Affective Resonance and Durability in Political Organizing

The case of patients who hack

Bibliographic Data

ID8088349
AuthorsSimeon Vidolov (0000-0003-2579-3177, University College Dublin, corresponding author), Geiger (0000-0002-2400-7333, University College Dublin), Emma Stendahl (0000-0002-1977-2997, Jönköping University)
Year2023
Volume44
Issue9
Pages1413-1438
Publication date2023-02-27
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueOrganization Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0170-8406 • E-ISSN: 1741-3044
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/01708406231162002
OpenAlexW4322494554
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited55

We explore the role of affect in fuelling and sustaining political organizing in the case of an online type-1 diabetes community. Analysing this community’s interactions, we show that the drive towards political transformation is triggered by affective dissonance, but that this dissonance needs to be recurrently enacted through the balanced circulation of objects of pain and hope. We propose the notion of affective resonance to illuminate the dynamic interplay that collectively moderates and fosters this circulation and that keeps bodies invested and reverberating together around shared political goals. Affective resonance points researchers toward the fragile and complex accomplishment that affective politics represents. Focusing particularly on the community’s interactions on Twitter, we also reflect on the role of (digital) resonance spaces in how affects circulate. By adopting and transposing concepts from affect theories into the context of patient communities, we further add important insights into the unique embodied challenges that patients with chronic illness face. Highlighting the hope induced by techno-bodily emancipation that intertwine into a particular form of political organizing in such healthcare movements, we give emphasis to patient communities’ deeply embodied affects as important engines for political, social and economic change

Affect (linguistics · Affect theory · Cognitive dissonance · Context (archaeology · Emancipation · Embodied cognition · Epistemology · Feeling · Political science · Politics · Social movement · Sociology · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism · Psychology · Communication · Social Psychology

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