Queering the Palimpsest: Affective Entanglement Beyond Dichotomization

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn Cultural Studies, the affective turn is a response to the so-called crisis of representation. Insisting on a crucial difference, some theorists separate representation as it is addressed in psychoanalytic accounts of the subject, from pre-individual bodily capacities, as they are developed in affect theory. In our article, we are revisiting Freud’s model of the mystic writing pad and present a metaphor enhancing an inclusive approach to both: the palimpsest. Following Ahmed and Butler, we understand subjectivity as a constant process of affective surfacing, in which intrapersonal and interpersonal dimensions constitute each other. The metaphor of the palimpsest offers a way to theorize subjectivity as structured by power relations yet open to potentiality, paying attention to the intrapsychic as affective force within encounters between subjects. “Queering the palimpsest” disrupts the dichotomization of ontology versus epistemology, the dichotomous ways of gendering the subject and the “either-or-option” of affect theory and psychoanalysis.