Affective Transformations

Book excerpt: Has the Affective Turn itself turned sour? Two seemingly contradictory developments serve as starting points for this volume. First, technologies from affective computing to social robotics focus on the recognition and modulation of human affectivity. Affect gets measured, calculated, controlled. Second, we witness a deeply concerning rise in hate speech, cybermobbing, and incitement to violence via social media. Affect gets mobilized, fomented, unleashed. Politics has become affective to such an extent that we need to rethink our regimes of affect organization. Media and Affect Studies now have to prove that they can cope with the return of the affective real.