Postcolonial Affect: In Response

TL;DR: Postcolonial and affect studies converge in encounters between distinct disciplinary formations, exploring points of exchange and friction.

Abstract: The essays gathered together in this special issue map a series of encounters between two disciplinary formations that are distinct in their aims and orientations as well as in the material conditions that precipitated their historical emergence in the academy. In what follows, I think with and alongside these contributions to explore some of the points of productive exchange and friction between postcolonial studies and affect studies as they emerge in the theoretical provocations of these eight authors. My comments are deeply informed by a graduate course I taught at the University of Southern California over the past decade in which I explored a series of questions surrounding the relationship between postcolonial studies and affect studies as critical turns in literary theory and criticism. Each year’s inclusion of new scholarship at the intersections of these two fields (challenging the logics of my previous syllabi) signaled the continually changing shape and pressures exerted on these field formations.