Affect Theory

Abstract This review addresses three significant aspects of affect theory in 2024: the attempts to turn affect from a theory into a practice, or into an empirically verifiable object; the exploration of how narrative arts mediate established regimes of feeling, and may help create new ones—which may in turn lead to better modes of collective life; and environmental affect, past and present. The introduction frames the review around an observation from Spinoza’s Ethics: ‘[H]ope cannot exist without fear, nor fear without hope’. The review is then divided into three sections that reflect upon the inherently unstable and intertwined nature of hope and fear and their significance to the present: 1. Activism and Empiricism; 2. Social Inventiveness; and 3. Environmental Affect. A brief conclusion then reflects on the reviewed works together.