of

Enchantments
Modernity
Nation,
Globalization
Empire,

Editor

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Saurabh

il Routledge
Taylor& Francis
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I,0NDON NEWYORK NEWDELHI

*11

Affect:Whatis it Goodfor?
WilliamMazzarella
Dictionaries and casualconversationboth tend to equate'affect'
with'emotion.' But affectalso often shadesover into 'feelingj and
as such seemsto point to a zone where emotion intersectswith
processestaking place at a more corporeal level. Even in its relatively untheorized invocations,affect carriestactile, sensuous,
and perhapsalso involuntary connotations.This essayis a critical exploration of the implications of such a categoryfor social
analysis.I write in the belief that only those ideas that compel
our desireaswell as our resistancereceiveand deservethe most
sustainedcritique.

lmpersonal
: Thinking
Affect
Embodied,
Why is affect attracting so much attention in social and cultural
analysisthesedays?The quick, lazy answer is that the public cultures we inhabit today have become more unabashedly affective.
From political to commercial discourse,we are being solicited in
an unprecedentedlyaffective,intimate register.I will have more
to say about this impressionof heightenedpublic intimacy, but
in order to get properly to grips with the analytical implications
of the category,we shall first have to dig a bit deeper.
From an analytical point of view, thinking affect points us toward a terrain that is presubjectivewithout being presocial.As
such it implies a way of apprehendingsocial life that does not
start with the bounded,intentional subjectwhile at the sametime
foregrounding embodiment and sensuouslife. Affect is not the unconscious- it is too corporeallyrooted for that. Nor can it be aligned
with any conventional conception of culture, since the whole

292 r WilliamMazzarella
point of affect,accordingto its most influential contemporarythc
orists,is that unlike emotion it is not alwaysalreadysemiotical,r,
mediated.Gilles Deleuze,in an essayon Divid Hume, creditstht,
latter with having discoveredthat 'tffective circumstances,prc
existand guidethe 'principlesof association'that constitutewhar
we like to recognizeas reason (2001 Irg72l: a5). Deleuzeis thus
confirmed in his belief that there is, in John Rajchman'swords,
'an element
in experiencethat comes before the determinatiorr
of subjectand sense'(2001: 15).
_ Drawing on and developing Deleuze'sruminations, perhaps
the most significant recent scholarly intervention has been thu
work of Brian Massumi, particularly his essay,The Autonomy
of Affect' which first appearedin the mid-t990s and was latcr
included in Parablesfor the virtual (2002). Massumi characterizes
affect as a domain of intensity,indeterminacy,and above all po
tentiality, which the signifying logic of cultuie reducesor, iniis
terms, 'qualifiesl Affect is both embodied and impersonal.Thc
appearanceof personal, subjectivelife is, then, foi Massumi as
for Deleuzea secondaryeffectof cultural mediation.This is whv
affect cannot be equatedwith emotion:
An emotion is a subjectivecontent,the sociolinguisticfixing of
the quality of an experiencewhich is from that-point onwird
definedas personal.Emotion is qualifiedintensity,the conventional, consensualpoint of insertion of intensity into semantically and semioticallyformed progressions,into narrativizable
action-reactioncircuits,into function and meaning.It is intensity owned and recognized(Massumi2002:23).
From the standpoint of affect,societyis inscribedon our nervous
systemand in our freshbeforeit appearsin our consciousness.
The
affective body is by no means a tabula rasa; itpreservesthe traces
ofpast actionsand encountersand bringsthem into the presentas
potentials:'Intensity is asocial,but not presocial
1...] tlie trace ol'
pastactions including a traceof their contexts
faie] ionserved in
the brain and in the fl esh'(2002: 3o :original emphasisj.Further,,The
trace determinesa tendency,the potential,if not yet the appetite,
and variation of the impingement;
f9r.lhe_lutonomic repetition'the
(ibid.: 32). For all the talk of
body' in current culturJtheory,
Massumi complains,the body rarely appearsas anything much

