The Affective Turn: what it is and how it has transformed the social sciences

This paradigm attempts to create new ways of investigating emotions from the social sciences.

Every so often, the development of science and philosophy in our societies has been marked by changes has been marked by transformations that carry the implicit promise that we will know something new, or at least that we will know it in a different way.

Thus, we could identify different stages that were inaugurated after the occurrence of a detour, a rotation, a turn, an alteration, a twist. That is to say, a change of route and sense in the construction of knowledge.

This has occurred with different nuances and in different disciplines. Specifically, within the social sciences in recent decades, there has been a group of works that have been a group of works that have been grouped under the name of "Affective Turn" (Giro Afectivo). (Affective Turn).

What is the Affective Turn?

The Affective Turn is a term used to refer to different works within the social sciences. different works within the social scienceswhose theoretical intention arises mainly in two ways (Lara and Enciso, 2013): the interest in the emotions that inhabit public life, on the one hand, and the effort to produce knowledge that delves into this emotionalization of public life (in contrast to the rationalization characteristic of traditional sciences), on the other.

It is said to be a "Turn" because it represents a rupture with the object of study on which the production of knowledge in the social sciences has traditionally been based. It is also "Affective", because the new objects of knowledge are precisely emotion and affect..

Some of the theories that have been grouped within the Affective Turn have been, for example, the contemporary reformulation of psychoanalytic theory, the Network Actor theory (which connects especially with scientific studies on technology), feminist movements and theories, cultural geography, post-structuralism (which connects especially with art), some theories within the neurosciences, among others.

Likewise, some of the antecedents for this change of route, which we know as the "Affective Turn", are the psychosocial theories originated in the second half of the 20th century, such as socioconstructionism, discursive social psychology, cultural studies of emotions, interpretative sociology, interpretive sociology, social psychology, and theories of the social sciences.interpretive sociology, sociolinguistics, among others (which in turn had taken up several of the most classical theories of sociology, anthropology and phenomenological philosophy).

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Three theoretical-practical consequences of the Affective Turn.

Something that emerged from the "Linguistic Turn" is the proposal that emotions can be studied beyond biology and physiology, with which, social sciences could develop research methods of their own; methods that would account for how (bodily) experience is connected to public life, and vice versa..

Likewise, and without being exempt from criticism and controversy, this proposal derived in the construction of different research methods, where not only emotions and affections gained strength, but also interactions, discourses, the body or gender (and its cultural and historical variability), as social and psychic mobilizers; and also as powerful knowledge builders.

In the following, we will follow the analyses of Lara and Enciso (2013; 2014) to synthesize. three of the theoretical and methodological consequences of the Affective Turn.

1. Rethinking the body

A basic premise in the Affective Turn is that emotions and affect play a very important role in the transformation and production of public life. For example, within institutions and their sectors (the media, health, law, etc.), which have an impact on the way we relate to each other and the way we experience the world.

In turn, emotion and affect are corporeal phenomena (they take place in the body, because they "affect", they connect the body with the world; they are experiences that are felt and occur at a preconscious level). These phenomena can be displaced and also transmitted through discourse.

Thus, the body ceases to be only an entity or a stable, fixed or determined organism; it is also understood as a process that has a Biological mediation, but which is not the only one. a process that has a biological mediation, but which is not the only one..

In short, affect and emotions become important as a unit of analysis, and thus the body leaves the limits of biology, which had explained it only in organic and/or molecular terms. This allows us to think about how experiences shape society and space, and from there, processes such as identity or belonging.

2. Affect or emotion?

Something that has been discussed especially since the Affective Turn is the difference and relationship between "affect" and "emotion". the difference and the relationship between "affect" and "emotion", and later "feeling", and the relationship between "affect" and "emotion".. Proposals differ according to the author and the tradition or discipline in which they are framed.

To put it very briefly, "affect" would be the force or intensity of experience, which predisposes to action; and emotion would be the pattern of corporeal-cerebral responses that are culturally recognized and that delimit the form of social encounters.

For its part, "feeling" (a concept that has developed in a particularly important way in the part of neurosciences that influenced the Affective Turn), would refer to the subjective experience of emotion (the latter would be a more objective experience).

3. Defense of transdisciplinarity

Finally, the Affective Turn has been characterized by defending a transdisciplinary methodological position. It is based on the assumption that a single theoretical current is not enough to explain the complexity of affect, and that it is not enough to explain the complexity of affect. how these affects socially and culturally organize our experiences.Therefore, it is necessary to resort to different orientations.

For example, some of the methods that gain strength from the Affective Turn have been discursive methodologies, narrative analysis, empirical approaches; in connection with genetic sciences, quantum physics, neurosciences or information theories.