Skip to main content

The Affect Lab: The Affect Lab

The Affect Lab
The Affect Lab
    • Notifications
    • Privacy
  • Project HomeThe Affect Lab
  • Projects
  • Learn more about Manifold

Notes

Show the following:

  • Annotations
  • Resources
Search within:

Adjust appearance:

  • font
    Font style
  • color scheme
  • Margins
table of contents
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Contents
  5. Introduction: Techniques of the Affect Lab
  6. 1. William James’s Planchette
  7. 2. Books of Faces
  8. 3. The Prison Dynograph
  9. 4. E-Meter Metaphysics
  10. Conclusion: The Epistemology and Aesthetics of Empathy
  11. Acknowledgments
  12. Notes
  13. Bibliography
  14. Index
  15. Figure Descriptions
  16. About the Author

We have only to speak of an object to think that we are being objective. But because we chose it in the first place, the object reveals more about us than we do about it. . . . In point of fact, scientific objectivity is pos- sible only if one has broken first with the immediate object, if one has refused to yield to the seduction of the initial choice, if one has checked and contradicted the thoughts which arise from one’s first observation. Any objective examination, when duly verified, refutes the results of the first contact with the object. To start with, everything must be called into question: sensation, common sense, usage however constant, even etymology, for words, which are made for singing and enchanting, rarely make contact with thought. Far from marvelling at the object, objective thought must treat it ironically.

—GASTON BACHELARD, THE PSYCHOANALYSIS OF FIRE

A new way of thinking—which is always a new way of measuring and presupposes the presence of a new standard, a new sensation-scale—feels itself to be in contradiction with old ways of thinking and constantly says, while resisting them, “that is false.” Examined more closely such a “that is false” really only means “I do not feel anything of myself in that,” “it’s of no interest to me,” “I do not comprehend how you are not able to feel as I do.”

—FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, UNPUBLISHED FRAGMENTS (SPRING 1885–SPRING 1886)

Annotate

Next Chapter
Contents
PreviousNext
Open access edition funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities

Portions of the Introduction and chapter 2 were originally published in a different form in “Books of Faces: Cultural Techniques of Basic Emotions,” NECSUS: European Journal of Media Studies 8, no. 1 (2019): 125–50; the original article was published under a CC-BY-4.0 Creative Commons license.

Copyright 2023 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota

The Affect Lab: The History and Limits of Measuring Emotion is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).
Powered by Manifold Scholarship. Learn more at
Opens in new tab or windowmanifoldapp.org