C Pedwell
Biographic Data
| ID | 25230 |
|---|---|
| NAME | C Pedwell |
| GIVEN NAMES | C |
| FAMILY NAME | Pedwell |
| SIGNATURE | PEDWELL C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Kent |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4651-5766 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 251 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Intuition as a “trained thing”: Sensing, thinking, and speculating in computational cultures
What happens when intuition becomes algorithmic? This article explores how approaching intuition as recursively trained sheds light on what is at stake affectively, politically, and ethically in the entanglements of sensorial, cognitive, computational and corporate processes and (infra)structures that characterise algorithmic life. Bringing affect theory and speculative philosophies to bear on computational histories and cultures, I tease out the…
Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan, Code: From Information Theory to French Theory
Assembling a distinctive genealogy of cybernetic thought situated in relation to Progressive Era technocracy, industrial capitalism, (de)colonial relations, and eugenic machinery, Code uncovers the vital interdependence of informatics, the humanities, and the human sciences in the 20th century. Rather than figuring cybernetics as emerging from Second World War military technologies and post-war digital computing, Code argues that liberal technocr…
Speculative machines and us: More-than-human intuition and the algorithmic condition
In the wake of Turing’s ‘universal machine’, this article foregrounds intuition as a generative concept and lens to unfold the affective genealogies of human-machine relations in post-war transatlantic cultures. As a mode of sensing, knowing, anticipating, and navigating the world that exceeds rational analysis, intuition is, I will argue, vital to attuning to our contemporary ‘algorithmic condition’, in which machine learning technologies are ac…
Revolutionary Routines: The Habits of Social Transformation
Affect theory’s alternative genealogies – Review Symposium on Leys’s The Ascent of Affect
Despite what its title, blurb and editorial endorsements might suggest, Ruth Leys’ The Ascent of Affect: Genealogy and Critique is not a genealogy of the ‘turn to affect’ or a critical account of the emergence of affect theory across the humanities, social sciences and life sciences. It is, rather, a post-war history of the ‘science of emotion’ focusing on mainstream, American, largely male, psychologists and philosophers investigating the relati…
Inhabiting the world of affect: Mediation, critique and power in Ben Anderson’s Encountering Affect
Transforming habit: Revolution, routine and social change
Compelling recent scholarly work has explored the crucial role affect, emotion and feeling might play in activating radical social and political change. I argue, however, that some narratives of ‘affective revolution’ may actually do more to obscure than to enrich our understanding of the material relations and routines though which ‘progressive’ change might occur and endure in a given context – while side-stepping the challenge of how to evalua…
Mediated habits: Images, Networked Affect and Social Change
Habit and the Politics of Social Change: A Comparison of Nudge Theory and Pragmatist Philosophy
Rethinking the political workings of habit and habituation, this paper suggests, is vital to understanding the logics and possibilities of social change today. Any endeavour to explore habit’s affirmative potential, however, must confront its legacies as a colonialist, imperialist and capitalist technology. As a means to explore what it is that differentiates contemporary neoliberal modes of governing through habit from more critical approaches, …
Affective Relations: The Transnational Politics of Empathy
Affective Relations: The Transnational Politics of Empathy explores the power dynamics underlying the contemporary affective injunction to 'be empathetic', and their complex social and geopolitical implications. Through analysis of a range of popular and scholarly sites and texts – including Obama's speeches and memoirs, best-selling business books, international development literatures, popular science tracts, postcolonial literature and feminis…
Cultural theory as Mood Work
In staging an encounter between Sedgwick's discussion of reparation, Spivak's analysis of translation, and critical scholarship on mood, this essay considers how we might understand contemporary cultural theory as a form of 'mood work' that is at once discursive and material, textual and affective, political and aesthetic. In particular, I am interested in how thinking reparation, translation and mood together might open up different ways of conc…
Economies of Empathy: Obama, Neoliberalism, and Social Justice
