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Chapter 16 - Affective Form

from II - Developments

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2020

Alex Houen
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
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Summary

In this chapter, I examine a singular instance of affective form in postcolonial fiction, which puts the body back in the body while also sustaining affect as a virtual substance, a potentiality that exceeds material and formal embodiments. Drawing on Aminatta Forna’s The Memory of Love (2010) and Happiness (2018), I examine key psychoanalytic and psychiatric categories such as PTSD, trauma, fugue, and narrative memory as they are transported globally. Focusing on fraught contexts such as the Sierra Leonian Civil War evoked by Forna, the essay examines the entrenched assumptions and soulmaking politics of Western epistemologies of consciousness, offering the affect of Forna’s novels as an alternative depiction of the concrete and abstract materialities of traumatic states.

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Affect and Literature , pp. 300 - 316
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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  • Affective Form
  • Edited by Alex Houen, University of Cambridge
  • Book: Affect and Literature
  • Online publication: 16 January 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108339339.017
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  • Affective Form
  • Edited by Alex Houen, University of Cambridge
  • Book: Affect and Literature
  • Online publication: 16 January 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108339339.017
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Affective Form
  • Edited by Alex Houen, University of Cambridge
  • Book: Affect and Literature
  • Online publication: 16 January 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108339339.017
Available formats
×