What is an affective archive? In Archives of Feeling, Ann Cvetkovich describes her attempt to “forge methodologies for the documentation and examination of the structures of affect that constitute cultural experience and serve as the foundation for public cultures” (11). Cvetkovich suggests an “archive of feeling” that would document the structures of feeling underlying American public cultures, such as the lesbian publics that primarily interest Cvetkovich. An affective archive, therefore, demands a recognition of cultural texts “as repositories of feelings and emotions, which are encoded not only in the content of the texts themselves but in the practices that surround their production and reception” (7).

Cvetkovich locates gay and lesbian emotional archives in both material and immaterial objects that may not normally be associated with official archives. This includes personal pictures, documentary films, public performances and festivals, and communal stories or memories. Cvetkovich claims that the archives of feeling are not necessarily found in fixed sites, but they are instead found “in the places, objects, and gestures of lesbian public cultures” (286). Archives of feeling are thus co-created in their recognition and unearthing. That is, encountering and engaging evidence of complex affects as they are located in the production and reception of culture texts is how an archive is created.

What are the effects of civic-produced emotional commonplaces concerning places where we live? How can we intervene in the tendency of these commonplaces to discourage the engagement and archiving of more complex affects?

He asserts that the herding mentality and instincts, which are hard-wired into the most primitive part of every human brain, generate social moods associated with specific timeframes. “Ideas and thoughts move around like a contagious disease and at some point achieve a critical mass, which means that a population has a particular mood at a given time,” he said. “If you have a good way of measuring the social mood, then you have a preview of coming attractions.”

Histories Hidden Engine – 90 mins (in 6 parts)
A curious research documentary, making links between patterns in nature, and social and economic trends. At first it talks about social moods, trends in movies and the stock market. The subsequent focus on stock market trends seems a little overkill, but the link to nature and nature’s patterns makes social moods seem more predictable.

Journal of Behavioral Finance
2005, Vol. 6, No. 3, Pages 144-160/ Social Mood and Financial Economics
John R. Nofsinger‌

The general level of optimism/pessimism in society is reflected by the emotions of financial decision-makers. Because these emotions are correlated across economic participants, our hypothesis leads to three important outcomes. First, social mood determines the types of decisions made by consumers, investors, and corporate managers alike. Extremes in social mood are characterized by optimistic (pessimistic) aggregate investment and business activity. Second, due to the efficient and emotional nature of stock transactions, the stock market itself is a direct measure or gauge of social mood. Third, since the tone and character of business activity follows, rather than leads, social mood, stock market trends help forecast future financial and economic activity. Specific predictions about stock market levels and trading volume, market volatility, firm expansion, leverage use, and IPO and M&A activity are also given.

 

Topics: Development of social moods; What social moods “predict” or tell us; How social moods differ from rhetoric’s classic “situation”