This paper asks how we might theorise the politics of empathy in a context in which visions of social justice premised on empathetic engagement need to be situated within prevailing neoliberal frameworks. Through reading the ambivalent grammar of President Obama's emotional rhetoric, I examine how it resonates in different ways both with feminist and antiracist debates about empathy and social justice and with the neoliberal discourse of the 'emp…
Affective (self-) transformations: Empathy, neoliberalism and international development
Affective self-transformation premised on empathy has been understood within feminist and anti-racist literatures as central to achieving social justice. Through juxtaposing debates about empathy within feminist and anti-racist theory with rhetorics of empathy in international development, and particularly writing about 'immersions', this article explores how the workings of empathy might be reconceptualised when relations of postcoloniality and …
Affecting feminism: Questions of feeling in feminist theory
This special issue engages with the relationship between feminist theory and ‘the affective turn’. Through their analyses of a range of affective states, spheres and sites, the authors in this volume pose critical questions regarding feminist theoretical engagements with affect, emotion and feeling. They ask whether it is necessarily a positive move to put affect theory and feminist theory together, or whether there are inherent risks, for exampl…
Feminism, Culture and Embodied Practice
Within both feminist theory and popular culture, establishing similarities between embodied practices rooted in different cultural and geo-political contexts (e.g. ‘African’ female genital cutting and ‘Western’ cosmetic surgery) has become increasingly common as a means of countering cultural essentialism, ethnocentrism and racism. Feminism, Culture and Embodied Practice examines how cross cultural comparisons of embodied practices function as a …
Weaving relational webs: Theorizing cultural difference and embodied practice
Through illustrating the similarities between embodied practices rooted in different cultural contexts (such as `African' female genital cutting and `Western' cosmetic surgery), feminist theorists seek to reveal the instability of essentialist binaries which distinguish various groups as culturally, ethnically and morally `different'. They also aim to query how the term `culture' is employed differentially on the basis of embodied axes such as ra…
Theorizing 'African' Female Genital Cutting and 'Western' Body Modifications: A Critique of the Continuum and Analogue Approaches
Making links between different embodied cultural practices has become increasingly common within the feminist literature on multiculturalism and cultural difference as a means to counter racism and cultural essentialism. The cross-cultural comparison most commonly made in this context is that between 'African' practices of female genital cutting (FGC) and 'western' body modifications. In this article, I analyse some of the ways in which FGC and o…
Affecting feminism: Questions of feeling in feminist theory
This special issue engages with the relationship between feminist theory and ‘the affective turn’. Through their analyses of a range of affective states, spheres and sites, the authors in this volume pose critical questions regarding feminist theoretical engagements with affect, emotion and feeling. They ask whether it is necessarily a positive move to put affect theory and feminist theory together, or whether there are inherent risks, for exampl…
Affective (self-) transformations: Empathy, neoliberalism and international development
Affective self-transformation premised on empathy has been understood within feminist and anti-racist literatures as central to achieving social justice. Through juxtaposing debates about empathy within feminist and anti-racist theory with rhetorics of empathy in international development, and particularly writing about 'immersions', this article explores how the workings of empathy might be reconceptualised when relations of postcoloniality and …
Mediated habits: Images, Networked Affect and Social Change
Economies of Empathy: Obama, Neoliberalism, and Social Justice
This paper asks how we might theorise the politics of empathy in a context in which visions of social justice premised on empathetic engagement need to be situated within prevailing neoliberal frameworks. Through reading the ambivalent grammar of President Obama's emotional rhetoric, I examine how it resonates in different ways both with feminist and antiracist debates about empathy and social justice and with the neoliberal discourse of the 'emp…
Habit and the Politics of Social Change: A Comparison of Nudge Theory and Pragmatist Philosophy