Affect:what is it Goodfor? t 293

more than dumb matter availablefor disciplineand cultural

,Is the body linked to a particularsubiectposition
inr.tiption,
;Vthi"g more than a iocal embodimentol ideolog?'(ibid':5'
originaiemphasis)'Massumiwants insteadto show us a nondoJitebody_ perhapsa spasticbody by mainstreammeasures,
Uuirtitt anirreduciblyandievealinglysocialbody.Mostgenerally,
Massumiis askingui to imaginesociallife in two simultaneous
,.girt.tr, on the 6ne hand, i registerof affective,embodiedinIririt' and,on the other,a registerof symbolicmediationand
is'not
Therelationbetweentheseregisters
discuisiveeiaboration.
or
resonation
of
rather
but
oneof conformityor correspondence
25)'
(ibid':
amplificationor dampening'
interference,
The implicationsof sucha positionwould seemmomentous.
of modesof social
It callsintb questionthe categorialcoherence
(which takes the
psychologl
inq"itv .unging from mainstieam
throughbourend)
its
and
as its beginning
U.i.ugr.r"d'su-*bject
theindividual
t.oir iil.rut sociologr(in whichthestruggle.between
Foucaultian
to
theme)
pathetic
ind societyis the perennially
all through
above
proceeds
portrt-.turalism (in which po*er
may well
affect
of
An examination
i.o".t."t of subjectivation).
underif
we
aesthetics,
social
of a
ioou. u, into theneighborhood
sense
or
aeslfuesls
of
sense
the ancientGreek
standby aesthetics
."p"'i""""'Butitisbydefinitionineducibletoanyanthropolory_
for:example,an anthropologrof emotion,or of aestheticsystems
that would seekto eiplain affectby situatingit comparatively
within integratedculturalorders'
SeenthiJ way,conventionalsocialanalysisis alwaysarriving
cultoo lateat thesceneof a crimeit is incapableof recognizing:
hegemonic
a
more-or-less
turehasalreadydoneitscoveringwork,
Thescholarly
.y-uoti. qualificationhasalreadybeenachieved.
of c.ulpr9{gct
secondary
this
ri.rtft invariablymisrecognizes
missing
life,
social
of
stuff
tural mediationas the fundamental
'thoughtbridlesand
thewoundsinflictedby language(Deleuze:
[1965]:66)'
mutilateslife,makingit sensible'2001
WhenMassumiin.'siststhatheisnotinvokingsome.prereflexive,romanticallyraw domainof primitiveexperientialrichness'
word.The senses,
Q6OZ:29)I think he shouldbe takenat his
work, like so
Massumi's
But
ute tne self,havetheir histories.
quivers
with the
also
vein,
muchthat is writtenin thisneo-vitalist
hand'
the
one
on
between,
opposition
romanceof a fundamental

294 r WilliamMazzarella
the productive,the multiple, and the mobile and, on the other.thc
death-dealingcertitudesof formal determination.As he puts it irr
a moment of rhetorical exaltation: ,If there were no escape,no
excessor remainder,no fade-out to infinity, the universewould
be without potential, pure entropy, death' (2002:55\.
Facedwith suchmelodramaone might well object,with Michacl
silverstein (2004), that the radical binarization of conceptual
mediation and affective immediacy is not only analytically unten
able but also a contingent feature of modein Euiopean philo
sophy.twhile I shall indeedbe arg'ing that the major fliw besetting
contemporary affect theory is its romantic (and complicit) attachment to a fantasyof immediacy - or as I prefer to put ii, imme_
diation (Mazzarella2006) - I would nevertheless[Le to explore
the possibilitythat the 'thing' it describesmay help us to reihink
the politics of public culture in a productiveiy criiical way.

TheClanandthe Crowd.Modernity
andAffect
The just-so story we too often tell ourselvesabout the origins
of modernity takes disenchantmentas its central theme. tn lhis
denuded fairy-tale, affect is progressivelyevacuatedfrom an increasinglyrationalized bourgeoisworld to the point where politics becomes,in Paul Valery'swords, ,the art of preventing the
from getting involved in what concernsthim' (quotld in
::":^er
Maffesoli 1996 [1938]: 154). The legitimacy of bourgebismod_
ernity seemshere to depend upon processesof abstriction that
are at once universalizingand vampiric. The inevitableend point
is Max weber's 'iron cage,'an arrogantly soullessbureauiratic
'nullity' ruled
by'specialists without spirit, sensualistswithout
heart'(1998 [1920]:182).
Political legitimationalso,it seems,has taken the samecourse,
Jiirgen Habermas (1989[1962]) narrates the transition from a
spectacular'publicnessof representation'in which the bodv of the
sovereign,ritually emerginginto public view, assertedand confirm.edthe stability of the polity and the efficacyof royal power,
to the rational-critical legitimation of the seCulardlmocratic
order. Perhapsthe most sensuouslymemorable illustration of this
transition - even if it is mobilized to very different critical ends is Michel Foucault's famous opening diptyctr in Discipline &
Punish (1977 U9751),which seeksto convince us, by means of

