to capture affect, efforts which many theorists think delimit the full potential of affect. Notably, affect allows us to move away from the linguistic meaning-making practices of social life, and consider additional, related, lived dimensions therein. Taken together, these ideas decenter the individual body, and push us to view the environment with its proliferation of agents. The buzz between often-recognizable units sometimes blurs the boundary between each body. As the buzz reaches its fever pitch, at moments of particular passion/intensity, the bodies cease to encase, and are overtaken by a swirling of affects between one another. Crying can play an interesting role here. It engenders a pull between bodies, and a whole set of interactions between those bodies, but it is also, crucially, not only of either of the bodies. It is the basis of their blurring. Throughout this section, I have focused on the transformational potential contained in affects. The crying child helps demonstrate the transformative potential of crying’s affects. This image also provides a platform to engage with the pre-personal, non-conscious and non-rational characteristics of crying’s affect. The baby’s lack of cognitive individuality makes her the perfect actor through which to focus on these qualities. The tears of a baby also serve to remind us of how quotidian, how ordinary crying is. The baby also reminds us that the suppression of tears is a constructed reality, perhaps one in need of reevaluation. It is easy to overlook how crying might be productive because their suppression is familiar and habitual to us, even those of us who cry on a regular basis. Further, crying’s ordinariness is also valuable. Now I want to build on the ideas introduced thus far to theorize the benefits of affective interaction. The remainder of this section will move away from an inquiry into of what work crying does, and instead focus on what work crying can do. In particular, I consider what can crying’s affective dimensions do in the way of relationships between people. I turn to affective solidarity, a term I take from Clare Hemmings, in an effort to further theorize the benefits of affective interaction engendered by crying, though often overlooked.
to capture affect, efforts which many theorists think delimit the full potential of affect. Notably, affect allows us to move away from the linguistic meaning-making practices of social life, and consider additional, related, lived dimensions therein. Taken together, these ideas decenter the individual body, and push us to view the environment with its proliferation of agents. The buzz between often-recognizable units sometimes blurs the boundary between each body. As the buzz reaches its fever pitch, at moments of particular passion/intensity, the bodies cease to encase, and are overtaken by a swirling of affects between one another. Crying can play an interesting role here. It engenders a pull between bodies, and a whole set of interactions between those bodies, but it is also, crucially, not only of either of the bodies. It is the basis of their blurring. Throughout this section, I have focused on the transformational potential contained in affects. The crying child helps demonstrate the transformative potential of crying’s affects. This image also provides a platform to engage with the pre-personal, non-conscious and non-rational characteristics of crying’s affect. The baby’s lack of cognitive individuality makes her the perfect actor through which to focus on these qualities. The tears of a baby also serve to remind us of how quotidian, how ordinary crying is. The baby also reminds us that the suppression of tears is a constructed reality, perhaps one in need of reevaluation. It is easy to overlook how crying might be productive because their suppression is familiar and habitual to us, even those of us who cry on a regular basis. Further, crying’s ordinariness is also valuable. Now I want to build on the ideas introduced thus far to theorize the benefits of affective interaction. The remainder of this section will move away from an inquiry into of what work crying does, and instead focus on what work crying can do. In particular, I consider what can crying’s affective dimensions do in the way of relationships between people. I turn to affective solidarity, a term I take from Clare Hemmings, in an effort to further theorize the benefits of affective interaction engendered by crying, though often overlooked.
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