CFP: “A Place to Feel: Writing and Staging Affect in Oceanic Literatures”
| Type of post: | Association news item |
| Sub-type: | No sub-type |
| Posted By: | David O'Donnell |
| Status: | Current |
| Date Posted: | Fri, 31 Oct 2025 |
CFP: “A Place to Feel: Writing and Staging Affect in Oceanic Literatures”
For a special issue of The Journal of Postcolonial Writing
Guest editors: Jessica Maufort (Université libre de Bruxelles, ULB), Marc Maufort (Université libre de Bruxelles, ULB), David O’Donnell (Victoria University of Wellington / Te Herenga Waka),
In tikanga Māori, “land provides a place for one to stand.” This notion is “inherent in the concept of tūrangawaewae, a place for the feet to stand; where one’s rights are not challenged, where one feels secure and at home” (Mead 276). Composed of “tūranga (standing place) and waewae (feet)” (Royal np), the term tūrangawaewae suggests a connection with the experiencing body, and by extension with sensation, feeling, and emotion. Hirini Moko Mead’s definition quoted above evokes this feeling of security that such a place inspires, or at least is supposed to. “A place to stand” (tūrangawaewae) is thus also potentially “a place to feel”: where a vibrant ecosystem of human and nonhuman beings dwell and feel through their body and mind. They experience affectively their attachment to this interconnected web that is “home.” Rather than a fixed and unique location, the fraught concept of “place” is here construed along Dorreen Massey’s lines: its distinctiveness lies in “that throwntogetherness, the unavoidable challenge of negotiating a here-and-now (itself drawing on a history and a geography of thens and theres); and a negotiation which must take place within and between both human and nonhuman” (Massey 140). One’s dwelling-place further bridges the material and immaterial, the natural and cultural, as it is indeed also shaped by a constellation of stories and events, both past and present. Likewise, the prism of affect, through which place will be discussed in this special issue, bridges the (alleged) gap between mind and body, the intimate and the collective, nature and culture.
As Gregg and Seigworth explain, there is no unified theory and approach to affect (6-8). The notion itself is open to debate, especially in its relation to that of emotion. On the one hand, some theorists differentiate the two, associating affect with bodily sensations, and emotion with the cognitive, sociolinguistic denomination of such sensory and subjective experience (Massumi; Kosofsky Sedgwick and Frank; Gregg and Seigworth). On the other hand, critics have recently blurred the lines between affect and emotion by understanding the former “as an assemblage of thought and emotion and, inevitably, as a theory of emotions as well” (Carrière, Mathis-Moser, and Dobson xv). Similarly, this special issue envisions “affect” in a wide sense, stranding all kinds of feelings, articulated either through physical (body) or emotional/imaginative (mind) perceptions, or through both. Emotions and affects “show us how all actions are reactions, in the sense that what we do is shaped by the contact we have with others” (Ahmed 4).
Since their flourishing in the 1990s with staple works by Massumi, Sedgwick and Frank, and Clough and Haley, affect studies have continued to diversify, notably through dialogues with literary and cultural studies (e.g. Houen) and more recently with ecocritical studies (e.g. Weik von Mossner). Ecocriticism’s recent turn to affect seems primarily motivated by today’s context of ecological crisis and the manifold feelings it inspires us. Many of these are “negative feelings” – fear, despair, anger, grief – in an age which some call the “Anthropocene” and which sees the multiscalar repercussions of climate change, the accelerated rate of animal species’ and plants’ extinction, humankind’s predicted demise, the continued pollution of our ecosystems and oceans, the melting of the poles and glaciers worldwide, the ever increasing violence of hurricanes and floods, etc. Without surprise, much of the recent ecocritical scholarship explores the notions of “eco-anxiety,” “eco-trauma,” “ecological grief,” and “solastalgia” (for an introductory overview, see Craps).
This special issue invites scholarly essays that reflect on “affect in place” and “places of affect” within the literary production in English hailing from Oceania. As a geographical and cultural scope, Oceania here encompasses Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands. As for literary media, we would call for articles investigating case studies in (short) fiction, poetry, as well as theatre and drama. We welcome discussions based on wide understandings of “place” and “affect,” as well as of correlated concepts such as “feeling” and “emotion,” “environment,” “nature,” “nonhuman,” “(post)colonial,” etc.
A non exhaustive list of topics and questions for scrutiny includes:
Works Cited
Ahmed, Sara. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2004.
Carrière, Marie, Ursula Mathis-Moser, Kit Dobson, eds. All the Feels: Affect and Writing in Canada = Tous les sens : affect et écriture au Canada. Edmonton : U of Alberta P, 2021.
