Influenced by psychoanalytic, Marxian, feminist, queer, and cultural theory, affect theory aims, in various ways, to understand our attachments to people, social experiences, historical events, and political possibilities. How can we understand affect, and why does it matter? In what ways does affect theory influence how we think about the body—its boundaries and its porosity? How does affect theory help us understand the public organization of feeling? What is the importance for affect theory in relation to politics? What are the links between affect and power? ...

By 1914, institutional psychoanalysis had collapsed. Once united in its adherence to Freud’s initial theory of unconscious psychosexuality, the discipline was fractured at nearly every conceivable point. For Freud, musing on a movement in disarray, the future of psychoanalysis appeared “desperately dark.” Yet, spurred to defend his ideas, Freud embarked on project to rebuild and reorient psychoanalysis, publishing original and landmark work on narcissism, trauma, the death drive, and mass psychology—contributions that cemented psychoanalysis as a discourse and field of inquiry in the 20th century and beyond. ...

With 10 years in the books, Brooklyn Institute for Social Research warmly invites you to our 10th Anniversary Institute Social! Join us, Saturday, June 4th, for an evening of great food, open bar, faculty lightning lectures, and, if you dare, karaoke. ...