<p>Acknowledgements xi</p> <p>Introduction: Affinities as an Invitation to Think Differently 1</p> <p><b>Part One: Sensations of Living</b></p> <p><b>Why Sensations? 7</b></p> <p><b>Facets of Sensation 11</b></p> <p>1. Ashes, ghosts and the ‘sense of presence’ 11</p> <p>2. ‘Grandma’s Hands’ by Bill Withers (version by Gil ScottHeron) 17</p> <p>3. The sensations of others: children’s perspectives 18</p> <p>Looks 21</p> <p>Voices, volume and imitation 22</p> <p>Size, height, weight, growing 24</p> <p>Play fighting and real fighting 26</p> <p>Bodily proximity with others 27</p> <p>Relational traces and bodily inscriptions 27</p> <p>4. The sensory-kinaesthetic intimacies of violence 29</p> <p>5. Becky Tipper’s creaturely ‘moments of being’ 31</p> <p>6. Meat, ‘food-animals’ and Rhoda Wilkie’s ‘sentient commodities’ 33</p> <p><b>Layering the Argument: Sensations of Affinity 39</b></p> <p>Life is full of sensory-kinaesthetics 40</p> <p>Sensations are multiple and atmospheric, emanating in encounters 42</p> <p>Sensations as sensations: not representations, adjuncts or qualities 46</p> <p>A sensory-kinaesthetic attunement reveals characters 50</p> <p>Affinities are charged with the energies of fascination, wondering and discordance 54</p> <p><b>Part Two: Ineffable Kinship</b></p> <p><b>Why Ineffable Kinship? 59</b></p> <p><b>Facets of Ineffable Kinship 63</b></p> <p>1. Family resemblances in literature and art 63</p> <p>2. Resemblance interactions 68</p> <p>A familiar conversation topic and form 70</p> <p>Resemblances as striking, fleeting and capricious 71</p> <p>Negotiating and ‘settling’ resemblances 72</p> <p>An uneasy combination of the potent and the trivial 74</p> <p>3. Resemblance stories 74</p> <p>4. The still-beating heart 89</p> <p>5. Nordqvist and Smart’s donors as ‘enigmatic presences’ 93</p> <p>6. Konrad’s ‘nameless relations’ and ‘transilience’ 97</p> <p>7. Super-donors and dubious progeniture 101</p> <p>8. ‘The Seed’ by The Roots, featuring Cody Chesnutt 104</p> <p><b>Layering the Argument: Affinities of Ineffable Kinship 106</b></p> <p>Metaphors of genetics and heritability 106</p> <p>Poetics and the ‘frisson’ of ineffability 111</p> <p>Wondering about what is circulating and relating 114</p> <p><b>Part Three: Ecologies and Socio-Atmospherics</b></p> <p><b>Why Ecologies and Socio-Atmospherics? 123</b></p> <p><b>Facets of Ecologies and Socio-Atmospherics 126</b></p> <p>1. Animate places and things in literature 126</p> <p>Nan Shepherd’s ‘living mountain’ 126</p> <p>Jon McGregor’s city that ‘sings’ 127</p> <p>Haruki Murakami’s ‘pulsing’ city 129</p> <p>Barbara Kingsolver’s Africa as an ‘attendance in my soul’ 130</p> <p>2. Atmospheric memories of animate places and things 131</p> <p>The atmospherics of a teenager’s city 131</p> <p>Anat Hecht’s ‘tangible memories’ of home 133</p> <p>Karin Widerberg’s atmospheric memories of ‘the homes of others’ 135</p> <p>3. Animate technologies, vehicles and journeys 137</p> <p>Phone feelings 137</p> <p>The threaded worlds of train travel 140</p> <p>Mimi Sheller’s ‘automotive emotions’ and ‘feeling the car’ 143</p> <p>Lynne Pearce’s ‘autopia’ of driving and thinking 146</p> <p>4. Weathery weather in social science and literature 148</p> <p>5. Writing weather stories 152</p> <p>6. Socio-atmospherics and the time of the floods 154</p> <p>Shock: the power and magnitude of water 155</p> <p>Bearing witness and being in touch 156</p> <p>An atmosphere of ‘getting on with it’ 158</p> <p>Legacies of the floods 159</p> <p>7. Weather poetics 164</p> <p><b>Layering the Argument: Ecologies and SocioAtmospherics 168</b></p> <p>Ecologies as convivialities, assemblages, happenings and animated space 169</p> <p>The feel of places, things, journeys and technologies 175</p> <p>Enigmatic ecologies and the socio-atmospherics of living 178</p> <p>From what is connected to the dynamics of connection 180</p> <p>Ecological poetics 184</p> <p><b>Conclusion: Affinities in Time 186</b></p> <p>Three layers of the argument 187</p> <p>Time: a final layering 188</p> <p>Time and sensations 190</p> <p>Time and ineffable kinship 193</p> <p>Time, ecologies and socio-atmospherics 196</p> <p>Accepting the invitation of affinities 200</p> <p>Notes 203</p> <p>References 204</p> <p>Index 000</p>