This talk is animated by my own recently roused fear of the crowd. I offer a way to think about politics and emotion in a moment that has witnessed handwringing across the political spectrum about the so-called masses’ unruly passions dangerously seeping into the political realm and bringing with them Brexit, Trump, and the explosion of rightwing authoritarianism across the globe. Classical liberal and democratic theorists have a response to the fear of the crowd: the political realm requires rational deliberation, and thus passions that might interfere must and can be exorcised, or at least sequestered from public, political life. What, then, should we conclude in this moment where it has become obvious, if it wasn’t before, that the political is awash in passions, and some very frightening passions at that? Faced with the madding crowds of the Brexit/Trump/QAnon era, liberal and democratic theory might lead us to the conclusion that liberal institutions have not and cannot keep our unruly passions in check, that democracy thus cannot work, that, in short, people’s passions make them, us, unfit for democracy. But is it not possible to acknowledge that the political is saturated with emotion without going down the crowd theorists’ path that denies the demos our political capacities? My aim with this talk is political as much as conceptual: we need a better rendering of politics and emotion in order to grasp the current moment. Through an exploration of crowds, affect, and the political, the talk considers left activist compositional tasks amid the felt contingency of the current moment.
 
Deborah Gould, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, is the author of Moving Politics: Emotion and Act Up’s Fight Against Aids (University of Chicago Press, 2009). She is currently writing a book titled Composing Collectivities: Appetite, Encounters, and the Not-Yet of Politics.

Please contact Regan Koch (r.koch@qmul.ac.uk), Pen Woods (p.woods@qmul.ac.uk) or Tiffany Watt Smith (t.k.watt-smith@qmul.ac.uk) for the Zoom details

** POSTPONED **

** THIS EVENT WILL BE RESCHEDULED LATER IN THE YEAR **

Thinking About Feeling: Once more with…

We will discuss our recent book project, Feelings of Structure: Explorations in Affect and our research-creation project and exhibition, Structures of Anticipation. The edited book addressed the built environment as spatial attunements. The essays explored the affective consciousness of spatial form/s that is at once social and personal – emergent and emerging and ever in process in an ‘interrelating continuity’. How do spatial forms contribute to, as Susan Lepselter writes, an ethnography of emergent feeling? How do we feel these spaces and world them – taking worlding as a way of apprehension and comprehension – giving it a structure that we make (non)sense of. What are the emergent feelings, strategies and practices that are integrated into our material and experiential world? Reversing Raymond Williams’ influential essay, “Structures of Feeling”, we ask how and in what way we could address the mixed experiences to which ‘the fixed forms do not speak at all’. We felt, to capture the traces of the experiences, the reverse phrasing, “feelings of structure,” was a more intriguing invitation to grasping the (un)/knowable.

The project Structures of Anticipation emerged out of working on the book as well as other related individual projects. The theme “anticipation” attended to the anxious unknowables of the times during the Trump years and before the pandemic happened. The theme hinged on the “sensation” of anticipation – circulating forces that build up, the turning of the corner, hope, reverie or of impending dread, anxiety, trepidation, as we refreshed our social media feed – and how it affected our daily material lives. 

Dr Karen Engle is Associate Professor at the University of Windsor, Canada, in the School of Creative Arts, Windsor, Ont. Canada

Dr Yoke-Sum Wong is Associate Professor at the School of Critical and Creative Studies at the Alberta University of the Arts (formerly ACAD) in Calgary, Ab. Canada

Please contact Regan Koch (r.koch@qmul.ac.uk), Pen Woods (p.woods@qmul.ac.uk) or Tiffany Watt Smith (t.k.watt-smith@qmul.ac.uk) for the Zoom details

Playing at the Boundary: Exploring the Relationship between Feminism and Fun in Karachi 

Khel Khel Mein (Playing at the Boundary) tells the story of three young people from the area of Lyari in Karachi–an area that is known for being one of the most conflict-ridden parts of the city. However, Lyari is also one of the oldest, most diverse and vibrant parts of the city. Each of the young people features in this documentary are pushing gender boundaries in their own unique ways. Mehreen is a champion boxer. Zulekha teaches girls and young women how to cycle and takes them out for regular rides, and Sidu is an activist who challenges gender roles and binaries. All three are struggling to bring a change in their communities and in society in general and having fun in the process. The session will include a screening of this short documentary and a discussion of the relationship between fun and feminism in Lyari and beyond.

Dr. Nida Kirmani is Associate Professor of Sociology in the Mushtaq Ahmad Gurmani School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. Nida has published widely on issues related to gender, Islam, women’s movements, development and urban studies in India and Pakistan. She completed her PhD in 2007 from the University of Manchester in Sociology. Her book, Questioning ‘the Muslim Woman’: Identity and Insecurity in an Urban Indian Locality, was published in 2013 by Routledge. Her current research focuses on urban violence, gender and insecurity in the area of Lyari in Karachi.