Clough, Patricia Ticineto and Jean Halley, eds. The Affective Turn: Theorizing the Social. Durham: Duke UP, 2007.
Craps, Stef. “Climate Trauma.” In The Routledge Companion to Literature and Trauma. Eds. Colin Davis and Hanna Meretoja. Abingdon: Routledge, 2020. 275-84.
Gregg, Melissa and Gregory J. Seigworth. The Affect Theory Reader. 1st ed. Durham: Duke UP, 2010.
Houen, Alex, ed. Affect and Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2020.
Kosofsky Sedgwick, Eve and Adam Frank. “Shame in the Cybernetic Fold.” Critical Inquiry 21.2 (Winter 1995): 496-522.
Massey, Dorreen. For Space. London: SAGE, 2005.
Massumi, Brian. “The Autonomy of Affect.” Cultural Critique 31 (Autumn 1995): 83-109
Mead, Hirini Moko. Tikanga Māori: Living by Māori Values. Huia: Wellington, 2003.
Royal, Te Ahukaramū Charles. “Papatūānuku – the land – Tūrangawaewae – a place to stand.” Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand. https://teara.govt.nz/en/papatuanuku-the-land/page-5 Accessed 31 July 2025.
Weik von Mossner, Alexa. Affective Ecologies: Empathy, Emotion, and Environmental Narrative. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2017.
For a special issue of The Journal of Postcolonial Writing
Guest editors: Jessica Maufort (Université libre de Bruxelles, ULB), Marc Maufort (Université libre de Bruxelles, ULB), David O’Donnell (Victoria University of Wellington / Te Herenga Waka),
In tikanga Māori, “land provides a place for one to stand.” This notion is “inherent in the concept of tūrangawaewae, a place for the feet to stand; where one’s rights are not challenged, where one feels secure and at home” (Mead 276). Composed of “tūranga (standing place) and waewae (feet)” (Royal np), the term tūrangawaewae suggests a connection with the experiencing body, and by extension with sensation, feeling, and emotion. Hirini Moko Mead’s definition quoted above evokes this feeling of security that such a place inspires, or at least is supposed to. “A place to stand” (tūrangawaewae) is thus also potentially “a place to feel”: where a vibrant ecosystem of human and nonhuman beings dwell and feel through their body and mind. They experience affectively their attachment to this interconnected web that is “home.” Rather than a fixed and unique location, the fraught concept of “place” is here construed along Dorreen Massey’s lines: its distinctiveness lies in “that throwntogetherness, the unavoidable challenge of negotiating a here-and-now (itself drawing on a history and a geography of thens and theres); and a negotiation which must take place within and between both human and nonhuman” (Massey 140). One’s dwelling-place further bridges the material and immaterial, the natural and cultural, as it is indeed also shaped by a constellation of stories and events, both past and present. Likewise, the prism of affect, through which place will be discussed in this special issue, bridges the (alleged) gap between mind and body, the intimate and the collective, nature and culture.
As Gregg and Seigworth explain, there is no unified theory and approach to affect (6-8). The notion itself is open to debate, especially in its relation to that of emotion. On the one hand, some theorists differentiate the two, associating affect with bodily sensations, and emotion with the cognitive, sociolinguistic denomination of such sensory and subjective experience (Massumi; Kosofsky Sedgwick and Frank; Gregg and Seigworth). On the other hand, critics have recently blurred the lines between affect and emotion by understanding the former “as an assemblage of thought and emotion and, inevitably, as a theory of emotions as well” (Carrière, Mathis-Moser, and Dobson xv). Similarly, this special issue envisions “affect” in a wide sense, stranding all kinds of feelings, articulated either through physical (body) or emotional/imaginative (mind) perceptions, or through both. Emotions and affects “show us how all actions are reactions, in the sense that what we do is shaped by the contact we have with others” (Ahmed 4).
Since their flourishing in the 1990s with staple works by Massumi, Sedgwick and Frank, and Clough and Haley, affect studies have continued to diversify, notably through dialogues with literary and cultural studies (e.g. Houen) and more recently with ecocritical studies (e.g. Weik von Mossner). Ecocriticism’s recent turn to affect seems primarily motivated by today’s context of ecological crisis and the manifold feelings it inspires us. Many of these are “negative feelings” – fear, despair, anger, grief – in an age which some call the “Anthropocene” and which sees the multiscalar repercussions of climate change, the accelerated rate of animal species’ and plants’ extinction, humankind’s predicted demise, the continued pollution of our ecosystems and oceans, the melting of the poles and glaciers worldwide, the ever increasing violence of hurricanes and floods, etc. Without surprise, much of the recent ecocritical scholarship explores the notions of “eco-anxiety,” “eco-trauma,” “ecological grief,” and “solastalgia” (for an introductory overview, see Craps).
