The Promise of Happiness - Sara Ahmed
"Once an object is a feeling-cause, it can cause feeling, so that when we feel the feeling we expect to feel, we are affirmed." p.28
Contrary to Massumi's definition of affect as autonomous or non-qualified intensity, Ahmed (2010:230-31) describes it as directed, qualified and 'even' congealed. So, emotions may have only a modal difference of intensity or degree from affects and not a formal difference of quality or kind. What are the consequences of determining affect as an autonomous and different thing from emotions and to see a continuum between them?
(an encounter with several gravestones, an encounter with a huge Turkish flag, an encounter with a quasi generic (obeliks style, white marble with some writings on it) historical monument. Encountering gravestones in everyday life is not a surprise for Istanboulites: The biggest graveyard in the Anatolian side is in the middle of the city. You always look to the graveyards while waiting for the traffic lights on your way from Kadıköy to Üsküdar with a bus or minibus. It might be a surprise for foreigners to see gravestones squizzed between buildings in the very center of Beşiktaş. Eyüp Sultan is a district of graveyards. You eat, drink and kiss against or sometimes on the gravestones. The encounter with graveyards was always a part of the city life. (pera'daki taksim'deki mezarlıklar).
But, first of all, a civil graveyard is something different from a military graveyard. A civil graveyard does not interpellate for nation, country, civil duties, enemies, martyrdom, war, etc. A civil graveyard only brings you pure death: questions about the meaning of life, afterlife, the absurd and natural absence of beloved ones, etc.
Secondly, do people, who encounter these stones, recognize them? Are they conscious of them? Do they know that they belong to the soldiers which fought during WWI? How do they interpret the Çanakkale Campaign? Do they associate them with the other graves just a few meters away which belong to the war with PKK? We know that depending on their ethnic, social, religious, economic status; on their individual memory and corresponding collective memory; on their political views and ideologies, first a gravestone and then a 'military' gravestone will generate different emotions. Regarding the unknown parameters, it seems impossible to have an idea about the individual affections.
However, the simple theory of banal nationalism (eleştiriler dipnot) suggests that the words and symbols that we use in everyday life, the minor, unimportant and most of the time invisible things reproduce the possible conditions for nationalism. It's then up to individuals to be affected (in a 'good' or 'evil' way) or not at all, according to their position in life. The encounter with a graveyard simply opens a world of possibilities for affection.
How might an anti-militarist, anti-racist and probably anti-nationalist (not in the sense of a system of governance but in the sense of a discourse which works on binary divisions, exclusion, and suppression) attitude fight against the nationalistic institutions of the state without diminishing people's power of action? Which might be the equivalent of a biopolitical state in contrast to a thanatopolitical state.)
Contrary to Massumi's definition of affect as autonomous or non-qualified intensity, Ahmed (2010:230-31) describes it as directed, qualified and 'even' congealed. So, emotions may have only a modal difference of intensity or degree from affects and not a formal difference of quality or kind. What are the consequences of determining affect as an autonomous and different thing from emotions and to see a continuum between them?
(an encounter with several gravestones, an encounter with a huge Turkish flag, an encounter with a quasi generic (obeliks style, white marble with some writings on it) historical monument. Encountering gravestones in everyday life is not a surprise for Istanboulites: The biggest graveyard in the Anatolian side is in the middle of the city. You always look to the graveyards while waiting for the traffic lights on your way from Kadıköy to Üsküdar with a bus or minibus. It might be a surprise for foreigners to see gravestones squizzed between buildings in the very center of Beşiktaş. Eyüp Sultan is a district of graveyards. You eat, drink and kiss against or sometimes on the gravestones. The encounter with graveyards was always a part of the city life. (pera'daki taksim'deki mezarlıklar).
But, first of all, a civil graveyard is something different from a military graveyard. A civil graveyard does not interpellate for nation, country, civil duties, enemies, martyrdom, war, etc. A civil graveyard only brings you pure death: questions about the meaning of life, afterlife, the absurd and natural absence of beloved ones, etc.
Secondly, do people, who encounter these stones, recognize them? Are they conscious of them? Do they know that they belong to the soldiers which fought during WWI? How do they interpret the Çanakkale Campaign? Do they associate them with the other graves just a few meters away which belong to the war with PKK? We know that depending on their ethnic, social, religious, economic status; on their individual memory and corresponding collective memory; on their political views and ideologies, first a gravestone and then a 'military' gravestone will generate different emotions. Regarding the unknown parameters, it seems impossible to have an idea about the individual affections.
However, the simple theory of banal nationalism (eleştiriler dipnot) suggests that the words and symbols that we use in everyday life, the minor, unimportant and most of the time invisible things reproduce the possible conditions for nationalism. It's then up to individuals to be affected (in a 'good' or 'evil' way) or not at all, according to their position in life. The encounter with a graveyard simply opens a world of possibilities for affection.
How might an anti-militarist, anti-racist and probably anti-nationalist (not in the sense of a system of governance but in the sense of a discourse which works on binary divisions, exclusion, and suppression) attitude fight against the nationalistic institutions of the state without diminishing people's power of action? Which might be the equivalent of a biopolitical state in contrast to a thanatopolitical state.)
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