Lauren Horn Griffin

“Rather than view veiling and head covering movements as a return to tradition, we can read them cultural tools that participate in present-day conversations. Read in this relational context, veiling can be seen a radical act, or a transgression of norms both within and outside Catholic communities. While the rhetoric surrounding the veil centers other terms, affective visual presentations highlight feelings of self-possession, empowerment, and the rush of feeling radical."

TikTok and Affective Publics

In the aftermath of the election of Donald Trump to the U.S. Presidency in 2016, scholars and journalists scrambled to explain what happened. Much of their focus revolved around understanding “evangelicals” in an attempt to figure out why so many white Christians supported Donald Trump despite his many publicized moral shortcomings. But in the aftermath of the U.S. Presidential election of 2020, conservative Catholics were also becoming part of that conversation. Sometimes labeled “trad” or “rad trad” (i.e., radical traditionalist) Catholics, journalists have started to take notice. In trying to explain right-wing Christians, whether focusing on “evangelicals” or “trads,” current scholarship has named the movement “white Christian nationalism.” This scholarship (coming mostly out of sociology) overemphasizes belief as a cause for political action. Following the method laid out by Zizi Papacharissi in Affective Publics, I am interested in comparing particular evangelical groups and traditionalist Catholics groups online (particularly their “sides” of TikTok) with a more balanced look at affect in addition to ideology. Papacharissi defined affective publics as “publics that actualize by feeling their way into politics through media.” I am particularly interested in how they use storytelling to define the personal as political and thus lay claim to agency. These publics materialize on TikTok, but they have distinctly different aesthetics; a comparative approach could shed light on both the structural similarities offered by TikTok (the medium) while also highlighting the different affective publics that materialize therein.

Bio:

Lauren Horn Griffin is assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Louisiana State University (LSU). Her first book, Fabricating Founders in Early Modern England (Brill 2023), provides a timely example of how religious identity and national consciousness have long been mutually constitutive. Her current research and teaching focus on religion, media, and technology.