Reaction to Section 1: Faith, Hope and Charity: Theoretical Lenses on Affect

Abstract

Within the landscape evoked by the term “affect” are an ecosystem of entities that alternately function as objects and as connections; constituted and constituting. Historically, to invoke affect is to simultaneously invoke cognition in the sense that reference to either one of a dichotomous pair simultaneously calls the other into being. Yet the authors of these chapters contest the simplistic dichotomisation of affect and cognition, and consistently argue for the fundamental, complex and intimate connection of the various facets of affect: belief and emotions, for instance, with aspects of cognition, such as learning and meaning. An additional consistency across the chapters is the commitment to locating affect in social practice, rather than locking it from sight within the individual. Indeed, the argument for the inextricability of the individual and the social seems relatively easy to make in relation to affect, where the social performance of affect is so visibly consequent upon personal history modulo the cultural considerations that frame and shape the social expression of emotion and belief.