Kindergarten theory

Childhood, affect, critical thought

Bibliographic Data

ID4893328
AuthorsDaniela Caselli (University of Manchester)
Year2010
Volume11
Issue3
Pages241-254
Publication date2010-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueFeminist Theory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1464-7001 • E-ISSN: 1741-2773
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1464700110376276
OpenAlexW2063466934
LanguageEN
Citations received9
References cited36

Current notions of affect are often underpinned by unacknowledged assumptions about spontaneity, materiality and immediacy. Childhood, which has traditionally been associated with these concepts (and for this reason has not been much debated within critical theory), helps us reconsider the political impact of affect theory. This is both because feminist theory has recently reconceptualized childhood and because positing affect as moments of intensity immanent to matter raises a number of problems from a feminist point of view. A passage from Mrs. Dalloway (illustrating how childhood works as a mimetic break within the project of literary modernism) will introduce an analysis of excerpts from Lisa Cartwright and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, two feminist case studies in which affect and childhood are linked. Referring to past psychoanalytical and political debates (especially by Jacqueline Rose, Juliet Mitchell and Walter Benjamin) that have anticipated some of the problems we are currently facing within feminist theory, the article investigates through childhood the politically problematic role of affect as 'the new' in critical theory

Aesthetics · Affect (linguistics · Affect theory · Critical theory · Developmental psychology · Early childhood · Epistemology · Feminism · Feminist theory · Immediacy · Materiality (auditing · Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Art Education and Development · Artistic and Creative Research · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism · Psychology · Gender Studies · Philosophy

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