2nd International Conference of the CRC 1171 "Affective Societies", April 27-29, 2017

Recent years have witnessed substantial transformations and multiplications of the public sphere that are driven by processes of transnationalization, migration, and digitalization and in turn significantly fuel social and political change. Public Spheres continue to be the most important spaces where these processes and changes and their implications for social coexistence, belonging, and solidarity are debated and negotiated by various actors. Traditional views have portrayed the public sphere as a locus of language-based communicative rationality, deliberation, and the exchange of different views and arguments. The international conference Public Spheres of Resonance: Constellations of Affect and Language will question these normative conceptions and proposes to conceive of contemporary public spheres as often fragmented spaces of affective resonance that emerge from the power of language to affect and to ascribe and instill collective emotion.