Thinking Through Affective Uncertainty: What Does it Do, and How is it Relevant to Our Contemporary Moment?

Abstract

How is affective uncertainty produced in art and performance? What does it do as a dramaturgical tool and artistic strategy? The text discusses a politically engaged theatre performance, Your Majesties by Navaridas & Deutinger, and the different strategies used to produce affective uncer tainty and ambivalence in its spectators. This uncertainty can be understood as an unsettlement, and as a tension fraught atti tude that might lead to 'ugly feelings' and suspended agency (Ngai 2005). How do we as spectators navigate our own uncertainties and ambivalence? This entails attentive lis tening to the voices saturating the complex theme, and to tensions causing our uncer tainties. Such affective conditions, however, might also carry a critical potential—useful for navigating our contemporary moment and its many urgencies. The article will also discuss how affective uncertainty ties in with the so called affective turn. in contemporary art and theatre. This was prompted by an interest to study its performative qualities, as well as to take a closer look at what the critical potential of spectator experiences of uncertainty might be. As the title of this essay already shows, this text is guided by the question: What does affective uncertainty do (as a drama turgical and artistic strategy), and how is it relevant to our contemporary moment? To answer this, I will draw on an example from the field of politically engaged contempo rary theatre.