Introduction: affective citizenship and the politics of identity, control, resistance

Abstract

In this introduction, we situate the growing and diverse literature on affect and citizenship as only beginning to capture the world around us, where tensions and hope run high. We present a brief overview of the literature on affective citizenship, with particular attention to how affect is implicated in the politics of identity, resistance, and control. We argue that this issue builds on nascent discussions already underway in journals like Citizenship Studies, and that the pieces included here extend our understanding of both the emancipatory and exclusionary potential of affective citizenship.

Keywords:

• Affect
• emotions
• citizenship
• identity
• resistance
• control

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to each of the reviewers for their insightful and productive comments on the pieces included here. We would also like to thank the Editors of Citizenship Studies for the opportunity to develop this issue and their support throughout the process. Many of the themes and ideas in this issue came together for the first time as a series of panels at the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association in 2015, and we would like to thank the ISA-Canada Section Chairs David Grondin (University of Ottawa) and Ellen Gutterman (Glendon College, York University) for important support for this project. We owe a special debt to John Grant (King’s University College, Western University) for his encouragement and support, especially in this project’s early stages. A final thanks to Korey Pasch and Carling Counter for their assistance in copy editing various versions of these works.