FEELING DOWN, BACKWARD, AND MACHINIC: QUEER THEORY AND THE AFFECTIVE TURN

Abstract

The engagement of queer theory with the affective turn, particularly in its divergence from the previous discussions preoccupied with the historical development and poststructuralist critique of sexual identity, has generated three distinct yet related strains of affective scholarship: queer negativity, queer temporality, and queer as machinic body. Each of the strains has raises different analytical challenges and potentials for both queer theory and affect theory, which I term respectively feeling down, feeling backward, and feeling machinic. These three types of scholarship describe the varied forms of sociality and levels of intensity that the queer body is affected by and bring three particular contributions to queer theory, including deepening the understanding of cultural processes, shifting epistemology at the temporal scale, and widening sexual ontology beyond its spatial privileging of the Euro-American experience.