Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity

These essays,""a palimpsest of previously published and unpublished material,"" find Sedgwick expanding her impressive critical powers to areas beyond literature and politics. Though she's best known for her work in queer theory (Epistemology of the Closet), Sedgwick has always been interested in""performativity""--how people embody linguistic and non-linguistic concepts. Sedgwick has hardly abandoned explorations of queerness--an essay on shame and Henry James's The Art of the Novel is about as queer as theory gets--but these five pieces find her attuned to the textures of things, and to things themselves. Her readings--of everything from Thackeray to""my friends who are thirty""--take on a sensual quality, exploring the connections between""phenomenology and affect"" and""what motivates performativity and performance"" and""what individual and collective effects are mobilized in their execution."" Fearless, challenging and occasionally exhilarating, Sedgwick remains one of the most courageous critics around.