Browsing by Subject "affect"

Translation process research has a long tradition of viewing the translator as a ’black box’, an isolated agent focused on cognitive problem-solving. Recent approaches have expanded the view to include affects, emotions and even emotion management. The general framework of this study is to investigate affective and attitudinal elements and situational roles that influence a translator’s work process and task definition. To this end, the writer observes a practicing translator’s work self-reflexively using an autoethnographic approach and producing an introspective case study. The purpose of using an introspective and autoethnographic approach is to make the translator’s subjectivity visible and transparent in the study and to highlight the integral role of affect in translatorial action. An important part of this study is an attempt to relate a translator’s practice with current theory. The theoretical part summarizes linguistic and functionalist translation theories and translation process research, giving a review that briefly covers the most current research methods used in the study of cognitive processes in translation. The practical task described and accomplished in this study involves the investigation of two work processes related to the production of a didactic tool. The didactic tool is a word list containing 256 Finnish emotion words, which is used to practice emotional skills in the context of NVC (nonviolent communication). The pedagogical aim of the tool is to enable the users to expand their emotional vocabulary and learn to verbalize experienced feelings more accurately. Developed by Marshall Rosenberg, NVC (nonviolent communication) is a practical application of Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy of nonviolence. The production of the didactic tool involves two work processes, one completed by the translator of the list and the other, a review process, completed by the writer. In the review phase, the aim is to modify the tool according to client specifications and provide a suggestion for a more user-centered tool. The practical result of this study is a new word list containing 170 emotion adjectives collected from Kielitoimiston sanakirja and categorized by basic emotions.

This thesis examines Facebook posts that Finnish animal welfare associations have published about rescue cats. The object of analysis is established as ‘rescue cat stories’ – a particular kind of narrative that tells the story of one or many cats who are rescued or attempted to be rescued by people who work or volunteer for animal welfare associations. Drawing from the fields of feminist animal studies and critical animal studies, the analysis discusses what thematic elements are prominent in viral rescue cat stories that promote neutering and how these stories are constructed narratively and affectively in a social media environment. The research material consists of four individual narratives: three stories of individual cats and one story of a feral cat colony. In order to locate the research topic, the study discusses what kind of differences and similarities there are in animal welfare, animal rights, and animal liberation philosophies, how the philosophies tend to interlock in certain contexts, and where animal rescue work is located in relation to other forms of animal advocacy. Finnish animal rescue work, which has previously been marginalised in academic research, is regarded with a feminist sensitivity that pays heed to the gendered nature of the caring work that rescue workers are involved in while also taking into account the risk of speciesism that follows from considering only some species as ‘protectable’ and ‘lovable’. In agreement with recent research that has been conducted in the field of feminist animal studies, the analysis contests the stark binary of abolitionism and welfarism and suggests that it is crucial to consider interspecies entanglements without resorting to ableist rationalisations that argue that it would be better for dependent domesticated animals to go extinct than to live as vulnerable beings. The topic of the research is analysed thematically with the help of Sara Ahmed’s theorisation of affects, affective economies, and sticky concepts and Susanna Paasonen’s theorisation of viscerally grabbing resonances. Additionally, Ruth Page’s delineation of mediated narrative analysis is employed in order to distinguish what is characteristic of stories that are shared in a social media environment. The methodological concept of ‘shared stories’ further informs the multimodal, mediated, and participatory nature of narratives that are produced, reproduced, and encountered in a social media environment. The analysis identified the act of naming, death, and mourning as prominent thematic elements that form the backbone of viral rescue cat stories. While the act of naming serves an important role in establishing cats as individuals, it does not seem to entail as much power to ignite the affective economy of a shared story as the aspects of death and mourning do. The goal of all the stories studied in the thesis is to promote feline neutering, but neutering as such does not seem to be sticky enough to ignite the affective economy of a post. Therefore, the research material suggests that the kind of stories that provided a sufficiently contextualised account of naming, death (or the risk of death), and mourning were more likely to grab the audience and generate interactions. Finally, the analysis concludes by stating that while it is possible that the affect-based focus on sharing a particular kind of reaction entails the risk of resonating in anthropocentric registers, other-oriented animal narratives can also have the power of inspiring simulative, other-directed empathy.

Since the beginning of the housing crisis in Spain in 2008, la Plataforma por Afectados de la Hipoteca (PAH) has grown to become one of the most dynamic and powerful social movements in the country. In my Master’s thesis, I use theories from political economy, Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), and a minor reading of the work of political philosopher Benedict de Spinoza, to look at the path two people who were “affected by mortgage” took from emotional and financial distress towards collective and transformative agency. Instead of leap-frogging from the personal crisis of our informants to the point of empowerment, I utilise the concept of expansive learning to dwell on the different stages in the process. Through the Spinozan concept of affects and contemporary neuropsychological theories of emotion, I distinguish between different instances of emotion and affect that the informants express as they reflect over how they chose to challenge the banks demanding that they give up their homes. Through collectively processing the hierarchies associated with debt and money, and by expanding the object of their activities from merely overcoming an untenable situation with their mortgage to a wider, shared framework of mutual aid, the informants show how expansive learning in the context of PAH appears as a joyful sensation of an increased capacity to act upon the world together with others. In this framework, expansive learning can, following Spinoza, be understood as a formation of common notions, as people who are dispossessed or risk dispossession encounter each other to find shared ground in their experiences and move from lonely, sad, and passive affects to a joyful and active feeling of collective power. To understand this process, I use thematic analysis together with a theory of affect and emotion to show how phases in the cycle of learning can be understood as successive transitions towards a joyful capacity to act upon the world together with others. Finally, I look at how the intrusion of global financial actors has imposed a serious threat and challenge to this local process of empowerment.