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National Affects

The Everyday Atmospheres of Being Political

Angharad Closs Stephens author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Published:8th Sep '22

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

National Affects cover

Through a focus on the affective dimensions of being together, this book examines new approaches, questions and sites in the study of nationalism and global politics.

Identity is widely acknowledged to be a felt experience, yet questions of atmosphere, mood and public sentiments are rarely made central to understanding the global politics of nationalism. This book asks what difference it makes when we address national identity as principally an affective force? National Affects traces how ideas about ‘us and them’ take form in ordinary spaces, in ways that are both deeply felt and hardly noticeable, in studies of global events that range from the London 2012 Olympic Games to responses to acts of terror, the European refugee crisis and ‘Brexit’.

In this timely intervention, Angharad Closs Stephens addresses the affective dimensions of being together to open new angles in the study of nationalism and global politics. She asks how the nation is felt in everyday life, as well as differently experienced, and investigates different forms of enacting being together to generate new insights in the study of national identity. National Affects draws on academic theories in the study of Politics, International Relations and Human Geography, as well as stories, performance works and novels, to establish a new tone of critical enquiry. Informed by longstanding critical interrogations of the politics of ‘us and them’, this book argues that these ideas are not as stable as they are often made to seem.

Drawing on a combination of artistic and academic interventions, this book offers a refreshing approach to conceptualising the politics of nationalism, identity and citizenship. In its focus on everyday atmospheres, it identifies new registers for intervening politically. Overall, National Affects outlines other ways of imagining and practising being political together, beyond the exclusionary politics of nationalism.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com.

Prose that is theoretically attentive and descriptively evocative… It forms a new ‘cultural physics’. * Professor Ben Highmore, Book review of National Affects, Cultural Studies, Oct 2022 *
Drawing on a combination of artistic and academic interventions, this book offers a refreshing approach to conceptualising the politics of nationalism, identity and citizenship. * Progressive Geographies *
I love this book. I began to understand the pull of nationalism through our attachments to the routine and the unremarkable. Angharad Closs Stephens’ narrative is subtle and works through the indirectness of art. Her elegant and precise voice induces trust. It reads as if it were music – gentle, complex, and enriching. I want to reread it, assign it, and share it. The topic is crucial and the form compelling. Perhaps only in this way can we begin to unknot nationalisms. * Naeem Inayatullah, Professor of Politics, Ithaca College, USA *
One of the most insightful books on why it matters to think of politics as the circulation of sentiments, moods and atmospheres, to help us understand why people are drawn to xenophobic nationalism as well as find ways of entreating its believers towards the convivial. Angharad Closs Stephens’ writing is lucid and passionate, her arguments and case studies magically compelling. * Ash Amin, Professor of Geography, University of Cambridge, UK *
National Affects is one of those rare books that left me feeling as though I had sat down and had the opportunity to think deeply with the author. Angharad Closs Stephens provides penetrating insight into various recent events, from the 2021 Olympics, through Thatcher’s funeral, to the 2015 ‘migration crisis’. Theorising nationalism ‘from the street’ through conversing with a range of critical scholars and artists, the book is nothing less than a triumph. * Vicki Squire, Professor of International Politics, The University of Warwick, UK *
Closs-Stephens’ National Affects offers an innovative, refreshing take on the divisive, nationalist politics that increasingly characterize the global scene. Beautifully written and wonderfully insightful, National Affects rigorously refuses the false binaries often created through affective atmospheres: being ‘with’ or ‘against’ the nation, taking decisive action or being struck by paralysis. An alternative vision is offered in place of these damaging options, one that stresses ambivalence and the everyday capacity to be with others whilst muddling through. This book will be crucial reading for students of political geography, nationalism and the politics of affect. * Dan Bulley, Reader in International Relations, Oxford Brookes University, UK *
A meticulously researched exploration into the subtle and emotive underpinnings of contemporary nationalism … Academically rigorous and intellectually stimulating … It is a pivotal contribution to the academic discourse on nationalism in the contemporary world. * Social Identities *

ISBN: 9780755641437

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

232 pages