Pauline Epistles as Affective Technologies: Liberating Literary Form and the Letter to Philemon

Abstract

This article explores the affective potentials of the Pauline epistles by extending a proposal that I made in my book, Literary Theory and the New Testament. There, I suggested that we conceive of epistles as meaning-bearing beings that give rise to what I called epistolary embodiment. Here, I seek to create space for the inherent precarity of epistolary communication by exploring the uncontrollable interstices between affect, emotion, embodiment, and cognition. How do the Pauline letters function as affective technologies – that is, as messy mechanisms for the art, skill, craft (the technē) of reflecting, evoking, and processing affects? Engaging a range of interlocutors outside of biblical studies (e.g., Ahmed, Mullaney, Gallop, Felski), I use the letter to Philemon as a case study for exploring how biblical scholars might embrace the ambivalences that mark all epistolary communication.