CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2013
| Author | Bakko, Matthew |
|---|---|
| Title | The Capture of Affect: (Homo)normalizations of Affective Relationality in the Non-Profit Industrial Complex |
| Summary | This thesis explores affective processes of normalization that actualize through the “Non-Profit Industrial Complex” (NPIC) in the United States. Through utilizing Deleuzian-inspired affect theory, I attempt to examine social structure through affect, the relational and bodily impact that produces a shift in another body's own capacity to affect and be affected. The analytical move of embedding affect within structure shifts our attention to how affective change is delimited, or "captured," through the institutional embeddedness of affect, and how this engenders norms of affective relationality that sustains structure. I argue that the NPIC is a territorial assemblage and apparatus of affective relationality that connects the non-profit system to foundations, wealthy donors, and the associated neoliberal state and corporate sector. Affective processes are transmitted through the NPIC in such a way that engenders patterned refrains of doing social change work that actualize as material practices that sustain the affective relationality of the NPIC. I explore how this is a normalization of affective relationality that mediates the capacity to affect and be affected, delimiting the potential for radical deterritorializations of the NPIC to actualize. I will examine connections between the lesbian and gay movement and the NPIC as a case example, specifically in regards to processes of homonormativity that (homo)normalize affective relations in the NPIC through the relational promise of belonging and access to dominant institutions. This demonstrates that social change work actualized through the NPIC is complicit in delimiting the openness and indeterminacy of affect, and consequently the capacity for actualizing new affective connections, assemblages, and worlds. |
| Supervisor | Cerwonka, Allaine |
| Department | Gender Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2013/bakko_matthew.pdf |
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