Eidos and affect : a response to Hook, Sullivan, Dixon and Condor

Abstract

I would like to start this brief response by thanking my critics for their detailed discussion. Their responses provide me with a welcome opportunity to further clarify some of the issues raised by my contribution. I am particularly encouraged by the fact that, while my respondents hail from the same disciplinary backgrounds (social psychologists/psychologists) there is considerable variety in the nature and scope of their responses, ensuring a genuinely interdisciplinary engagement, at least when considered complexly. While I cannot address each of their individual con- cerns within the narrow confines of my response it is hoped that readers of Ethnicities and my critics will consider these remarks as a general and partial response in a bloodless academic exchange. It is, perhaps, worthwhile to point out from the outset that my article stands on two legs – phenomenological and psychoanalytical – without owing its balance to either one of them individually. Reading this article as either an ‘unphenomenological’ contribution or an incom- plete intervention in psychoanalysis would miss the point of the exercise.