Affirmation, Pain and Empowerment

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Abstract
Feminist theory, not unlike mainstream social theory, has taken an ‘ethical turn’ in the frame of a globalized world that has seen a sharp increase in structural injustices, flows of migration and perennial warfare. This historical context intensifies but also re-structures the traditional terms of the ethical debate about the role of the other in the constitution of the self and the moral imperative to contain and be responsible to and for the other. The paper addresses this debate and tries to argue against the tendency of much contemporary ethical theory to focus primarily on melancholia, mourning and negativity. My argument favors instead an ethics of affirmation. The key question is: What sort of ethical interaction with others is engendered by an affirmative ethics? If joyful affectivity, following Deleuze's reading of Spinoza, is defined as the force that aims at fulfilling the subject's capacity for inter-action with others and for freedom, what does this mean concretely for ethical behavior? What are the political implications of this vision of the subject for trans-national feminist politics?