Affect:Whatis it Goodfor? . 295

aru-",i" contrast,that between the middle of the 18th-century

and the early l9th-century the normativeforms of Europeansovereignty shifted from spectaculartheatricality to rationalized,
affeit-evacuatedtechnicism.Out of a form of rule in which the
volatility of the visceral was both a principle of efficacy and 1
fatal structural flaw, modern governmentality emerged with all
the seamless,affectlessprecision of a machine.
Liberalsarguethat the reifying abstractionsof the commodity
form, modern citizenship and bureaucratic reasonare necessary
even liberatory - technologiesin complex, industrial societies'
Yes, Newtonian mechanics may once have consorted openly
with the poetic doctrine of sympathies(Starobinski2003 [1999])
and astrologymay once have informed astronomy.Even G.W.F'
Hegel'sall-absorbingSpirit found someinspiration in 17th-century
rn4istr vitalism (Beiser1995).But such infantile dallianceswith
'superstition' had to be disowned for grownaffect-intensive
up modernity to take its soberscientificform. For their part, critical theorists of modernity from Karl Marx onward transform the
Romantic lament for lost aestheticfullnessinto a systemicpolemic
against the bad faith embeddedin the discourseof modernity'
'The tools used by
Al Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge note,
the rationalistic disciplinesnegatethe mimetic foundation that
is necessaryfor them to operate' (1993 11972):24).
The stage,then, is set for a kind of return of the repressed,
whether in the form of a grand revolutionary reversalor a more
'haunting' of the deathly
inconclusive, but no less subversive,
abstractions of modern knowledge by the vitally embodied
energiesthey both require and deny. From the psychoanalytic
liberition theologr of a Herbert Marcuse or a Wilhelm Reich to
the teleological certitude of scientific socialism,affect will out.
On this point, conservativeindividualists ioin hands with radical populists, enabling Jos6Ortega y Gasset'sremark, made in
'The past has reason
the 1930s,to enact its own prophesytoday:
on its side, its own reason.If that reason is not admitted, it will
return to demand it' (1932 [1950]:95).
The ideological discourse of modernity not only represses
and demonizesthe affectivebut also romantically fetishizesit
particularly insofar as it can be located at the recedinghorizon of a
iuuug" disappearingworld,an anthropologicalother inthe glas-sic
sense.One might say that what Michel-Rolph Trouillot (1991)

296I William
Mazzarella
has calledanthropology's'savage
slot'served,inter alia,to assist
the disavowal through which the discourseof modernity absolverl
itself from grappling with its own affectivepolitics.
In this regard, Emile Durkheim's The Elementary Forms ol
Religious Life (1995[L912]) is a splendidly subversivetext. For
starters Durkheim, quite consciouslywriting with and againsr
the contemporaryfigure of the urban crowd, givesus something
that in today'spolarizedtheoreticallandscapehasbecomealmost
unimaginable: a social theory that is at once semiologicalanrl
affect-based.Mulling over the proto-structuralist sign politics
and the collectiveeffervescenceof the corroborree,he strivesto
isolatethe constitutive functions of both the mediationsand the
mania which so many of his contemporariescould only recog
nize as the regressiveaffinity betweendistant primitives and alltoo-proximate proletarian crowds. The Polynesiancategory ol
manalends Durkheim a transhistorical,transcultural name for
the sacredpower of the social.But in stressingits volatile ,contagiousnesslits amoral energy,Durkheim is also invoking the
kind of nonsubjectivesensuousmimetic potential that seemed
to inform both the primitive communitas and the - preciselymindlessagitation of the crowd.
In the discourseof modernity, affect appearsas a socialpharmakon, at once constitutiveand corrosiveof life in common. In
the Durkheimian bounded clan, the harnessingof mana for purposesof socialregenerationis a noisy,sweatybut relativelymech.
anical matter. But the organic complexity of industrial societies
seemsto make the self-consciouslymodern deploymentof affect
much more complicated. The figure of the urban mob (when
not simply sullen) is affectivelyeffervescent,to be sure,but also
for that very reasonfrighteningly unstableand vulnerableto the
manipulationsof demagoguesand advertisersalike. In the closed
clan the energygeneratedby proximate bodies in motion, each
mirroring the other's excitation, operatesas a principle of solidarity and commitment. But in the open crowd thesevery same
conditions herald excessand violence.Crowd agitation readsas
regressive,driven by atavistic instincts at odds with the brittle
bonds of civilization.
Collectively comprising a howling feedback loop, the members of a crowd, quickly shedding their bourgeois individuality, become mimetic, indiscriminately amplifying each others'

