The Ascent of Affect

"If you are fed up with the binariness of emotion theories, read Ruth Leys' The Ascent of Affect . . . . Refreshingly, she doesn't start from the view that emotions are visceral, sensation-like and universal or from the view that they depend on meaning, culture and (specifically human) cognition. Instead, she evaluates the development, difficulties and merits of both these two opposed approaches, as well as elucidating the inadequacies of neuroscientific analysis."

"Psychologists have excelled in the study of simple rat behavior, in part because the behavior is simple. But when behaviorism declined and psychologists became interested in more complex constructs, the research as well as the concepts became very complex very quickly. In The Ascent of Affect, Leys (emer., Johns Hopkins Univ.) fascinatingly elucidates the research and theory on the emotions that people display and experience. She discusses the evolution of ideas on emotion, blending philosophical and psychological arguments and counterarguments about the nature of emotions that, after half a century, still defy explanation. There is no shortage of models, with each successive theory identifying the problems of its predecessors and trying to correct them. Some problems are methodological, so psychologists develop complex laboratory approaches to reconcile discrepancies, but the concept of emotion does not keep still. Rather, it wiggles in ways that force researchers to blend social, mental, and neurological ideas to capture the depth of people’s emotional lives. This complex book should make students of emotion happy—even if they have not yet solved the mystery of what that emotion really is. Recommended."

"[A] brilliant analysis of the rise and internal contradictions of affect theory. Leys's project mostly addresses the history of psychology--discussions of Sedgwick and Massumi notwithstanding. She devastates Massumi's 'The Autonomy of Affect,' to which Berlant refers. Leys reveals the mistakes on which Massumi's use of psychological research depends to justify his central claim; namely, that affect precedes both emotion and cognition. . . . She offers a detailed, critical review of developments following Tomkins's affect program theory. . . . [and] goes on to explain the most recent debates, which involve many more researchers and many more arguments . . . . meticulous history and analysis."

“There are books and there are earthquakes. The Ascent of Affect is an earthquake—it shakes the very foundations of a wide range of edifices of thought, from affect theory to Hardt and Negri’s Post-Marxism to trauma theory. All of these theoretical movements, Ruth Leys shows, are united in their elision of human intentionality. But anti-intentionalism is based on bad—indeed, wrong—science. Trenchant, razor-sharp, and always lucid, this book is bound to send shock waves through some of the most pressing intellectual debates of our time. A tour de force.”

“A masterfully told story, not simply of the history of one modern object, emotion, but of much larger shifts in human self-understanding in late modernity. The clarity of Leys’ writing makes the text accessible to the literature scholar who has modest scientific training and to the research psychologist who likely is unfamiliar with the turn to affect in the humanities and arts.”

“Anyone wishing to know more about emotions has to read this amazingly smart and well-argued book. Ruth Leys, the eminent historian of science, has written a critical genealogy of the emotion sciences as they evolved after World War II. She engages with both theoretical and experimental approaches, and takes particular aim at affect studies that have, very successfully, promoted emotions as non-intentional, non-cognitive, and non-cultural. Leys challenges such views by confronting them with critical voices that have previously gone unheard or been neglected.”