Senses Without Names: Affective Becomings in William Faulkner and Carson McCullers

Abstract

This chapter argues that Nietzsche’s philosophy is of central importance to affect theory, particularly in the field of literary criticism. Marsden explores the idea that literary texts generate new and strange affective forces but that these are frequently commuted to normative models of human experience when analyzed by literary critics. Inflecting Brian Massumi’s influential work on affect theory with a Nietzschean critique of value, Marsden offers a reading of William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury and Carson McCullers’ The Member of the Wedding, which remains alert to the power of affective becoming to communicate “senses without names.”