Affective Criticism

Phorie, our research and creation collective, is formed around a camaraderie based on the sharing of ideas. To bring back some of the passion that tends to be leached out of theory by the reflexes of critical distance acquired at university, we decided to consider the question of affect first. Though it is, ironically, a highly abstract term, it nevertheless has the advantage of prompting us to adopt a research position that calls upon both our emotional and sympathetic dispositions and our penchant for analysis.

A digital residency on the website of Esse this fall provided an opportunity to test out this first wave of research on essays published in the magazine. How does affect permeate writing on art in the magazine? Is it possible to discern the affective experience of artworks in the critiques—the very experience that leads the authors to write about them? In what forms and under what terms is affect expressed? An exploratory reading of the writing about contemporary art in the magazine’s archives led us to posit some tentative responses, within the vast research field of affective economy.