The Traffic of Affect in Michael Helm’s Cities of Refuge

Abstract

This chapter analyses Michael Helm's novel through the lens of affect theory, humanitarianism, and urban studies. It posits that the novel registers both affective responses to the stranger while pointing that in our search for meaning in a highly chaotic globalized world, the traffic of emotions emerging from the city challenges conventional oppositions between analytical and affective reasoning. It aims to demonstrate that the novel links affect to aesthetics in the form of creative writing and story-telling, only to question the epistemological and ethical limits of the knowledge achieved through narrative.