This book
offers a unique and timely reading of the early Frankfurt School in response to the recent ‘affective turn’ within the arts and humanities. Resisting the overly rationalist tendencies of political philosophy, it argues that critical theory actively cultivates a powerful connection between thinking and feeling, and rediscovers a range of often neglected concepts that were of vital importance to the first generation of critical theorists, including melancholia, hope, (un)happiness, objects and mimesis. In doing so, it brings the dynamic work of Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Ernst Bloch and Siegfried Kracauer into conversation with more recent debates around politics and affect. An important intervention in the fields of affect studies and social and political thought,
Critical theory and feeling shows that sensuous experience is at the heart of the Frankfurt School’s affective politics.
Table of Content
Introduction: once more, with feeling
1 Thinking through feeling: critical theory and the affective turn
2 Feeling blue: melancholic dispositions and conscious unhappiness
3 A feeling for things: objects, affects, mimesis
4 Expectant emotion and the politics of hope
Coda
Index
About the author
Simon Mussell is an independent researcher and editor
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