The motor of being: a response to Steve Pile’s ‘Emotions and affect in recent human geography’

Abstract

Here, I argue two points related specifically to what Pile refers to as “affectual geographies”: firstly, to defend “what is important about this work”, and secondly to consider the slippage between affect and emotion, its genealogy and potential pitfalls, and what this means in terms of the “space in-between” the affective and the subjective registers. Finally, I suggest an alternative, materialist approach to the interplay between these registers to Pile’s suggestion of a “transplanting” of psychoanalytic concepts.