Decolonizing affect: Resonance as an ethnographic technique

Abstract

This article is a call to decolonize affect theory through deepening its engagement with fieldwork conducted in the global South. It examines the native Chinese concept of ganying, or resonance, as an ethnographic technique by engaging with the author's fieldwork experiences among Body Mind Spirit practitioners in China. Participating in ganying captures the formation of affective atmospheres through the ethnographer's involvement in their co-creation. Where attunement functions as a normative ideal, resonance becomes a technique of embodying responsiveness and cultivating intimacy that supports efforts to narrativize affect. Examining the genealogy of ganying and its ethnographic applications reveals this concept's alignment with influential theorizations that in recent decades have been constructed as “new” and “paradigm shifting” contributions to the affective turn. It cautions against the risks of erasure resulting from such Eurocentric negligence of kindred notions circulated in scholarly and vernacular contexts outside of the global North.