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In this essay I analyze the ways in which gender and space are shaped and made sense of through digital gameplay. Specifically in the turn based strategy game XCOM: Enemy Within for the MacBook Air with a computer mouse as the primary input device. Using a mixed methods approach consisting of gameplay sessions of XCOM and qualitative interviews with two players regarding their gameplay I argue that earlier research on space within game studies has overlooked the ways in which the shaping of space in gameplay is also gendered. Developing a theoretical framework influenced by gender studies, critical theory, affect theory, assemblage theories of space, and game theory, I argue for how the shaping of space and gender in game-play is interdependent. This in that the shaping of space and gender in digital gameplay is in constant relation and tension with societal norms and the affective capacities of bodies and digital games. In conclusion, I reflect on the possibilities to develop more empirical research based on the the theoretical framework explored in the essay.

<p>There is a scene in Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale in which Offred, eponymous handmaid to the totalitarian theocracy that now governs America, is overwhelmed by the sudden need to laugh. Spasms wrack her body. She crams her hands into her mouth, she fears she will vomit, she imagines she is giving birth. Finally, well aware that her convulsions would register as subversion to a regime that polices bodies and supervises affects, Offred crawls into a cupboard in an effort to "compose herself." Laughter without Humor arose from this passage, from the inexplicable laughter that overwhelms Offred's disciplined body and demolishes her carefully composed self. The suspicion that laughter challenges the self-contained "I" has always been buried in our idioms: the subject "dissolves" in laughter, the individual proliferates suddenly into a "barrel" or "bundle" of laughs, ontological boundaries are breached as we "roar" or "bark" with laughter. In the twentieth-century, laughter appears across a wide variety of artistic forms as a vigorous affective force capable of convulsing being and exploding calcified structures of thought. This project examines the interrelationship between fictional depictions of humorless laughter and the dissolution and reconfiguration of the subject in poststructuralist theory.</p><p>The field of humor studies, which counts Aristotle, Kant, and Freud among its contributors, avoids laughter's irrational properties and instead offers scientific reasons--physiological, evolutionary, and psychological--as to why we laugh. In contrast, Laughter without Humor seeks to understand laughter on its own terms by posing an alternate question: what does laughter do? In four chapters, I consider four discrete strains of humorless laughter: the dankly corporeal flow of a specifically female "dangerous laughter" (Chapter 1), the blustering wave of "ecstatic laughter" associated with mystic experience (Chapter 2), an infectious "grotesque laughter" that tosses the individual back and forth between ontological categories with uncanny fervor (Chapter 3), and the shattering shriek of "atomic laughter" that indexes the experience of total nuclear annihilation (Chapter 4). In particular I focus on literary work from William James, André Breton, T.S. Eliot, Nathanael West, Henri Michaux, Kurt Vonnegut, Stanley Kubrick, Margaret Atwood, and Steven Millhauser; and on philosophical texts by Friedrich Nietzsche, Georges Bataille, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Hélène Cixous, Catherine Clément, Julia Kristeva, Édouard Glissant, Brian Massumi, and Eugenie Brinkema. I ultimately argue that the messy burst of laughter disturbs the intelligibility of both self and text. In so doing, it clears a space to imagine new, provisional models of personhood that are based on affective entanglement rather than rational self-containment.</p> / Dissertation

This work is a theoretical exploration that seeks to better understand the grooming process involved in some cases of domestic trafficking for sexual exploitation in North America. It theorizes the grooming process as a relation of power engaged in a strategy of subjection. The analysis points to how micropolitical deployments of disciplinary techniques restrict the fluidity of agency, enable the habituation of behaviour, modify thought processes, and produce consciousness. This thesis also identifies two political problems in current anti-trafficking legislation and policies in North America. The first is that sex work has become conflated with trafficking for sexual exploitation. This conflation does not serve the interests of sex workers, as it has led to legislation that further criminalizes the sex industry, and to an increase in violence and exploitation within it. It also does not serve the needs of trafficked individuals, as it leads to trafficking being misunderstood, and renders anti-trafficking