Article:

Queer Affect Theory. Zum Verhältnis von Affekt und Trieb bei Sedgwick und Freud

Within the field of queer theory, which has delivered important impulses for more recent discussions of affect, the status of affect nonetheless often remains vague. This shortcoming can be responded to by juxtaposing Sedgwick's affect theory with Freud. As a close reading of their texts shows, the concept of affect in some ways inherits the concept of the drive. This allows for a reading of psychoanalysis as affect theory. Taking the proximity of these discourses as a point of departure, we then see, however, where affect theory departs from psychoanalysis. Moving beyond psychoanalytic mythologies, affect theory no longer claims to address finitude and violence as conditions of human existence.