10Affect Theory

This chapter reviews works in affect theory published in 2018. The chapter is divided into the following sections: 1. Introduction; 2. The Interplay of Feeling and Thinking, which focuses on Rick Furtak’s Knowing Emotions and Antonio Damasio’s The Strange Order of Things; 3. Narrative of Affect and Affective Narratives, which focuses on Erica L. Johnson’s Cultural Memory, Memorials, and Reparative Writing and Duncan A. Lucas’s Affect Theory, Genre, and the Example of Tragedy; 4. Digital Affect, which focuses on Tero Karppi’s Disconnect: Facebook’s Affective Bonds and Affect and Social Media: Emotion, Mediation, Anxiety and Contagion, edited by Tony D. Sampson, Stephen Maddison and Darren Ellis; 5. Reflections. In publications this year, old themes have been given renewed attention; for instance, the relationship between knowledge and emotion, and narrative and affect, but there have also been new lines of enquiry that have emerged in the sub-field of digital affect, which extends understanding of the role of technology in enhancing and shaping, as well as limiting, felt experience.