affect. In so doing, I develop the concept of affective solidarity as necessary for sustainable feminist politics of transformation. This approach is proposed as a way of moving away from rooting feminist transformation in the politics of identity and towards modes of engagement that start from the affective dissonance experience can produce. Moving beyond empathy as a privileged way of connecting with others, I argue that the difference between ‘womanhood’ and ‘feminism’ is critical for a universal yet non-essential understanding of what motivates gendered change.

What's in a Name? Bisexuality, Transnational Sexuality Studies and Western Colonial Legacies

Abstract This paper explores the role of bisexuality in transnational sexuality studies. The author argues that bisexuality is either absent, or inscribed as potential or behaviour, rather than identity. In the process, transnational sexuality studies reproduces bisexualitys historical role as facilitator of Western sexual oppositions, a role that also facilitates colonial distinctions between cultures as sexually civilised or sexually primitive. In addition, rendering bisexuality as potential or behaviour safeguards lesbian and gay subjects as de facto authors of queer studies transnationally. The author suggests ways of reframing transnational sexuality studies to address these problems.

Contando estórias feministas

This article identifies and analyses the dominant stories that academics tell about the development of Western second wave feminist theory. Through an examination of recent production of interdisciplinary feminist and cultural theory journals, I suggest that despite a rhetorical insistence on multiple feminisms, Western feminist trajectories emerge as startlingly singular. In particular, I am critical of an insistent narrative that sees the development of feminist thought as a relentless march of progress or loss. This dominant approach oversimplifies the complex history of Western feminisms, fixes writers and perspectives within a particular decade, and repeatedly (and erroneously) positions poststructuralist feminists as ‘the first’ to challenge the category ‘woman’ as the subject and object of feminist knowledge. Rather than provide a corrective history of Western feminist theory, the article interrogates the techniques through which this dominant story is secured, despite the fact that we (feminist theorists) know better. My focus, therefore, is on citation patterns, discursive framings and some of their textual, theoretical and political effects. As an alternative, I suggest a realignment of key theorists purported to provide a critical break in feminist theory with their feminist citational traces, to force a concomitant re-imagining of our historical legacy and our place within it.This article identifies and analyses the dominant stories that academics tell about the development of Western second wave feminist theory. Through an examination of recent production of interdisciplinary feminist and cultural theory journals, I suggest that despite a rhetorical insistence on multiple feminisms, Western feminist trajectories emerge as startlingly singular. In particular, I am critical of an insistent narrative that sees the development of feminist thought as a relentless march of progress or loss. This dominant approach oversimplifies the complex history of Western feminisms, fixes writers and perspectives within a particular decade, and repeatedly (and erroneously) positions poststructuralist feminists as ‘the first’ to challenge the category ‘woman’ as the subject and object of feminist knowledge. Rather than provide a corrective history of Western feminist theory, the article interrogates the techniques through which this dominant story is secured, despite the fact that we (feminist theorists) know better. My focus, therefore, is on citation patterns, discursive framings and some of their textual, theoretical and political effects. As an alternative, I suggest a realignment of key theorists purported to provide a critical break in feminist theory with their feminist citational traces, to force a concomitant re-imagining of our historical legacy and our place within it.

The Feminist Subject of Agency: Recognition and Affect in Encounters with ‘the Other’

This chapter began life at the ‘Agency and Coercion’ workshop held by the Gender Institute at LSE in May 2010, where Amal responded to Clare’s paper on differing feminist histories of agency. Amal used the opportunity to introduce questions of affect and accountability into the debate, and we are delighted to have been given the opportunity to take our conversation forward here.

GENERATIONAL DILEMMAS: A Response to Iris van der Tuin's ‘“Jumping Generations”: On Second- and Third-wave Feminist Epistemology’

Iris van der Tuin is surely right that feminist theorists need to challenge our linear generationalism, both in how we tell the story of the recent past and in how we occupy the present; a vibrant future for feminist epistemology depends on this.

The materials of reparation

In Object Lessons (2012), Robyn Wiegman considers how the political imaginary of the feminist alternative functions. She explores our attachments to feminism’s objects, quite brilliantly showing how we – as feminists – invest in theory and critique’s ability to transform the world. I am not entirely sure how she manages it, but Wiegman combines uncomfortable insights about, for example, our desires for the concept and practice of ‘intersectionality’ to deliver us from the burden of ongoing racism and injustice, with a generosity that invites the reader in and keeps her reading...

Ready for Bologna? The Impact of the Declaration on Women’s and Gender Studies in the UK

This article explores the likely impact that the Bologna Declaration (1999) will have on the field of women’s and gender studies in the UK. While the UK higher education sector as a whole has been slow to take up the opportunities and challenges presented by Bologna, this article argues that women’s and gender studies may gain particularly from a European reorientation. Women’s and gender studies currently has to struggle for both national resources and recognition, and so has little to lose and much to gain from actively engaging in the process of Europeanization of degrees. The author advocates for UK women’s and gender studies practitioners to take a leading role in this process, in order to facilitate the potential benefits for the field.

Stretching Queer Boundaries: An Introduction:

During the academic year 1997/98 Clare Hemmings organized a lecture series under the title Queer Today . . .? Contemporary Issues in Sexuality and Gender, within and sponsored by the School of Literary and Media Studies, University of North London (UNL). The motivation for the series came from the realization that a number of research students and staff at UNL were embarked on what could loosely be termed ‘queer projects’, and yet, as is so often the case, there was no formal academic space within which to share interests or develop ideas. The Queer Today . . .? lecture series was originally conceived, then, as a response to the needs of a local academic community starved of resources and time. Speakers were invited to present new work within queer studies (however they understood that) to a core group of staff and students, and time was split equally between formal presentation and engaged discussion. From the start, the series had a number of central aims and concerns that were considered essential to the success of such a queer endeavour. The Queer Today . . .? series was intended to: