Affective Critique: Fear, Hope, Abandonment and Pleasure in Dianne Otto's Living with International Law

Abstract

However, a cursory glance over the standard set of proposals of affect theorists suggests that all this is well-nigh impossible. Not only is affect often theorised— for instance, in Brian Massumi’s work—as autonomous and outside social signification,1 that primary field of critical theory; it is also posited as a critique of sorts of critical social studies, with its attention to the residue that constructivist models of social studies leave behind—‘the residue or excess that is not socially produced, and that constitutes the very fabric of our being’. 2 The visual arts theorist Simon O’Sullivan therefore concludes: ‘Affects are [...] the stuff that goes on beneath, beyond, even parallel to signification. [...] You cannot read affects, you can only experience them’.3 This assertion implies that affect as critical object stands in opposition to critique, or at least the critique produced by attention to social structures.