Glad animals

speed, affect, and modern literature

Katherine G. Sutherland

pp. 161-182

in: Stephen Ahern (ed), Affect theory and literary critical practice, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019

Abstract

This chapter considers representations of speed in modern literature, or literature of the machine age, arguing that an affective craving for speed permeates thinking, feeling, expression, and subjectivity in modern and postmodern literature. Working forward from Thomas De Quincey to David Foster Wallace, including analyses of F.T. Marinetti, Evelyn Waugh, and Virginia Woolf, Sutherland argues that affect theory cannot be separated from motion and speed and further that narratives of speed open up texts to new critical possibilities. Drawing on Deleuze, Virilio, Massumi, Braidotti, Bennett, and others, Sutherland makes a case for ethical acceleration, wherein accelerated affective experience might be suspended momentarily for critical reflection on future subjectivities, provisionally matching critical understanding to the velocity of (post)modern, affective, embodied experiences.

Cited authors

Deleuze Gilles

Woolf Virginia

De Quincey Thomas