Ordinary Affects and Cruel Optimism: A Phenomenological Study of Affective Responses in Rachel Seiffert’s “Field Study”

Abstract

This paper explores the intersection of Affect Studies, Textual Criticism, and Phenomenology to broadly examine the affective responses contemporary literature evokes. Focusing on Rachel Seiffert’s short story “Field Study” (2004), it argues that the narrative’s spatial poetics of the ordinary activate an affective mode of reading that unsettles the distinction between textual representation and lived experience. Through its quiet yet insistent attention to relationality—both human and ecological—the narrative fosters an embodied awareness of interconnectedness, challenging assumptions about individual agency, historical accountability, and the socio-political conditions of the post-Cold War landscape. Drawing on Bachelard’s spatial poetics, Kathleen Stewart’s Ordinary Affects, and Lauren Berlant’s Cruel Optimism, the analysis reveals an urgent sense of socio-political and existential transformation. Heidegger’s concept of “dwelling” further exposes how the text questions Western modernity’s promises of well-being. Ultimately, “Field Study” discloses the paradoxes of optimism and loss while advocating for a relational understanding of existence.