How to Do Things with Affects

Shifting the focus from human interiority toward the agency of cultural objects, social arrangements and aesthetic matter, How to Do Things with Affects examines the affective operations and transmissions triggered by various aesthetic forms, media events and cultural practices.

"The major strengths of How to Do Things with Affects [...] are the multidisciplinary exemplification of a very general schema and the refinement of what exactly is meant by the stylish phrase, 'to restore agency to form.' Scholars working to recuperate literature and art as suitable objects of inquiry in affect studies will find several essays here that bolster that effort. All in all, if something of a formalist turn is underway in affect theory, How to Do Things with Affects [...] is an enriching volume that can serve as an introduction to that turn or an abundant development of it.
- Stephanie Amon, Afterimage (2020) 47 (2): 93–96.

Ernst van Alphen, Ph.D. (1988), University of Utrecht, is Professor of Literary studies at the University of Leiden. His most recent books are Failed Images: Photography and Its Counter-Practices (2018) and Staging the Archive: Art and Photography in the Age of New Media (2014).

Tomaš Jirsa, Ph.D. (2012), Charles University, is Postdoctoral Researcher in Comparative Literature at Palacký University Olomouc. He has published books and articles on the relations between modern literature and the visual arts, media theory, and the affective aesthetics of music videos.