Affect:whatis it Goodfor?' 297

'In a crowd every
impulses and impressions.Gustave Le Bon:
of desentimentand acf is contagious'(2002[1895]:7). Composed
uncleact
horrifyingly
of
individualizedbodies,the crowd is a kind
body sociat,capableonly of the concretelogic of the saJag:mind:
.q cio*a thinks in imagis, and the imageitself immediately calls
the
up u t.ti.t of other imalges,having no logical connection with
hallucination'
is
a'collective
tiirt' (f S).The end resu'it,famously,
liOl,l masscognitivemeltdown that,invadesthe understanding
critical faculty' (18)' Thus savagesolidarity
judgment, but also
"nd'pututyres"all
,*pi"ut."us the very antinomy of reasoned
sociality'2
urban
a
new
of
us ttt-"raw material
This was the outcome that Sigmund Freud would thematize
that
in his Group Psychology(1959[1921]),3when he argued
socnl
stablefor
necessary
were
that
bonds
lhe affective
1'love';
subrelationships not only required a psychically problemati.c
Discontlimation of-basicdrives (the story of.ciuilization and its
with
inii, tgeg I19501)but were also quite cfgarlyincompatible
work
.t.ui tnin6.,g and soberjudgmenl. And in his remarkable
The Lauts ol l*itotion, Gabriel Tarde prefigured both Georg
as
simmel and walter Benjamin when he characterizedcity life
85).
(1903:
L singularmixture of anaesthesiaand hyperaesthesia'
Tarde"moved from this diagnosisof the affectively conductive
tout court as a
urban crowd to a striking formula for social lif.e
'society is imitaresonance:
condition ofmimetic
leneralized
"tion
and imitation is a kind of somnambulism'( 1903: 87,original
emphasis).
iypicaity the crowd, in its guiseas the paradigmaticpublicsocial iorm oi -urs society,is either inert or hyperactive'In eith.er
And in either case,analyststake
caseit is eminently suggestible.a
incommensurable,an emradically
be
massaffect and reasonlo
that this is the place
it
seems
oddly,
other.
each
bur.urr-"nt to
of Le Bon coincide
cadences
aristocratic
*h.r. the witheringly
In a simneo-vitalists.
contemporary
our
populism
6f
*itt tt
grounds
"
ontological
the
(whicti
leaves
polarity
moral
of
pf.,.""rrut
^ot
tt. argumentuntouche-d)the crowd's formerly unacceptable
emergentpuissance
unreason now reappearsas the productive,
'The mass man has no
of ttt" multitude. Ortega y Gassetwrote
flesh'
ult.ntio" to sparefor rieaioning,he learns only in his own
the
at
guessed
have
not
ltSfZltSSOl:'aS;.nut he could,I suspect,
critics
of
generation
..t.U*toty refunctioning to which a later
would submit these sentiments.s

