A Talk by Angela Xiao Wu of New York University

Much attention to affective computing has focused on its alleged ability to “tap into human affects,” which has also become a trope foundational to broader theoretical frameworks of big data surveillance. Drawing on the conceptual distinction between emotionology and actual emotional experiences, this talk calls to reorient critical analysis away from affective computing’s design epistemics to its social life. I trace the social life of such portable technologies as sentiment analysis and Like buttons in China, and discuss the type of politics that allowed them to redefine collective action. Approaching affective computing at the level of the emotionological, I demonstrate, opens up new inquiries that focus our attention away from interiorized subjects onto conditions of collective existence.

Presenter: Angela Xiao Wu
Angela Xiao Wu is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. Broadly her works investigate the connections between media technologies, knowledge production, and politics. She’s currently working on a book that examines how public culture takes shape when systems thinking informs its conception and governance.

This event is co-sponsored by the Institute of Communications Research and the Department of Communication.