This special issue invites scholarly essays that reflect on “affect in place” and “places of affect” within the literary production in English hailing from Oceania. As a geographical and cultural scope, Oceania here encompasses Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands. As for literary media, we would call for articles investigating case studies in (short) fiction, poetry, as well as theatre and drama. We welcome discussions based on wide understandings of “place” and “affect,” as well as of correlated concepts such as “feeling” and “emotion,” “environment,” “nature,” “nonhuman,” “(post)colonial,” etc.
A non exhaustive list of topics and questions for scrutiny includes:
- Affect-emotion and/or mind-body interplay when approaching place:
- How is our affective embeddedness into our dwelling place both a bodily and imaginative/cognitive process?
- How do we relate emotionally to a place? How is our physical perception of it infused with emotional feelings? Conversely, how does our state of mind shape such a somatic approach?
- How does this place impact, or define, us emotionally? Conversely, how does affect influence our home and our relationship to home?
- Non-anthropocentric approaches to affect: nonhumans’ affective and/or emotional capacities in literary artistic production. Does place, as a vibrant community of more-than-human beings and natural elements, display affective sensations and reactions, especially when in contact with human inhabitants? How could interspecies dialogue also take place at the affective level?
- Transcending “negative” affective responses: Question of “positive” affects, sensations, and emotions in the dire times of ecological crisis. How can Oceania, often portrayed as a victim to climate change, be associated with feelings other than anxiety, pity, and mourning? Where do ecophobic and ecophilic feelings toward a place start or stop being meaningful as levers for creativity and meaning production?
- Decolonising approaches: Affect and colonial or post/neo/decolonial perceptions of “the place where you stand”; Contribution of affect, as a methodological/analytical reading grid, to revisions of “the postcolonial” notion. How does affect intervene in humankind’s relationship to Oceanic places marked by ecological imperialism (resources extraction industries, nuclear colonialism, etc.)?
- Affect and the role of culture: Past and present cultural practices (storytelling, guardianship, memorials,...) fuelling affective/emotional attachment to place. How have Indigenous and non-Indigenous cultures in Oceania adapted some of these in the face of pandemics, new communication technologies, and the multiscalar challenges of climate change?
- Affect and the ethics of care: Insights of affective/emotional attachment to place (or lack thereof) for the question of how we care (or not) for it; varying motivational role of certain affects and/or emotions. How can they provide an incentive for us to attend to issues in local (personal, known) and global (impersonal, remote) places?
- Affect and the role of the arts: Aesthetic/performance devices in literary production (fiction, poetry, play) and performative arts (play, dance, song, ritual) that re-enact/re-stage affect and trigger it in the reader or audience; Interrogating the potentialities of the artistic medium, i.e. the written (prose fiction, poetry) and the performed/oral text (play, poetry); The technical production and the environmental background to a play (site-specific performance).
Works Cited
Ahmed, Sara. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2004.
Carrière, Marie, Ursula Mathis-Moser, Kit Dobson, eds. All the Feels: Affect and Writing in Canada = Tous les sens : affect et écriture au Canada. Edmonton : U of Alberta P, 2021.
Clough, Patricia Ticineto and Jean Halley, eds. The Affective Turn: Theorizing the Social. Durham: Duke UP, 2007.
Craps, Stef. “Climate Trauma.” In The Routledge Companion to Literature and Trauma. Eds. Colin Davis and Hanna Meretoja. Abingdon: Routledge, 2020. 275-84.
Gregg, Melissa and Gregory J. Seigworth. The Affect Theory Reader. 1st ed. Durham: Duke UP, 2010.
Houen, Alex, ed. Affect and Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2020.
Kosofsky Sedgwick, Eve and Adam Frank. “Shame in the Cybernetic Fold.” Critical Inquiry 21.2 (Winter 1995): 496-522.
Massey, Dorreen. For Space. London: SAGE, 2005.
Massumi, Brian. “The Autonomy of Affect.” Cultural Critique 31 (Autumn 1995): 83-109
Mead, Hirini Moko. Tikanga Māori: Living by Māori Values. Huia: Wellington, 2003.
Royal, Te Ahukaramū Charles. “Papatūānuku – the land – Tūrangawaewae – a place to stand.” Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand. https://teara.govt.nz/en/papatuanuku-the-land/page-5 Accessed 31 July 2025.
Weik von Mossner, Alexa. Affective Ecologies: Empathy, Emotion, and Environmental Narrative. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2017.
