REVIEW ESSAY BAD FEELINGS IN PUBLIC:RHETORIC,AFFECT, AND EMOTION ERIN J. RAND Depression: A Public Feeling. By Ann Cvetkovich. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012; pp. xi + 278. $84.95 cloth; $23.95 paper. Feminism and Affect at the Scene of Argument: Beyond the Trope of the Angry Feminist. By Barbara Tomlinson. Philadelphia, PA: Temple Uni- versity Press, 2010; pp. viii + 279. $79.50 cloth; $30.95 paper. The Promise of Happiness. By Sara Ahmed. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010; pp. x + 315. $89.95 cloth; $24.95 paper. T he “affective turn” in academic discourse, often invoking potential- ity and becoming, the body’s capacity to affect and be affected, and the vital forces and intensities that exceed linguistic capture, has by now taken root in a variety of disciplinary conversations and has been taken up toward innumerable ends. 1 Both the development and the deployment of the affective turn has found especially fecund grounds in the work of feminist and queer scholars, in no small part because feminist and queer scholarship often highlights gendered, raced, and sexualized embodiment, ERIN J. RAND is Assistant Professor of Communication and Rhetorical Studies at Syracuse University in New York. © 2015 Michigan State University. All rights reserved. Rhetoric & Public Affairs Vol. 18, No. 1, 2015, pp. 161–176. ISSN 1094-8392. 161 This work originally appeared in Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 18.1, Spring 2015, published by Michigan State University Press.