Sponsored by The University Seminar on Affect Studies This workshop seeks to explore the tension between the universal normative claim to truth and the singular claim to truth in affect, focusing on one of the strongest human emotions and experiences: erotic desire. In the absence of an absolute in a post-secular society, the role of affect has stepped in to substantivize many normative claims—either culminating in a ‘politics of feeling’ or in prioritizing individual emotions and affective economies over normative categories such as justice or freedom. This has major implications for two of the most contested concepts in religious, philosophical, political, and literary thought: truth and reason. Erotic desire is often thought to unsettle those very concepts: conceived as inevitably singular moments of rapture and ecstasy and often associated with the loss of (self-)control, desire is believed to be located at the edge of ratio and language and therefore without viable claims to truth. Our workshop will highlight the subversive power of desire and/or affect and its inherent, even if problematic relation to truth and reason. For in-person registration, please email the organizers: Patricia A. Dailey pd2132@columbia.edu Caroline Sauter caroline.sauter@nyu.edu