Full Description
This book offers an interdisciplinary analysis of current formations of publics that is informed by in-depth knowledge of affect and emotion theory.
Using empirical case studies from contexts as diverse as India, Pakistan, Tanzania, and the Americas as well as Europe, the book challenges dichotomous distinctions between private and public. Instead, publics are understood as a relational structure that encompasses both people and their physical and mediatized environment. While each kind of public is affectively constituted, the intensity of its affective attunement varies considerably.
The volume is aimed at academic readers interested in understanding the dynamic and fluid forms of contemporary formation of publics—be it digital or face-to-face encounters as well as in the intersection of both forms. This includes researchers from media and communication studies, social anthropology, theatre or literary studies. It is aimed at advanced students of these disciplines who are interested in the unfolding of contemporary publics.
Contents
1. Prologue: Affective Publics and Their Meaning in Times of Global Crises; 2. Introduction: The Affective Character of Publics; PART I: Places; 3. Unhappy Objects: Colonial Violence, Maasai Materialities, and the Affective Publics of Ethnographic Museums; 4. Theater Publics in Motion: Affective Dynamics of Theater and the Street, Berlin 1989; 5. Digital Administrative Publics: Affective and Corporate Entanglements in Germany's New Federal Portal PART II: Networks; 6. (Im)Mobility in the Americas and COVID-19: The Emergence of a Hemispheric Affective Counterpublic; 7. Women Activists Imaged Through Social Media Publics: The "Feisty Dadis of Shaheen Bagh" as Political Subjects; 8. Affectivism and Visibility in the Mediatization of Disappearing Non-Muslim Women in Pakistan; 9. Hijacking Solidarity: Affective Networking of Far-Right Publics on Twitter; 10. Affective Temporalities of Digital Hate Cultures; 11. Understanding the Affective Impact of Algorithmic Publics; PART III: Media; 12. Contested Image Practices of Public Shaming: A Case Study of an Internet Meme in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict; 13. "GOOKS, Go Home!": Vietnamese in the United States; 14. Affective Publics and the Figure of the "Right-Wing Writer"; 15. Opening Up Ethnographic Data: When the Private Becomes Public
