Communication as Constitutive Transmission? An Encounter with Affect

Abstract

Abstract Affect theory has met with an uneven welcome in communication studies, although attending to affect (i.e., the fluctuating intensities of encounter) could enhance the scope and impact of communication inquiry. This article makes a case for sustained engagement at the field level, across subfields. I argue that affect confronts a premise at the heart of our discipline today: the claim that communication is constitutive as opposed to mere transmission. By engaging with affect, we can recuperate potential eclipsed by this contrast and cultivate communication theory that: (a) informs transmission as a constitutive activity, (b) expands what counts as communication beyond human language and social interaction, and (c) recovers disappeared ways that power operates communicatively. Retuning communication in this way, we can inform what remains enigmatic in affect theory: how communicability happens. Arguably, the capacity to understand and intervene in the present moment depends on developing communication theory of this kind.