Fear of a Blank Planet

This study is organized into four major chapters. In the first chapter, the various grounds traversed by affect and the problems of writing 'about' affect are established. The second chapter reads across Continental philosophy to extract and expand upon the undertheorized spatio-temporalities of affect in terms of what Bergson and Deleuze call 'the virtual.' In the third chapter, the major emphasis is on the work of Sigmund Freud and his earliest theorizations of affect. Freud's theories are re-evaluated through the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. The fourth and concluding chapter examines the writings of Henri Lefebvre on everyday life and, also, the importance that Lefebvre's work has for new directions in cultural studies. The thrust of the argument concerns an almost completely neglected third term in Lefebvre's approach to questions of everyday life: everydayness. It is, ultimately, through everydayness that affect and 'the virtual' might find their most direct and important ways onto the theoretical terrain of cultural studies.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Speech Communication

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Seigworth, Gregory James

Contributors dc:contributor

• Grossberg, Lawrence

• Psychology, Personality

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

(MiAaPQ)AAI9904582

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/87557