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Affect Is Social, Not Just Personal
- Affect is a collective, free-floating emotion shaped by institutions and material conditions.
- Berlant shows personal feelings like anxiety connect to economic and social structures, not just individuals.
Light-Bulb Moment In Grad School
- Maggie recounts reading Berlant in grad school and feeling a 'light bulb' moment about her academic precarity.
- Cruel Optimism helped her see attachments to lost academic promises as structurally shaped.
Emotions Are Political And Material
- Emotional experiences like anxiety and hopelessness often spring from material and economic realities.
- Treating these affects as political opens collective responses rather than only individual treatment.