deployments ineffective as a result. The second is that binary categorizations of consent (as tied to exploitation) in North American trafficking legislation are problematic and theoretically insufficient. Binary conceptions of consent are problematic because: (a) they enable a conflation of sex work and trafficking for sexual exploitation; (b) they force survivors or sex workers to relinquish their agency and identify as “victims” in order to work toward a conviction of their trafficker, or to avoid arrest or deportation; and (c) they emphasize a view of choice/consent that precludes an understanding of how an agent always works within limits that are unique to that individual. They are theoretically insufficient because they rely on liberal understandings of autonomy, which my engagement with Butler, Foucault, and affect theory critiques. This thesis makes the argument that there are varying degrees to which identity and consent are constructed through the production of subjectivities and the reorganization of preconscious thought processes. The “self”, consent, and judgment, are —to varying degrees— produced by external signifiers, institutions, and discourses. Thus, this work points to the need for a more nuanced approach to determine agency, one that does not rely upon binary and static categorizations. / Graduate

Na década de 1990 assistimos a uma tendência na música experimental localizada em diferentes países, a qual pode ser reconhecida como uma volta para o silêncio. Essa tendência é identificada na música do coletivo internacional de compositores-performers Wandelweiser com sede na Alemanha, no estilo Berlin Reductionism da cena Echtzeitmusik na cidade de Berlim, no Onkyô na cidade de Tóquio, no estilo lowercase/quiet microsound que é descentralizado geograficamente, além de outros. A notável relação com o silêncio de 4\'33\" composta em 1952 por John Cage, considerado o criador da música experimental, levanta questões sobre se essa volta para o silêncio poderia ser uma farsa como a recuperação de um dispositivo das vanguardas de meados do século XX ou se ela seria algo diferente disto. O primeiro objetivo deste trabalho é o de \'compreender\' a escuta desse \'novo silêncio\'. Nota-se que o aspecto conceitual do silêncio dessa nova tendência na música experimental é algo de menor expressão se comparado com o seu aspecto \'afetivo\'. Dessa forma, optou-se por uma metodologia especulativa para saber o que o silêncio da recente música experimental \'faz\' no ouvinte ao invés de saber o que esse silêncio \'significa\'. A metodologia é fundamentada pela Teoria do Afeto que consiste em uma volta no início deste século para a filosofia da imanência de Baruch Spinoza, ressignificada por Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari e outros. O método utilizado é o de meta-modelização de Guattari em que a interação de conceitos geram novos conceitos desconhecidos que, dessa forma, permite o devir de elementos que frequentemente escapam dos modelos baseados na representação. Argumentamos primeiramente que a escuta do silêncio na recente música experimental é uma escuta corporal, visto que seu silêncio é afetivo. Para chegarmos a tal resultado, partimos inicialmente de uma análise dos choques tanto das manifestações vanguardistas quanto os do mundo capitalista que, embora sejam de domínios diferentes ambos expressam um potencial para o estudo da recepção corporal. Em seguida, definimos uma noção de recepção corporal por meio do conceito de Corpo-sem-Órgãos. Em um terceiro momento discutimos a possibilidade de um modelo teórico que aborde a escuta para o que está além do som, ou seja, uma escuta corporal do som inaudível, indicando um uso estendido dos modelos \'correlacionistas\' de escuta de Pierre Schaeffer e de Seth Kim-Cohen. Então apresentamos uma série de pesquisas e trabalhos artísticos sob a luz da Teoria do Afeto, além dos conceitos de \'masoquismo produtivo\', \'ruído afetivo\' e \'escuta afetiva\'. Finalmente apresentamos as recentes cenas da música experimental silenciosa que, com o auxílio da interação entre os conceitos discutidos anteriormente e o discurso de músicos e pesquisadores envolvidos com essas cenas torna-se possível especular que o seu silêncio afetivo pode promover um agenciamento para restabelecer a capacidade micropolítica da escuta atuar no ambiente. Essa pesquisa pretende assim contribuir com uma investigação sobre música no campo da Teoria do Afeto e uma investigação do afeto nos campos dos Estudos do Som e da Musicologia. / In the 1990s we witnessed in different countries a trend in experimental music that can be acknowledged as a turn to silence. Such a trend is verified in the musical expression of the Wandelweiser Group; in the Berlin Reductionism style from the Echtzeitmusik scene; on Onkyô scene; in the lowercase/quiet microsound style and others. The noteworthy connection with the silence of 4\'33\" composed in 1952 by John Cage arouses questions about whether this turn to silence could be a \'farse\' or if it would be diverse something. The first aim