Andrew Snyder, integrated researcher at INET-md, authors “Affect Affects: Music, Politics and Affect in Latin America and Beyond“, the afterword of the special issue The Affective Politics of Music in Latin America of Journal of Extreme Anthropology, fully available in open access
Abstract
This afterword considers the thematic issue ‘The Affective Politics of Music in Latin America,’ published by the Journal of Extreme Anthropology. I begin by questioning the frame of Latin America as a space of inquiry for understanding the relationship between music, politics, and affect. I ask if this such a continental geography provides a coherent space for comparable case studies, and I discuss the genealogy of the construction of Latin America as a particularly affective territory. After discussing the issue’s articles in relation to their primarily national frames, I place the issue within a larger affective turn in Latin American studies and festive studies. I then discuss my forthcoming book project on Brazilian music in Portugal, which, by theorizing ‘postcolonial intimacy,’ seeks to expand affect theory in relation to music and politics beyond national frames. Lastly, I consider the import of affect theory to Latin American musicians themselves, arguing that the fundamental implication of affect theory, that feeling has an impact, are obvious to musicians, who have always self-consciously used music’s affects for political purposes.