Rethinking Affect Through Social Justice: Teresa Brennan, Energetics, and Living Attention

This work seeks to explore the possibilities of applying affect theory to practices of social justice, specifically, through the affect theories based on energetics described by Teresa Brennan. The first section gives an overview on Brennan’s main arguments and how I interpret her through a Spinozistic lens. This project then explores the positive and negative roles that happiness, anger, grief, and humor have had in various social movements and how they have often been mis- or underused in these moments. The final section offers Brennan’s theory of “Living Attention” as a means of understanding our own affects and the affects of others and how to use them effectively and healthily.