of this research is to \'understand\' listening to this \'new silence\'. It is observed that the \'conceptual\' aspect of the silence related to this new trend in experimental music is something exposing lower expression if compared with its \'affective\' feature. Thus, we elected a speculative methodology in order to know what the silence of this experimental music \'does\' in the listener rather than knowing what that silence \'means\' indeed. This selected methodology is based on the Affect Theory, which consists of a turn at the beginning of this century to Baruch Spinoza\'s philosophy of immanence whose work was restated by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari afterward. The method used is Guattari\'s meta-modelisation in which the interaction of concepts bears new concepts that, in this way, also allows for the becoming of elements that frequently escape from models based on representation. We argue first that the listening of silence in the current experimental music is a bodily listening, since its silence is affective. In order to arrive at such a viewpoint, we start from an analysis of the shocks of both avant-garde and capitalist manifestations that, although from different fields both express a potential for the investigation of bodily reception. Next, we conceive a notion of bodily reception through the Artaud\'s concept of Body-without-Organs. In a third moment we discussed the possibility of a theoretical model that approaches listening for what is beyond sound, that is, a bodily listening of the inaudible sound, pointing to an extended usage proposition of the \'correlation\' models of listening by Pierre Schaeffer and Seth Kim - Cohen. Then we present a sequence of researches and artistic works under the prism of the Affect Theory, as well as the concepts of \'productive masochism\', \'affective noise\' and \'affective listening\'. At last we offer an overview of the current scenario related to silent experimental music that, with the aid of the interaction between the concepts discussed beforehand and as well the discourse of musicians and researchers involved with these musical prospects, it becomes possible to speculate that their affective silence could promote an agency to reestablish the micropolitic capacity of listening which is able to act in the environment. Therefore this research intends to contribute with an investigation on music in the field of Affect Theory and an investigation of affect in the Sound Studies and Musicology.

Na década de 1990 assistimos a uma tendência na música experimental localizada em diferentes países, a qual pode ser reconhecida como uma volta para o silêncio. Essa tendência é identificada na música do coletivo internacional de compositores-performers Wandelweiser com sede na Alemanha, no estilo Berlin Reductionism da cena Echtzeitmusik na cidade de Berlim, no Onkyô na cidade de Tóquio, no estilo lowercase/quiet microsound que é descentralizado geograficamente, além de outros. A notável relação com o silêncio de 4\'33\" composta em 1952 por John Cage, considerado o criador da música experimental, levanta questões sobre se essa volta para o silêncio poderia ser uma farsa como a recuperação de um dispositivo das vanguardas de meados do século XX ou se ela seria algo diferente disto. O primeiro objetivo deste trabalho é o de \'compreender\' a escuta desse \'novo silêncio\'. Nota-se que o aspecto conceitual do silêncio dessa nova tendência na música experimental é algo de menor expressão se comparado com o seu aspecto \'afetivo\'. Dessa forma, optou-se por uma metodologia especulativa para saber o que o silêncio da recente música experimental \'faz\' no ouvinte ao invés de saber o que esse silêncio \'significa\'. A metodologia é fundamentada pela Teoria do Afeto que consiste em uma volta no início deste século para a filosofia da imanência de Baruch Spinoza, ressignificada por Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari e outros. O método utilizado é o de meta-modelização de Guattari em que a interação de conceitos geram novos conceitos desconhecidos que, dessa forma, permite o devir de elementos que frequentemente escapam dos modelos baseados na representação. Argumentamos primeiramente que a escuta do silêncio na recente música experimental é uma escuta corporal, visto que seu silêncio é afetivo. Para chegarmos a tal resultado, partimos inicialmente de uma análise dos choques tanto das manifestações vanguardistas quanto os do mundo capitalista que, embora sejam de domínios diferentes ambos expressam um potencial para o estudo da recepção corporal. Em seguida, definimos uma noção de recepção corporal por meio do conceito de Corpo-sem-Órgãos. Em um terceiro momento discutimos a possibilidade de um modelo teórico que aborde a escuta para o que está além do som, ou seja, uma escuta corporal do som inaudível, indicando um uso estendido dos modelos \'correlacionistas\' de escuta de Pierre Schaeffer e de Seth Kim-Cohen. Então apresentamos uma série de pesquisas e trabalhos artísticos sob a luz da Teoria do Afeto, além dos