will / desire

from willful subjects by sara ahmed

"when the will becomes will power, then the fate of the subject becomes 'in its power.' and when social problems are narrated as problems of will, they become a consequence of the failure of individuals to will themselves out of situations in which they find themselves."

"given that the will becomes a technique, a way of holding a subject to account, it could be understood as a straightening device. . . a queer history of will might foreground the association between will and error and explore its myriad forms."

"the will is thus called upon to resolve the problem of the will: not being fully determined from without becomes the requirement to determine from within."

"not philosophy is practiced by those who are not philosophers and aims to create room within philosophy for others who are not philosophers. not being a philosopher working with philosophy can be understood as generative: the incapacity to return texts to their proper histories allows us to read sideways or across, thus creating a different angle on what is being reproduced. not philosophy aims not to reproduce the body of philosophy by a willful citational practice: if philosophers are cited (and in this book many philosophers are cited0 they are not only cited alongside those who are not philosophers but are not given any priority over those who are not."

"one of my key aims is to explore how the will becomes a question of time by thinking through how will relates to the past as well as the future, and how the will is thus never quite present or in the time we are in"

pain

 all quotes from the cultural politics of emotion by sara ahmed

"it is through sensual experiences such as pain that we come to have a sense of our skin as a bodily surface, as something that keeps us apart from others, and as something that 'mediates' the relationship between internal or external, or inside and outside."

"it is through such painful encounters between this body and other objects, including other bodies, that 'surfaces' are felt as 'being there' in the first place. to be more precise the impression of a surface is an effect of such intensifications of feeling."

"the contradictory function of skin begins to make sense if we unlearn the assumption that the skin is simply already there, and begin to think of the skin as a surface that is felt only in the event of being 'impressed upon' in the encounters we have with others."

"i am not saying here that emotions are the same thing as sensations, but that the very intensity of perception often means a slide from one to another, as a slide that does follow as a sequence in time. hence whilst sensation and emotion are irreducible, they cannot simply be separated at the level of lived experience."

"[Drew Leder] suggests that 'the body is 'absent' only because it is perpetually outside itself, caught up in a multitude of involvements with other people'. and so, experiences of dysfunction (such as pain) become lived as a return to the body. . . pain can often lead to a body that turns in on itself, while pleasure tends to open up bodies to other bodies."

"i would not use the terms 'absent' and 'present' to describe embodiment as leder does, as it implies the possibility that bodies can simply appear or disappear. rather, i would point to the economic nature of intensification, and suggest that one is more or less aware of bodily surfaces depending on the range and intensities of bodily experiences. . . such intensity may impress upon the surfaces of bodies through negation: the surface is felt when something is felt 'against' it."

feel your way

all quotes from the cultural politics of emotion by sara ahmed

"hardness is not the absence of emotion, but a different emotional orientation towards others. the hard white body is shaped by its reactions: the rage against others surfaces as a body that stands apart or keeps its distance from others. we shouldn't look for emotions 'in' soft bodies. emotions shape the very surfaces of bodies, which take shape through the repetition of actions over time, as well as through orientations towards and away from others. indeed, attending to emotions might show us how all actions are reactions, in the sense that what we do is shaped by the contact we have with others."

"emotions are intentional in the sense that they are 'about' something: they involve a direction or orientation towards an object. the 'aboutness' of emotions means they involve a stance on the world, or a way of apprehending the world. . . emotions are relational: they involve (re)actions or relations of 'towardness' or 'awayness' in relation to such objects."

"emotions should not be regarded as psychological states, but as social and cultural practices. . . emotion is not what comes from the individual body, but is what holds or binds the social body together."

"feelings become a form of social presence rather than self-presence. in my model of sociality of emotions, i suggest that emotions create the very effect of the surfaces and boundaries that allow us to distinguish an inside and an outside in the first place. . . it is through emotions, or how we respond to objects and others, that surfaces or boundaries are made: the 'i' and the 'we' are shaped by, and even take the shape of, contact with others."

"the model of emotional contagion. . . is useful in its emphasis on how emotions are not simply located in the individual, but move between bodies."

"emotions in their very intensity involve miscommunication, such that even when we feel we have the same feeling, we don't necessarily have the same relationship to that feeling."

"the relationship between movement and attachment is instructive. what moves us, what makes us feel, is also that which holds us in place, or gives us a dwelling place. hence movement does not cut the body off from the 'where' of its inhabitance, but connects bodies to other bodies: attachment takes place through movement, through being moved by the proximity of others."

"the work i am most indebted is the work of feminist and queer scholars who have attended to how emotions can attach us to the very conditions of our subordination. such scholars have shown us how social forms (such as the family, heterosexuality, the nation, even civilisation itself) are effects of repetition. . . my argument about the cultural politics of emotions is developed not only as a critique of the psychologising and privatisation of emotions, but also as a critique of a model of social structure that neglects the emotional intensities, which allow such structures to be reified as forms of being."

"it also follows that we should not look for emotions only where the attribution of 'being emotional' is made. what is posited as 'unemotional' also involves emotions, as ways of responding to objects and others. i will not be equating emotionality with femininity. see campbell (1994) for an important critique of how women are 'dismissed' through being seen or 'judged' as being emotional."

"even feelings that are immediate, and which may involve 'damage' on the skin surface, are not simply feelings that one has, but feelings that open bodies to others. my analysis introduces the concept of 'intensification' to show how pain creates the very impression of a bodily surface. i also consider how pain can shape worlds as bodies, through the ways in which stories of pain circulate in the public domain."

"when we talk about the displacement between objects of emotion, we also need to consider the circulation of words for emotion. . . the word 'mourns' might get linked to other emotion words: anger, hatred, love. the replacement of one word for an emotion with another word produces a narrative. our love might create the condition for our grief, our loss could become the condition for our hate, and so on. the emotion does its work by 'reading' the object: for example, others might get read as the 'reason' for the loss of the object of love, a reading which easily converts feelings of grief into feelings of hate."

"the surfaces of bodies 'surface' as an effect of the impressions left by others. . . the surfaces of collective as well as individual bodies take shape through such impressions."

"i have been overwhelmed by how much 'emotions' have been a 'sticking point' for philosophers, cultural theorists, psychologists, sociologists, as well as scholars from a range of other disciplines. this is not surprising: what is relegated to the margins is often, as we know from deconstruction, right at the centre of thought itself."

a question of turning

from queer phenomenology by sara ahmed

"my writing moves between conceptual analysis and personal digression.  but why call the personal a digression?  why is it that the personal so often enters writing as if we are being led astray from a proper course?"

"it is not just that bodies are moved by the orientations they have; rather, the orientations we have toward others shape the contours of space by affecting relations of proximity and distance between bodies.  importantly, even what is kept at a distance must still be proximate enough if it is to make or leave an impression."

"phenomenology is full of queer moments; as moments of disorientation that maurice merleau-ponty suggests involve not only 'the intellectual experience of disorder, but the vital experience of giddiness and nausea, which is the awareness of our contingency, and the horror with which it fills us.'"

"space then becomes a question of 'turning', of directions taken, which not only allow things to appear, but also enable us to find our way through the world by situating ourselves in relation to such things."

"the question of orientation becomes, then, a question not only about how we 'find our way' but how we come to 'feel at home'."

"but 'getting lost' still takes us somewhere; and being lost is a way of inhabiting space by registering what is not familiar: being lost can in its turn become a familiar feeling.  familiarity is shaped by the 'feel' of space or by how spaces 'impress' upon bodies."