Rethinking the political workings of habit and habituation, this paper suggests, is vital to understanding the logics and possibilities of social change today. Any endeavour to explore habit’s affirmative potential, however, must confront its legacies as a colonialist, imperialist and capitalist technology. As a means to explore what it is that differentiates contemporary neoliberal modes of governing through habit from more critical approaches, …
Theorizing 'African' Female Genital Cutting and 'Western' Body Modifications: A Critique of the Continuum and Analogue Approaches
Making links between different embodied cultural practices has become increasingly common within the feminist literature on multiculturalism and cultural difference as a means to counter racism and cultural essentialism. The cross-cultural comparison most commonly made in this context is that between 'African' practices of female genital cutting (FGC) and 'western' body modifications. In this article, I analyse some of the ways in which FGC and o…
Affect theory’s alternative genealogies – Review Symposium on Leys’s The Ascent of Affect
Despite what its title, blurb and editorial endorsements might suggest, Ruth Leys’ The Ascent of Affect: Genealogy and Critique is not a genealogy of the ‘turn to affect’ or a critical account of the emergence of affect theory across the humanities, social sciences and life sciences. It is, rather, a post-war history of the ‘science of emotion’ focusing on mainstream, American, largely male, psychologists and philosophers investigating the relati…
Weaving relational webs: Theorizing cultural difference and embodied practice
Through illustrating the similarities between embodied practices rooted in different cultural contexts (such as `African' female genital cutting and `Western' cosmetic surgery), feminist theorists seek to reveal the instability of essentialist binaries which distinguish various groups as culturally, ethnically and morally `different'. They also aim to query how the term `culture' is employed differentially on the basis of embodied axes such as ra…
Theorizing 'African' Female Genital Cutting and 'Western' Body Modifications: A Critique of the Continuum and Analogue Approaches
Making links between different embodied cultural practices has become increasingly common within the feminist literature on multiculturalism and cultural difference as a means to counter racism and cultural essentialism. The cross-cultural comparison most commonly made in this context is that between 'African' practices of female genital cutting (FGC) and 'western' body modifications. In this article, I analyse some of the ways in which FGC and o…
Weaving relational webs: Theorizing cultural difference and embodied practice
Through illustrating the similarities between embodied practices rooted in different cultural contexts (such as `African' female genital cutting and `Western' cosmetic surgery), feminist theorists seek to reveal the instability of essentialist binaries which distinguish various groups as culturally, ethnically and morally `different'. They also aim to query how the term `culture' is employed differentially on the basis of embodied axes such as ra…
Feminism, Culture and Embodied Practice
Within both feminist theory and popular culture, establishing similarities between embodied practices rooted in different cultural and geo-political contexts (e.g. ‘African’ female genital cutting and ‘Western’ cosmetic surgery) has become increasingly common as a means of countering cultural essentialism, ethnocentrism and racism. Feminism, Culture and Embodied Practice examines how cross cultural comparisons of embodied practices function as a …
Economies of Empathy: Obama, Neoliberalism, and Social Justice
This paper asks how we might theorise the politics of empathy in a context in which visions of social justice premised on empathetic engagement need to be situated within prevailing neoliberal frameworks. Through reading the ambivalent grammar of President Obama's emotional rhetoric, I examine how it resonates in different ways both with feminist and antiracist debates about empathy and social justice and with the neoliberal discourse of the 'emp…
Affective (self-) transformations: Empathy, neoliberalism and international development
Affective self-transformation premised on empathy has been understood within feminist and anti-racist literatures as central to achieving social justice. Through juxtaposing debates about empathy within feminist and anti-racist theory with rhetorics of empathy in international development, and particularly writing about 'immersions', this article explores how the workings of empathy might be reconceptualised when relations of postcoloniality and …
Affecting feminism: Questions of feeling in feminist theory
This special issue engages with the relationship between feminist theory and ‘the affective turn’. Through their analyses of a range of affective states, spheres and sites, the authors in this volume pose critical questions regarding feminist theoretical engagements with affect, emotion and feeling. They ask whether it is necessarily a positive move to put affect theory and feminist theory together, or whether there are inherent risks, for exampl…
