Emotional Geographies of Non-Recognition and Illegibility: Theorizing Black Affect in Joan Riley’s The Unbelonging

ABSTRACT: “What is the emotional cost (affect) of being embedded within the spectrum of non-recognition and illegibility?” asks the protagonist of Joan Riley’s The Unbelonging (1985). The essay revisits the notion of affect to theorize the embodied dispositions—the emotional or bodily responses to the processes of racialization and negation of Black people within the diasporic context. Drawing on the notion of affect as a useful paradigm for registering distinctive forms of embodiment or the somatic, the present study examines the affective dispositions of living in the constellation of anti-Black and anti-immigrant discourses. In particular, it surveys the recent upsurge of affect theory in literature, while examining Riley’s debut novel The Unbelonging through the lens of affect. The article sheds light on two aspects: first, the significance of affect and emotions in literature and second, how Black bodies are affected by this affect in ways that might not be captured fully in language. A renewed focus on emotions, sentiments, and affect facilitates a more nuanced analysis of The Unbelonging and helps to assess and account for a range of affective experiences of individuals or communities, naturalized as inferior or subhuman.