Tuesday, 14 June 2022, 2 to 5 pm, diffrakt | centre for theoretical periphery
Workshop with
Tyrone S. Palmer
“Affect” has become a key term in recent theoretical production. Following the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, for instance, affect has been conceived as something that ontologically escapes the logic of representation: “It is a zone of indetermination, of indiscernibility, as if things, beasts, and persons […] endlessly reach that point that immediately precedes their natural differentiation.” Such affect, then, is pure relational potentiality underneath what comes to be constituted as difference/s. In this sense, the concept postulates a strange universality: an ontological basis that subtends the individuation of feelings and sensitivities.
However, despite such pretenses toward unmarked relational universality, affect is always already (and still) tethered to the logics of raciality that create and sustain the World, that is, a world that relies on Blackness and its perpetual negation, its exclusion and destruction. The relationality of affect, in other words, relies on the production of non-relation. But what might it be, then, how might it feel, to think affect from the flipside, from Blackness, from non-relation?
Participation in the workshop is limited. To register and receive the reading materials, please send a brief message to mail@diffrakt.space.
Pandemic: The event will be held in accordance with current COVID-19 regulations. The room is equipped with air filtration devices, but given the persistent viral situation, we would also like to ask you, if possible, to test yourselves with a rapid test ahead of the event.