298 ! William Mazzarella

Comparativelyrare is the thinker who takes the ritual and/or

professionalcoordination of affect - what one might call ,affect
management'- to be a central principle of social life and insti
tutional survival.Elias Canetti capturesthis paradoxicalpursuit
when he writes that the only way to create social institutions
that are durable yet suitably suffused with affective energy is
by means of 'a consciousslowing down of crowd events' (1984
[1960]:41). Without suchritual retardation,the crowd acceler
'
ates inexorably towards orgasmic conflagration,the ,discharge
that is at once its fulfillment and its undoing. In the houseof organizedreligion, conversely,'whatever the church has to show, is
shownslowly' (1984[1960]:156,originalemphasis).
And Michel
Maffesoli notes,somewhat over-generally:'Any effervescenceis
structurallyfoundational.This is a basicsociologicalrule that did
not of course escapeDurkheim; the trick is to know how to use
this effervescence,
how to ritualizeit' (1996 [1983]: 142).
The languageof ritual is the languageof power, insofar as it
enshrines the dramaturgical conventions of state nationalism
and officially sanctioned piety. But if we understand ritual as a
speciesof social mediation, and institutional practicesas a form
of performativeritual, then we might also concludethat, contrary
to the ideologicaldiscourseof rationalizedmodernity, the labile
terrain of affect is not in fact external to bureaucratic process.
Affect is not, then, so much a radical site of othemessto be policed
or preservedbut rather a necessarymoment of any institutional
practice with aspirationsto public efficacy.
If I venture to say that modernity is and has always been structurally affective,I want to be quite clear about what this might
mean. I am not merely suggestingthat the rationalizing, disenchanting institutions of modernity need to be understood
as vulnerable becausethere always remains a vital 'outside' or
'other' that exceeds
their normalizing grasp.It has for example
by now become quite routine to argue (not least with reference
to colonial and postcolonialsettings)that the panoptic, capillary
ambition of modern governmentalityin fact leavesIargeswathes
of local lifeworlds relatively untouched and therefore external
to its sway. Unabsorbed,these densethickets of vernacular sociality then perennially return as the uncanny repressedof the
political order, unsettling and denaturing claims to rule by singular
sovereignreason.

Affect:Whatis it Goodfor? t 299

proWhat I am suggestinghere,by contrast,is that any social
affective
be
must
alone
force
ject that is not i-por"a through
Massumi's
in order to be effeitive - i.e., iihas to speakboth of
'languages'concurrently: intensity aswell as.qualificatiol' lilefic
plausibility' Faced with the
,"ronui." as well as propositional
'coherencei
moreover, speech an-d
g"";"rir"a requirementbf
incommensurable
these
mediate
to
Iocial practice must attempt
appearto be muthem
make
to
as
ptu".t tntough each otheiso
of
overt discourses
just
requirement
a
lually entail"ia.1'nit is not
of insti
pragmatics
in
the
too
it
seet
oti"iiti-ution. Rather,one
seek
demands
institutional
tutloliuf practice, where abstract
legalistic
for
reach
appeals
affective
affective resonance and
justification
-r +L:-,,--oo^r.,ahrc
,
l
Onemightspeakofthisunresolvabledialecticasastructura
on
a
shortcoming.
sense
in
any
not
it
is
flaw or a fiult line. But
'gap' is a condition of power's efficacy'if by efthe contrary, this
engageficacy we mean itsiapacity to harnessour attention' our
herg
a.m
appearthat
it
might
m"ni u.ta our desire.I ,"il\r"that
I
is
bound'
which
language
psychologistic
i"t"tii"e to the kind of
the affecas I suglestedabove,to airive too late at the sceneof
affect
that
I
believe
that
clear
be
iive ntJlgut by now it should
catsuch
of
mediations
the
to
is in fact neither wholly external
manner
the
Further'
them'
of
eft'ect
.goti"t nor simply a disiursive
iriwhich *e ate interpellatedin our lives ascitizens'consumers
these
und, i.r.r"uringly, consumer-citizens requiresthat we take
,subject'glc.) no.tonly asvitaiity-denying
1,seiqtitizenl
"at"gori",
iJ""Trgi""i obfuscationsbut-asaffectively-imbued,compellingly
we are
flawed"socialfacts. When we are thus addressed'when
that
and
always'failsi
identification
our
offered such identities,
across
movement
(a
dialectical
desire
which we experienceas our
itt. g"p between affect and articulation) is always thwarted'
eni"t iri"ir"ly this failure is the condition of our continued
'really
we
who
misses
public
discourse
gage;e.tt. Ii is not that
irJj tt ut its categoriesare always too general for our specific
our'selves'in and through
(indeeid,we only recognize.ip.ti."""
discourseaddressesus
public
ihft discursivemediation). Rather,
generality' One is
impersonal
of
simultaneouslyon two levels
of citizenassemblage
legal
oUtt.u.t and pertains to the formal,
it
is equally
gut:
in
the
gets
us
,trip utta civii society.The other
us as
solicits
and
intimate,
i-p".to.tut but also shockingly

