Affirm Press is an independent publisher in Melbourne, Australia, dedicated to publishing great stories, big ideas, and the most engaging local and international authors. Our children's list was shortlisted for the 2020 BOP Bologna Best Children’s Publisher of the Year award.
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Affective Bordering is an incisive exploration of the emotional politics of migration and borders. Billy Holzberg dives into the intricate interplay between emotions and migration governance, revealing how emotions work to reinforce racial, sexual, and national hierarchies. Examining pivotal events in Germany during the aftermath of the misnamed 'refugee crisis' in Germany, the book traces the construction of different emotions during key events of this period. Challenging the assumption that positive emotions like hope and empathy necessarily work as a counter to negative emotions like anger or fear, Affective Bordering reveals the racial grammars of deservingness that shape border governance today. Bringing together queer feminist theories of affect with postcolonial border and migration studies, the book offers a thought-provoking perspective on the reproduction and contestation of borders in today's world.
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This volume provides a novel platform to re-evaluate the notion of open-ended intimacies through the lens of affect theories. Contributors address the embodied, affective and psychic, sensorial and embodied aspects of their ongoing intimate entanglements across various timely phenomena. This fascinating collection asks how the study of affect enables us to rethink intimacies, what affect theories can do to the prevailing notion of intimacy and how do they renew and enrich theories of intimacy in a manner which also considers its normative and violent forms. Lively and thought-provoking, this collection contributes to timely topics across the social sciences, representing multiple disciplines from gender studies, sociology and cultural studies to anthropology and queer studies. By so doing, it advances the value of interdisciplinary perspectives and creative methodologies to understanding affective intimacies.
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A fear of one’s own emotions can lead people to develop what has been termed emotion- or affect phobia. To deal with this specific kind of phobia, Affect Phobia Therapy (APT) has proven to be useful. In APT, psychodynamic, cognitive behavioral, and experimental techniques are combined to help the patient to learn to accept and manage emotions again. Research shows that especially people suffering from anxiety or depression and people with avoidant or dependent personality disorders benefit from this method. This book offers a practical explanation of this evidence-based therapeutic method. The eight chapters focus on all different aspects of APT and the underlying theoretical concepts are illustrated with example patient-therapist dialogues. Target Group: psychologists, psychotherapists, students
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This book offers a unique and timely reading of the early Frankfurt School in response to the recent 'affective turn' within the arts and humanities. Resisting the overly rationalist tendencies of political philosophy, it argues that critical theory actively cultivates a powerful connection between thinking and feeling, and rediscovers a range of often neglected concepts that were of vital importance to the first generation of critical theorists, including melancholia, hope, (un)happiness, objects and mimesis. In doing so, it brings the dynamic work of Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Ernst Bloch and Siegfried Kracauer into conversation with more recent debates around politics and affect. An important intervention in the fields of affect studies and social and political thought, Critical theory and feeling shows that sensuous experience is at the heart of the Frankfurt School's affective politics.
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Stress can have a deleterious effect on people's mental, physical, and psychological health. There is a growing body of evidence, however, that suggests animals, both as pets and therapy partners, can help mitigate people's stress levels. This book showcases a rich collection of research papers from Human-Animal Interactions. It highlights research pertaining to pets as well as animal-assisted therapy in both school and professional settings. The book also includes a scene-setting introduction and wrap-up conclusion from the editor. Providing comprehensive information on the impact of animals on human stress, this book is a useful resource for anyone interested in human health or human-animal relationships.
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This book offers the first comprehensive history of white workers from the end of the First World War to Zimbabwean independence in 1980. It reveals how white worker identity was constituted, examines the white labouring class as an ethnically and nationally heterogeneous formation comprised of both men and women, and emphasises the active participation of white workers in the ongoing and contested production of race. White wage labourers' experiences, both as exploited workers and as part of the privileged white minority, offer insight into how race and class co-produced one another and how boundaries fundamental to settler colonialism were regulated and policed. Based on original research conducted in Zimbabwe, South Africa and the UK, this book offers a unique theoretical synthesis of work on gender, whiteness studies, labour histories, settler colonialism, Marxism, emotions and the New African Economic History.
