Feminist Philosophy and the Affective Turn: An ex ante Response

Abstract

The affective turn developed as a matrix of conceptual discussion during the passage between the 20th and 21st centuries and, among many other debates, argued in favor of the productivity of the distinction between affect and emotion. The objective of this article is to point out the type of intervention that feminist philosophy deployed on this issue before the irruption of this tradition and, secondly, to establish what content can be given to the idea of affective agency under this framework. The core of the argument leads us to go through a series of fundamental interventions by the feminist philosopher Iris Marion Young who, according to my assessment, scrutinized some of the problematic political effects of certain arguments that, to this day, form the heart of the affective turn in its most orthodox version.