300 r WilliamMazzarella
embodiedmembersof a sensuoussocialorder.In relation to bottr
of theselevelsthe notion of the individual as bounded,volitional
'subject' - while
ideologically crucial - must be taken as some
thing of a strategiccompromise.
Both the marketing of branded goods and electoral politics
demonstratethis principle at work. In either case,the official
justification for the affect-intensiveFactor X (the candidate's
'charisma,'the
brand'scompulsion)- that exceedsan instrumental.
rational appeal- is the need for a unique positioning in a field or
functionally interchangeablecommodities.But is it not the case
that we respond powerfully (with both excitement and alarml
to being addressedat a level that exceedsour judicious deliberation as rational choosers?In either case,we participate in a
double fetishism that projects this delicate tension bnto thc
'inherent' properties
of the desired or dreadedobject as well as
onto the'ambivalent'motivationof the choosingsubject.I call this
a fetishismsincethe dialectic in fact originatesin neither subject
nor object,but is rather a structuralpropertyof the public cultural
fields in which subjectand object come to be for themselvesand
for each other, and in which, at the sametime, their apparently
miraculous meeting as predestinedpartners (,made-fbr eacir
other') is constantly staged.

Mediation
and Death
Attentive readerswill no doubt by now be troubled. How can
I start with Massumi and Deleuzeand now blithely be invoking
such unabashedlyGermanic terms as mediation and dialectics,
especiallygiventhe extraordinary- I am temptedto sayphobic _
level of vitriol that the Deleuzians reseroefor precisely such
concepts?In their highly influential work, Empire,Michael Hardt
and Antonio Negri not only excoriate,the dialectic, that cursec
dialectic!'(2000:377),butgo on to situatethemselvesin much the
samelineageasthat of Massumi,the neo-Nietzscheanmoment of
Frenchpoststructuralism(again,with the samevitaristforebears)
that refused what it took to be the totalizing ambition of the
Hegelian dialectic in favour of ,refusal,resistance,violence.and
the positive affirmation of being' (ibid.: 57S).
Deleuze accusesthe dialectic of ,prestidigitationl figuring it
as a treacheroustemptation to totalize: 'Dialecticsis the art that

Affect:Whatis it Goodfor? | 301

invitesus to recuperatealienatedproperties'(2001 [1965]: 70)'

The comment needsto be historically situated.The generation
of postwar French critical thinkers to which Deleuze belonged
grew up in a context where being radical meant subscribingto
lhe twinned hegemonyof the FrenchCommunist Party and postphilosophy.The.extraorHegelianexistential-phenomenological
lecturesat the Ecole
1930s
l(ojeve's
of
Alexandre
influence
dinirv
of
Splrll should not
Phenomenotogy
The
on
Etudes
Fiautes
des
The next generation'srebellion consequently
be underestimated.6
involved a baby-with-the-bathwaterintellectual purge,in which
dialecticswas disastrouslyreduced to the Hegelian positiue
dialectic - that is, the dialectic that is teleologicallyoriented towards a future condition of fullness,in which all particulars are
subsumedwithout significantremainderunder generalconcepts'
The greatestcasualtyof this reduction was the possibility of imagining social and philosophical processesof mediation as nontotatizing along the lines of, say, Theodor Adorno's negative
dialectici. For all the subtlety of its elaborations,the rebellion
bequeathedto the philosophies it spawned a crudely romantic
disfinction between,on the one side,all-encompassingform (whose
totalizing ambition must be resisted)and, on the other side, the
evanescentforms of affectiveand - it is often implied - popular
potentiality (which must be nurtured and celebrated).This reductive binary opposition between (in Deleuze and Guattari's
terminologl),molar'structuresand'molecular'potentialscontinues
to inform Massumian affect theory today in a way that undercuts its considerablepower.
At points Massumi doesseemto acknowledgesomethinglike
a dialLctical relationship between emergenceand articulation,
betweenaffectand qualification.For example,in the Introduction
'Possibility is backto Parables for the Virtual he notes that
formed from potential's unfolding. But once it is formed, it also
effectively feeds in' (2002:9). And yet Massumi continues to
insist upon a radical distinction between vital potential and the
death-dealingwork of formal mediation. This is nowhere more
evident than when, in a slightly later passage,he seemsoddly
keen to take at face value Hegel'stheory of subsumption at its
most megalomaniacal:
If you apply a concept or systemof connection between concepts,it is the material you apply it to that undergoeschange,