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'Realist film theory and cinema' embraces studies of cinematic realism and 19th century tradition, the realist film theories of Lukács, Grierson, Bazin and Kracauer, and the relationship of realist film theory to the general field of film theory and philosophy. This is the first book to attempt a rigorous and systematic application of realist film theory to the analysis of particular films. The book suggests new ways forward for a new series of studies in cinematic realism, and for a new form of film theory based on realism. It stresses the importance of the question of realism both in film studies and in contemporary life. Aitken's work will be of interest to scholars and advanced students of film studies, literary studies, media studies, cultural studies and philosophy.
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Lukácsian film theory and cinema explores Georg Lukács' writings on film. The Hungarian Marxist critic Georg Lukács is primarily known as a literary theorist, but he also wrote extensively on the cinema. These writings have remained little known in the English-speaking world because the great majority of them have never actually been translated into English - until now. Aitken has gathered together the most important essays and the translations appear here, often for the first time. This book thus makes a decisive contribution to understandings of Lukács within the field of film studies, and, in doing so, also challenges many existing preconceptions concerning his theoretical position. For example, whilst Lukács' literary theory is well known for its repudiation of naturalism, in his writings on film Lukács appears to advance a theory and practice of film that can best be described as naturalist. Lukácsian film theory and cinema is divided into two parts. In part one, Lukács' writings on film are explored, and placed within relevant historical and intellectual contexts, whilst part two consists of the essays themselves. This book will be of considerable interest to scholars and students working within the fields of film studies, literary studies, intellectual history, media and cultural studies. It is also intended to be the final volume in a trilogy of works on cinematic realism, which includes the author's earlier European film theory and cinema (2001), and Realist film theory and cinema (2006).
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When a malevolent multinational arrives on our shores, familiar creatures like pontianaks, manananggals, rākṣasīs and ba jiao guis are forced out of their jobs. Some give in and sign up for mundane corporate life – but others would rather fight than join the broken-spirited hordes of the (desk)bound. Benjamin Chee’s comics and Wayne Rée’s prose intertwine in this collection to bring you familiar Asian mythology in an even more familiar setting: the realm of dead-end work, glass ceilings and truly hellish bosses.
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Art, museums and touch examines conceptions and uses of touch within arts museums and art history. Candlin deftly weaves archival material and contemporary museology together with government policy and art practice to question the foundations of modern art history, museums as sites of visual learning, and the association of touch with female identity and sexuality. This remarkable study presents a challenging riposte to museology and art history that privileges visual experience. Candlin demonstrates that touch was, and still is, crucially important to museums and art history. At the same time she contests the recent characterisation of touch as an accessible and inclusive way of engaging with museum collections, and argues against prevalent ideas of touch as an unmediated and uncomplicated mode of learning. An original and wide-ranging enquiry, this book is essential reading for scholars and students of museum studies, art history, visual culture, disability, and for anyone interested in the cultural construction of the senses. ;
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In the mid-1970s, a long wave of contentious radicalism swept through Italy. 'Proletarian youth', 'metropolitan Indians', 'the area of Autonomy': a shifting galaxy of groups and movements practised new forms of activism. Factories and universities were occupied; rent and utility payments were withheld; neo-Fascists and drug pushers were attacked on sight. The movements were at once creative and brutal, intransigent and playful. A particular target for mockery was the parliamentary Left, and above all the Italian Communist Party (PCI). An earlier wave of radical activism had culminated in the Hot Autumn of 1969; then, the PCI had managed to 'ride the tiger' of industrial militancy, emerging with its credibility enhanced. Now, however, the PCI was committed to compromise with the ruling Christian Democrats. The second cycle of contention thus ended in a hostile engagement: rather than adopt their policies, the PCI labelled the movements Fascists, criminals and hooligans. By the end of 1977 the movements were broken, while the PCI had moved sharply to the Right. The main beneficiaries were left-wing 'armed struggle' groups such as the Red Brigades. Building on Sidney Tarrow's 'cycle of contention' model and drawing on a wide range of Italian materials, Phil Edwards has told the story of a unique and fascinating group of political movements, and of their disastrous engagement with the mainstream Left. As well as shedding light on a neglected period of twentieth century history, this book offers lessons for understanding today's contentious movements ('No Global', 'Black Bloc') and today's 'armed struggle' groups. ;
