Keynote – Affect Theory for Uncertain Futures
Carolyn Pedwell gave the closing lecture at the Affective Societies Annual Conference, ‘Mobilizing Affect – Affective Mobilization’, in Berlin, Germany.
Held at the ICI Berlin from 21-23 May 2025, the conference explored the powerful role of affect and emotion in driving social and political mobilization. It examined the dynamics of affect in prompting (political) action, shaping activist practices, and sustaining social movements. Featuring contributions from academics, activists, and artists, the conference aimed to deepen the understanding of the role of affect in mobilizing social transformation – across the political spectrum.
Carolyn’s lecture, ‘Affect Theory for Uncertain Futures: Encountering the Cybernetic Archive’, explored the particular modalities, moods, and mobilizations affect theory offers for grappling with emergent socio-political, technological, and ecological crises and challenges amid growing uncertainty and upheaval.
From the dynamics of global reactionary politics to the risks of generative AI to the ravages of climate emergency, affective relations are central to the political intensities and infrastructures of the present. But what resources and techniques might affect studies also offer for intuiting, speculating, experimenting with, composing, re-making, refusing and/or surviving the future – wherein ‘the future’ is understood to be multiple, differentiated, unpredictable, and under threat? Focusing on the transnational history of weather forecasting and atmospheric prediction and control as an orienting case which entangles cybernetics, climate change, global inequalities, post-truth politics, chaos, and machine learning-generated models of the future, the talk asked: What could an affect theory and praxis for uncertain futures look like? What does it feel like? What can it do?
See further information about the conference and recordings of key talks here.