conceitos de \'masoquismo produtivo\', \'ruído afetivo\' e \'escuta afetiva\'. Finalmente apresentamos as recentes cenas da música experimental silenciosa que, com o auxílio da interação entre os conceitos discutidos anteriormente e o discurso de músicos e pesquisadores envolvidos com essas cenas torna-se possível especular que o seu silêncio afetivo pode promover um agenciamento para restabelecer a capacidade micropolítica da escuta atuar no ambiente. Essa pesquisa pretende assim contribuir com uma investigação sobre música no campo da Teoria do Afeto e uma investigação do afeto nos campos dos Estudos do Som e da Musicologia. / In the 1990s we witnessed in different countries a trend in experimental music that can be acknowledged as a turn to silence. Such a trend is verified in the musical expression of the Wandelweiser Group; in the Berlin Reductionism style from the Echtzeitmusik scene; on Onkyô scene; in the lowercase/quiet microsound style and others. The noteworthy connection with the silence of 4\'33\" composed in 1952 by John Cage arouses questions about whether this turn to silence could be a \'farse\' or if it would be diverse something. The first aim of this research is to \'understand\' listening to this \'new silence\'. It is observed that the \'conceptual\' aspect of the silence related to this new trend in experimental music is something exposing lower expression if compared with its \'affective\' feature. Thus, we elected a speculative methodology in order to know what the silence of this experimental music \'does\' in the listener rather than knowing what that silence \'means\' indeed. This selected methodology is based on the Affect Theory, which consists of a turn at the beginning of this century to Baruch Spinoza\'s philosophy of immanence whose work was restated by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari afterward. The method used is Guattari\'s meta-modelisation in which the interaction of concepts bears new concepts that, in this way, also allows for the becoming of elements that frequently escape from models based on representation. We argue first that the listening of silence in the current experimental music is a bodily listening, since its silence is affective. In order to arrive at such a viewpoint, we start from an analysis of the shocks of both avant-garde and capitalist manifestations that, although from different fields both express a potential for the investigation of bodily reception. Next, we conceive a notion of bodily reception through the Artaud\'s concept of Body-without-Organs. In a third moment we discussed the possibility of a theoretical model that approaches listening for what is beyond sound, that is, a bodily listening of the inaudible sound, pointing to an extended usage proposition of the \'correlation\' models of listening by Pierre Schaeffer and Seth Kim - Cohen. Then we present a sequence of researches and artistic works under the prism of the Affect Theory, as well as the concepts of \'productive masochism\', \'affective noise\' and \'affective listening\'. At last we offer an overview of the current scenario related to silent experimental music that, with the aid of the interaction between the concepts discussed beforehand and as well the discourse of musicians and researchers involved with these musical prospects, it becomes possible to speculate that their affective silence could promote an agency to reestablish the micropolitic capacity of listening which is able to act in the environment. Therefore this research intends to contribute with an investigation on music in the field of Affect Theory and an investigation of affect in the Sound Studies and Musicology.

This project develops extant theories of political affect and relational identification and affinity formation by tracing how the visual images of an understudied archive--American superhero comic books--work to build multiple, alternative, fitful, inchoate, and sometimes radically creative spaces for visions of the political to take shape and develop over time. By analyzing and interpreting the generic superhero phenomenon of origin stories in comic books and by mapping the formal and narrative techniques used to construct origin stories, I show how received understandings of power, order, justice, violence, whiteness, masculinity, and heteronormativity often linger outside of language in an analytically untapped relational space between bodies--the space of political affect. Visual images of superheroes thus do more than take up space within political sign-systems; I argue them as material engines of affect, as engines of potential and usefully critical political identities and affinities. Superhero comic books, a cultural form often disregarded as childish or even ideologically dangerous, are thus recovered in this project as theoretically complex, offering speculative feminisms, anti-racism, and queer temporalities that link these popular objects of visual culture to ongoing traditions of utopianism and foundational revisionism within American political culture.

