Affect theory is an interdisciplinary field of inquiry that examines affect as a pre-personal intensity or bodily capacity for response, often distinguished from conscious emotion or feeling. It investigates how these non-representational forces circulate, shape subjectivity, influence social dynamics, and constitute political power, thereby offering critical analytical frameworks for understanding embodied experience, relationality, and collective life beyond purely cognitive or linguistic models. Its significance resides in highlighting the role of non-conscious and embodied processes in phenomena ranging from individual experience to large-scale social and political formations.