[Linganth] Call for papers for a special issue : Language, Work and Affective Capitalism

Tue Jun 25 19:55:25 UTC 2019

*Call for papers for a special issue*

*Language, Work and Affective Capitalism*

edited by

Kati Dlaske, University of Jyväskylä

Alfonso Del Percio, University College London

We invite abstracts for original research articles to be included in a
special issue on Language, Work and Affective Capitalism. Please send your
abstract of max 300-400 words to a.percio at ucl.ac.uk and kati.dlaske at jyu.fi
by 31 August 2019. The accepted abstracts will be included in the SI
proposal for the *Journal of Sociolinguistics*. Please see below for a more
detailed description of the aims and scope of the special issue.

The ’affective turn’ in cultural, anthropological and sociological research
(e.g. Gregg & Seigworth 2010) has encompassed an increased interest in the
interconnections of affect and capitalism, and more specifically, in
“affective capitalism”; the various ways and modes in which “our capacities
to affect and become affected are transformed into assets, goods, services,
and managerial strategies” (Karppi et al. 2016: 9; e.g. Massumi 2015;
Mannevuo 2015; Karppi et al. 2016; McElhinny 2010).

Nowhere are these processes as manifest they are in the world of work, the
domain of capitalist surplus production *par excellence*, where the ongoing
post-Fordist reorganization in the spirit of ‘new work’ hinges on autonomy,
initiative, creativity and flexibility of people and the ‘new economy’
sells, rather than products and goods, services, experiences and lifestyles
(e.g. Adkins & Dever 2016; Bergmann 2019; McRobbie 2016; Hardt & Negri
2004; Allan 2019; Heller 2011; Dlaske 2015).

Previous research has theorized affect in various, often contracting ways.
An influential strand has approached affect as an extra-linguistic
phenomenon, something that precedes and escapes cognitive-discursive
meaning making (e.g. Massumi 2015; Thrift 2007). Another line of thinking
(e.g. Ahmed 2004; Wetherell 2012) has criticized this separation as
untenable. Margaret Wetherell approaches affect as an intertwined part of
discursive practices and states that it is the situated, multisemiotic
practices – and the way they organize affect – that should be at the focus
of research (see also Nissi & Dlaske, *forthcoming*). Taking up this latter
line of thinking, an emerging body of research in sociolinguistics has
started to explore and illuminate the multiple ways in which language
figures in the organization of affective attachments in the domain of work
(e.g. Allan, 2019; Nissi & Dlaske, *forthcoming*) and beyond (e.g. Casey
2018; Dlaske 2017; Milani 2017; Ng 2019).

The aim of the proposed special issue is to offer a space for pushing
further – theoretically, methodologically and empirically – research on the
interconnections between language, work and affective capitalism. Questions
that the contributions of the special issue are expected to address include
(but are not limited to) the following:

-          How does language figure in the organization of affective
attachments in the domain of work?

-          How do these attachments work to advance, reinforce or resist
the logics and circles of capitalist value production?

-          Where and how do the attempts of organizing affective
attachments fail?

-          How do intersectional differences, such as class, race, gender
or age, become manifest in these processes?

-          What social/political/personal and other consequences do these
processes have?

*References:*

Adkins, L. and Dever, M. (2016) *The Post-Fordist Sexual Contract: Working
and Living in Contingency*. Palgrave MacMillan: Houndmills.

Ahmed, S. (2004) *The cultural politics of emotion*. Edinburgh: Edinburg
University Press.

Allan, K. (2019) Volunteering as hope labour: the potential value of unpaid
work for the un- and under- employed. Culture, theory and critique 60(1):
66-83.

Bergman, Frithjof (2019) New Work, New Culture: Work we want and a culture
that strengthens us. Hampshire: Zero Books.

Casey, C. (2018). New Orleans bounce music, sexuality, and affect. *Journal
of Language and Sexuality* 7(1): 5-30

Dlaske, Kati (2017) Music-video covers, minoritised languages, and
affective investments in the space of YouTube. *Language in Society *46
(4): 451−475.

Dlaske, Kati (2015) Discourse matters. Localness as a source of
authenticity in craft businesses in peripheral minority language sites. *CADAAD
Journal *7 (2): 243–262.

Gregg, M. & Seigworth, G. J. (2010) *The affect theory reader*. Durham: Duke
University.

Hardt, M. and Negri, A. (2004) Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of
Empire. New York: Penguin.

Heller, M. (2011). *Paths to Post-Nationalism: A Critical Ethnography of
Language and Identity*. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Karppi, T., Kähkönen, L., Mannevuo, M., Pajala, M. & Sihvonen, T.
(2016) Affective
capitalism: Investments and investigations. *Ephimera: Theory & Politics in
Organization*, 16(4), 1–13.

Mannevuo, Mona (2015) Affektitehdas. Työn rationalisoinnin historiallisia
jatkumoja. [Affect Factory: Rationalisation of Labour in Historical
Continuums] Doctoral Thesis. Annales Universitatis Turkuensis, C, 406.

Massumi, B. (2015) *Politics of affect*. Cambridge: Polity Press.

McElhinny, Bonnie (2010) The audacity of affect: Gender, race and history
in linguistic accounts of legitimacy and belonging. *Annual review of
anthropology*. Vol. 39: 309–328.

McRobbie, A. (2016) *Be Creative. Making a Living in the New Culture
Industries*. Polity: Cambridge.

Milani, T. (2017). The multi-semiotic and affective politics of the
margins. In *Entangled Discourses South-North Orders of Visibility*, ed. by
C. Kerfoot & K. Hyltenstam. London: Routledge.

Ng, C. J. W. (2019) “You are your only limit”: Appropriations and
valorizations of affect in university branding. *Journal of
Sociolinguistics *23 (2) :121–139.

Nissi, R. & Dlaske, K. (*forthcoming*) Empowerment as an
affective-discursive technology in contemporary capitalism: Insights from a
play. *Critical Discourse Studies*.

Thrift, Nigel (2007) Non-Representational Theory: Space, Politics, Affect.
London: Routledge.

Wetherell, (M). (2012) Affect and discourse – What’s the problem? From
affect as excess to affective/discursive practice. *Subjectivity*, 6(4),
349–68.

-- 

*Dr Alfonso Del Percio*
*Lecturer in Applied Linguistics*
UCL Institute of Education
University College London
Centre for Applied Linguistics
20 Bedford Way, Room 628a
London WC1H 0AL
Associate Editor: Language, Culture and Society
https://benjamins.com/#catalog/journals/lcs/main
Blog: https://disruptiveinequalities.com/
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