Unspecified event : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters in Creative Writing at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand. EMBARGOED until 15 April 2028.

Abstract

Affect, the emotional conditions that arbitrate our meaningful relations with ourselves, one another, and the world, is constantly morphing and moving. Affect and its patterns over time are complex, volatile, and ambiguous, yet we rely on them to give us meaningful certainty, both political and personal, in an uncertain world. This critical portion of the thesis explores, through Margaret Wetherell’s affective practice, the possible figuration of affect as a singular unconscious–conscious socially discursive interplay in Samantha Harvey’s 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘩𝘢𝘱𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘜𝘯𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘦: 𝘈 𝘠𝘦𝘢𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘕𝘰𝘵 𝘚𝘭𝘦𝘦𝘱𝘪𝘯𝘨. The thesis simultaneously examines affect as a force that can escape emotionally laden discursive (and recursive) ideological meaning-making, through the lens of Brian Massumi’s theory of autonomous affect. The creative thesis, alongside the critical, explores the contradictions of affect for myself, an ex Jehovah’s Witness, and its potential figurations, which led me to come out as a trans woman in my fifties. The creative component is a memoir tracing the patterns of affect that have formed me across eleven non-fiction stories. The stories reflect how, the more I research, write, and meditate, the more an understanding of affect escapes my grasp; the sheer complexity of emotions that reciprocate and generate between the unconscious and the conscious overwhelms and exceeds me. They are not binary containers but are integrated with one another, with the body, and across bodies. Where I begin, and another body starts, becomes less clear to me. I am left to locate the self, neither in essence nor in chaos, but in infinitely unfolding space.