Ordinary Writing: Theorizing the Affective Structures of the Present in Lauren Berlant and Kathleen Stewart’s The Hundreds
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
The present work explores how affect is conceptualized throughout The Hundreds (2019), a collaborative project between Lauren Berlant and Kathleen Stewart composed of one hundred poems of one hundred words each (or multiples of one hundred). Throughout these poems, the authors affectively reflect on and theorize about everyday life through experimental ethnographic and writing practices, self-imposing a word restraint to their writing with the objective of exploring the creative and theoretical possibilities behind alternative ways of writing affect theory. Focusing on the unique fusion of poetry, ethnography and theory present in their work, this text explores the formal qualities of the poems and how the distinctions between criticism and fiction are blurred through a series of creative and experimental tactics that point towards radical ethical pedagogies and resist neoliberal values in academia. Some of these tactics specifically subvert academic conventions regarding citation, authorship and enunciation, and point towards innovative ways of inhabiting the place of the scholar and understanding academy itself. One of the central questions this investigation seeks to answer is how form is used by Berlant and Stewart in The Hundreds to theorize affect, with a special focus on how their efforts amount to what could speculatively be called «ordinary writing», a method to creatively describe and conceptualize the ordinary.
Downloads
Article Details
An open-access CREATIVE COMMONS copyright license is used. Those authors whose works are published by this journal, accept the following terms:
- Authors will retain their copyright and guarantee the Journal the right to first publish their work, which will simultaneously be subject to the Creative Commons Recognition License CC BY SA that allows third parties to share the work, provided that its author and first publication is indicated.
- Authors may adopt other non-exclusive license agreements for the distribution of the published version of the work (e.g., deposit it in an institutional telematics file or publish it in a monographic volume) provided that the initial publication in this journal is indicated.
- Authors are allowed and recommended to disseminate their work over the Internet (e.g. in institutional telematics files or on their website) before and during the submission process, which can produce interesting exchanges and increase quotes of the published work.
References
Berlant, Lauren and Kathleen Stewart. 2019. The Hundreds. Durham & London: Duke University Press.
Berlant, Lauren. 1997. The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship. Durham & London: Duke University Press.
Berlant, Lauren. 2008. The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture. Durham & London: Duke University Press.
Berlant, Lauren. 2010. «Thinking about Feeling Historical». In Political Emotions: New Agendas in Communication, ed. Janet Staiger et al. New York & London: Routledge, 229–245.
Berlant, Lauren. 2011. Cruel Optimism. Durham & London: Duke University Press.
Berlant, Lauren. 2019a. «Reading Sedgwick, Then and Now» In Reading Sedgwick, ed. Lauren Berlant. Durham & London: Duke University Press.
Berlant, Lauren. 2019b. «The Hundreds, observation, encounter, atmosphere, and world-making». Journal of Visual Culture, 18 (3): 289–304.
Brewster, Ann and Schlunke, Katrina. 2005. «We Four: Fictocriticism Again». Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 19 (3): 393–395. DOI: 10.1080/10304310500176818
Certeau, Michel de. 1988. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Cvetkovich, Ann. 2012. Depression: A Public Feeling. Durham & London: Duke University Press.
Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. 1983. «What is a Minor Literature». Mississippi Review, 11 (3): 13–33.
Flavell, Helen. 2004. Writing-Between: Australian and Canadian Ficto-Criticism [Doctoral thesis, Murdoch University]. Murdoch University Research Repository, https://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/id/eprint/53/
Flavell, Helen. 2009. «Who Killed Jeanne Randolph? King, Muecke or “ficto-criticism”». In Outskirts: Feminism Along the Edge, 20. Available online: https://www.outskirts.arts.uwa.edu.au/volumes/volume-20/flavell. Accessed on April 10th, 2022.
Haas, Gerrit. 2014. Ficto/critical strategies: Subverting textual practices of meaning, other, and self-formation. [Doctoral thesis, Freie Universität Berlin & The University of Western Australia]. University of Western Australia Research Repository, https://api.research-repository.uwa.edu.au/ws/portalfiles/portal/9835008/Haas_Gerrit_2014.pdf
repository.uwa.edu.au/ws/portalfiles/portal/9835008/Haas_Gerrit_2014.pdf
Haraway, Donna J. 2016. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham & London: Duke University Press.
Harney, Stefano and Fred Moten. 2013. The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study. New York: Minor Compositions.
Massumi, Brian. 1995. «The Autonomy of Affect». Cultural Critique, 31: 83–109. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/1354446
Muecke, Stephen. 2002. «The Fall: Fictocritical Writing». Parallax, 8 (4): 108–112. DOI: 10.1080/1353464022000028000
Nealon, Chris. 2019. «Sedgwick Inexhaustible». In Reading Sedgwick, ed. Lauren Berlant. Durham & London: Duke University Press.
Robb, Simon. 1996. «Academic Divination is not a Mysticism: Fictocriticism, Pedagogy and Hypertext» in Crossing Lines: formations of Australian Culture, ed. Association for the Study of Australian Literature.
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. 1997. «Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading; or, You’re So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Introduction is About You». In Novel Gazing: Queer Readings in Fiction, ed. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. Durham: Duke University Press, 1–37.
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. 2003. Touching Feeling. Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity. London & Durham: Duke University Press.
Singh, Julietta. 2018. Unthinking Mastery. Dehumanism and Decolonial Entanglement. Durham & London: Duke University Press.
Stewart, Kathleen. 1996. A Space on the Side of the Road: Cultural Poetics in an “Other” America. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Stewart, Kathleen. 2005. «Cultural Poesis: The Generativity of Emergent Things». In The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research, ed. Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1015–1030.
Stewart, Kathleen. 2007. Ordinary Affects. Durham & London: Duke University Press.
Stewart, Kathleen. 2008. «Weak Theory in an Unfinished World» In Journal of Folklore Research, 45, 1: 71–82. http://doi.org/10.2979/JFR.2008.45.1.71
Stewart, Kathleen. 2014. «Tactile Compositions» In Objects and Materials: a Routledge Companion, ed. Penny Harvey et al. London & New York: Routledge, 119–127.