Speculative Affect: Objects and Emotions is an edited collection examining the intersection between affect and objects in the fields of literature, cultural theory, and cultural production. The word “speculative” in the title references recent philosophical and cultural work in the “speculative turn,” a philosophical field that includes speculative realism, new materialisms, “thing” theory, or object-oriented ontology, where the object is analyzed apart from human consciousness and human use-value. By linking this return to an ontological object realism beyond human consciousness with affect theory’s reimagining of corporeality by exploring attachments, bodily sensations, autonomic responses, and emotions as embodied forces beyond conscious knowing, this work addresses the last frontier in radically reconfiguring the status of human life – the division and hierarchy between so-called inert material and the apparent “superiority” of humanity.