Affective Relations: The Transnational Politics of Empathy
Affective Relations: The Transnational Politics of Empathy explores the power dynamics underlying the contemporary affective injunction to 'be empathetic', and their complex social and geopolitical implications. Through analysis of a range of popular and scholarly sites and texts – including Obama's speeches and memoirs, best-selling business books, international development literatures, popular science tracts, postcolonial literature and feminis…
Cultural theory as Mood Work
In staging an encounter between Sedgwick's discussion of reparation, Spivak's analysis of translation, and critical scholarship on mood, this essay considers how we might understand contemporary cultural theory as a form of 'mood work' that is at once discursive and material, textual and affective, political and aesthetic. In particular, I am interested in how thinking reparation, translation and mood together might open up different ways of conc…
Transforming habit: Revolution, routine and social change
Compelling recent scholarly work has explored the crucial role affect, emotion and feeling might play in activating radical social and political change. I argue, however, that some narratives of ‘affective revolution’ may actually do more to obscure than to enrich our understanding of the material relations and routines though which ‘progressive’ change might occur and endure in a given context – while side-stepping the challenge of how to evalua…
Mediated habits: Images, Networked Affect and Social Change
Habit and the Politics of Social Change: A Comparison of Nudge Theory and Pragmatist Philosophy
Rethinking the political workings of habit and habituation, this paper suggests, is vital to understanding the logics and possibilities of social change today. Any endeavour to explore habit’s affirmative potential, however, must confront its legacies as a colonialist, imperialist and capitalist technology. As a means to explore what it is that differentiates contemporary neoliberal modes of governing through habit from more critical approaches, …
Inhabiting the world of affect: Mediation, critique and power in Ben Anderson’s Encountering Affect
Affect theory’s alternative genealogies – Review Symposium on Leys’s The Ascent of Affect
Despite what its title, blurb and editorial endorsements might suggest, Ruth Leys’ The Ascent of Affect: Genealogy and Critique is not a genealogy of the ‘turn to affect’ or a critical account of the emergence of affect theory across the humanities, social sciences and life sciences. It is, rather, a post-war history of the ‘science of emotion’ focusing on mainstream, American, largely male, psychologists and philosophers investigating the relati…
Revolutionary Routines: The Habits of Social Transformation
Speculative machines and us: More-than-human intuition and the algorithmic condition
In the wake of Turing’s ‘universal machine’, this article foregrounds intuition as a generative concept and lens to unfold the affective genealogies of human-machine relations in post-war transatlantic cultures. As a mode of sensing, knowing, anticipating, and navigating the world that exceeds rational analysis, intuition is, I will argue, vital to attuning to our contemporary ‘algorithmic condition’, in which machine learning technologies are ac…
Intuition as a “trained thing”: Sensing, thinking, and speculating in computational cultures
What happens when intuition becomes algorithmic? This article explores how approaching intuition as recursively trained sheds light on what is at stake affectively, politically, and ethically in the entanglements of sensorial, cognitive, computational and corporate processes and (infra)structures that characterise algorithmic life. Bringing affect theory and speculative philosophies to bear on computational histories and cultures, I tease out the…
Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan, Code: From Information Theory to French Theory
Assembling a distinctive genealogy of cybernetic thought situated in relation to Progressive Era technocracy, industrial capitalism, (de)colonial relations, and eugenic machinery, Code uncovers the vital interdependence of informatics, the humanities, and the human sciences in the 20th century. Rather than figuring cybernetics as emerging from Second World War military technologies and post-war digital computing, Code argues that liberal technocr…
Sociology (14 works) · Epistemology (12 works) · Psychology (12 works) · Social Psychology (9 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · Political science (8 works) · Politics (8 works) · Law (6 works) · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism (6 works) · Social Psychology (5 works)