For many people, Japanese life is increasingly marked by precarity. This is often characterized by a lack of social and familial relationships that were the foundation of Japanese society in earlier eras. Buddhism has rarely played a part in addressing these feelings of precarity because Buddhism in Japan is associated with funerals and death. Yet some women participate in and actively create what this dissertation calls “feeling Buddhism,” which combats the feelings of helplessness and social isolation that accompany precarity. Feeling Buddhism is about sensing Buddhism, physically feeling the body perform ritual acts and inhabit sacred space. It is also about the emotions, affects, and feelings that accompany these physical acts. Based in feminist ethnography, this dissertation argues that Japanese women cultivate constructive feelings through Buddhism that enable them to craft deep and meaningful connections with one another. In particular, it focuses on the Buddhist women who belong to the Pure Land Sect or Jōdoshū. Chapter One traces the history of women’s historical involvement in Japanese Buddhism to show that Japanese women have always been active participants in Buddhism. Chapter Two examines three articles written by Japanese scholar-priests to argue that they are more concerned with praising Jōdoshū and Hōnen than addressing women’s relationship with Buddhism. Chapter Three looks at two Jōdoshū women’s groups in Kyoto and utilizes theories of ritualization and affect to argue that these experiences create new and mend existing relationships though Buddhism. Chapter Four looks at the Jōdoshū nun Kikuchi Yūken and her caring labor with young women in Tokyo to argue that her work ought to be considered a form of socially engaged Buddhism. Chapter Five moves beyond Jōdoshū to examine the International Ladies Association of Buddhism and argues that the women within the organization attempt to cultivate upper-class taste and an appreciation for an internationalization.

Though Horacio Quiroga is better known for his jungle tales, he was also a prolific film critic. Writing in the early days of silent cinema, Quiroga channeled his love for the new art into a series of four short stories about film: "Miss Dorothy Phillips, mi esposa" (1919), "El espectro" (1921), "El puritano" (1926), and "El vampiro" (1927). These stories not only reveal Quiroga's passion for the cinema, but also showcase the power of film to affect the spectator. The theoretical basis of my study comes from the Deleuzian concept of affect, being defined as the invisible force or intensity which exists in bodies and can also be transmitted between bodies that have differing capacities for acting on each other. In the case of the cinema, the film and the spectator are the two bodies that participate in this transmission of intensities. In the first chapter, I discuss how "El puritano" reveals that film's resurrected images can be more powerful than the originals. Then, I analyze "El espectro," which serves as an example of how film's mimetic qualities increase its power to affect spectators and produce in them visceral reactions. Particularly striking in this story is the filmic gaze of an on-screen actor, a gaze which transmits affect to the other characters. In the second chapter, I analyze "Miss Dorothy Phillips, mi esposa," particularly how it theorizes the erotic gaze of filmed actresses. Then I discuss "El vampiro," in which I study the relationship of two men with the filmed image of a beautiful Hollywood actress. In the story, an inventor is able to "move" film in such a way as to create a spectral woman who can interact with others. However, by the end of the story it becomes clear that it is the film—personified by this spectral woman—that holds the true power in this relationship of bodies.

Sociala medier har ökat lavinartat sedan internet nådde människors hem under  90-talet. Enbart det sociala mediet Facebook har  243 miljoner användare i Europa. Sociala medier har även blivit ett primärt val för de flesta användare för interaktion med varandra. I en värld där informationsflödet och varje relation är konstant uppmärksammades en brist i hur sociala medier interagerar med användaren. För att undersöka hur individer upplever notifikationerna i sociala medier användes grundaffekterna av Silvan Tomkins som kompletterades via en litteraturstudie. Notifikationer på sociala medier undersöktes sedan kvalitativt med hjälp av  tester och  användare i fokusgruppsmiljö. Denna studie resulterade i ett antal definierade känslor  som  individer upplever av notifikationer  samt  åsikter kring redan befintlig funktionalitet och förslag till riktlinjer ur ett användarcentrerat perspektiv. / Social media has increased exponentially since the Internet reached people's homes during the 90's. The social media Facebook alone has 243 million users in Europe, social media also became a primary choice for most users to interact with each other. In a  world where the information flow and each relationship are constant, a flaw emerged in how the social media interacts with the user. To investigate how individuals experience notifications in social media, affect theory by Silvan Tomkins was used and then supplemented by a literature review. The notifications were then examined qualitatively  using tests and  with the help of users in a focus group setting. This study resulted in  a defined set of emotions that individuals experience of notifications as well as  opinions  about  existing  functionality  and  proposed guidelines from a user-centered perspective.