The proliferation of general theories of affect in recent years has emphasized the relative poverty of specifically affective literary theory and criticism. This essay addresses the circulation of affects as mediated by literary works, especially novels. Affects, in the sense of both the intensity of the body in transition and emotion as its “capture and closure” (Massumi), are contagious, but neither “imitation” (Spinoza) nor “transmission” (Brennan) nor the very concept of “contagion” does justice to the complexity of the ways in which the spread and circulation of affect occur in society. Affect is an event, an occurrence, contingent as much upon one’s biology and persisting dispositions as upon the dominant social system of affect production. In spreading and circulation, affect tends toward its other, i.e., sensory and linguistic representations, which may however trigger further affective events. This contradictory dynamism also defines literary creation as well as reading. The mimesis, distinct again from imitation, happening in the two kinds of activity takes on the character of an affective event in which the two entities in mimetic relation undergo mutual affection. Reading is further distinguished from writing by its movement from a singular experience toward the formation of an interpretive community in which affective events that threaten consensus may or may not continue to happen.
KISS