302r William
Mazzarella
much more markedly than do the concepts. The change is
imposed upon the material by the concept'i systematicity"antr
constitutesa becoming homologousof the material to th.
system.This is all very grim. It has lessto do with ,more to th,
world'than 'more of the samelIt has lessto do with inventiorr
than masteryand control (2002: U).
certainly the caricature of mediation-as-subsumptionas
sketchedhere is indeed very grim. And the saddestirony is thar
this line of thinking, while ostensibly'critical,'actuallygrantstht,
would-be normalizing institutions of modern govein-mentalit.y
preciselythe kind of totalizing efficacythat their-own ideological
discourseclaims.Ton the one hand, this position credits iisti
tutions with a seamlessness
that they do nofenjoy. on the other and this is a crucial point-it fatally misidentifierih"ir power with
the possibility of such seamlessness.
Urtimately, it uies this en
tirely reified vision of immaculate subsumption to lend plausi
bility to the singular integrity of its own vitil ,alternative.'For alr
its claims to enablea ne., radical form of socio-culturalanalysis,
sucha standpoint in practicepreventsus from understanditrgtn"
workings of any actually existing social institutions, becau"seir
has alwaysalreadydismissedtheir mediatingpracticesas having
compromised the potentialities that a more im-mediate vitaliti
would embody.
Much writing in this tradition presentsitself rather narcissis,
tically as interveningin an 'insurrectionary'or'insurgent'manner
into apparently authoritative realms of utterance ind practice.
But rather than expendingvast amounts of energr recuperating
the constitutiveinstability and indeterminacythat attends all
signification (asif it were really hidden, as if its ,revelation'might
enablesome momentous transformation),would it not be m6rc
illuminating to explore how this indeterminacyactualryoperates
in practice as a dynamic condition of our engagementwith the
categoriesof collectivelife? Ratherthan positingthe emergentas
the only vital hope againstthe dead hand of -Jdiation, wiy not
considerthe.possibilitythat mediationis at once perhapsthehost
fundamental and prod'ctive principle of all roiiul life precisely
becauseit is necessarilyincomplete,unstable,and provisionati
Mark Poster'sobjectionto Maffesolideservesto be exiendedto the
neo-vitaliststout court: 'His generousappreciationof ,,newtribalism,'

Affect:whatis it Goodfor?t 303

fails to provide a materialismof the mediation,an articulation of
the complex structuring of everydaylife' (2001: 163).
ElsewhereI havearguedthat'On the one hand, reflexivesocial
entities(selves,societies,cultures)are fundamentallyconstituted
(andnot just reconstituted)throughmediation.On the other hand,
as Derrida and other scholars suggest,this constitutive mediation also always produces a fiction of premediatedexistence'
(Mazzarella 2004: 357).In other words, mediation is the social
condition of Lhe fantasy of immediation, of a social essence
(vital and/or cultural) that is autonomousof and prior to social
processesof mediation.This is by no meansan obscureconsideration: our everyday'folk' senseof our apparentlygiven selvesand
our placesin the world depend on preciselysuch an illusion.
One might saythat the deepirony of mediationis that its constitutive role in social life dependsupon its own masking.Michael
Warner makes an analogouspoint when he arguesthat although
publics only arise through the circulation of texts, their social
efficacydependson their seemingto exist prior to their textual
constructicln:
Public speechcontendswith the necessityof addressingits public as already existing real persons.lt cannot work by frankly
declaringits subjunctive-creativeproiect. Its successdepends
on the recognitionof participantsand their further circulatory
activity,and peopledo not commonly recognizethemselvesas
virtual projections.They recognizethemselvesonly as already
beingthe personsthey are addressedasbeing,and asalreadybelonging to the world that is condensedin their discourse
(2002:82).
This illusion of pre-mediatedexistence- of immediation - is,
then, at oncethe outcomeof mediationand the meansof its occlusion. It is also a fantasy sharedby the most reactionary political
interests (those who would have us commit to the primacy of
race,blood, and nation) and, in a different register,the kind of
critical theory at issuein my discussionhere (where it becomes
a principle of comprehensiverefusal, of perennial liberation)'
I am not of coursearguingthat thesetheoristsare crypto-fascists
(although that kind of accusation is sometimes made from a
Marxist-materialiststandpoint).But I do think that it is important

304 r WilliamMazzarella
to note that the dream of immediation, far from being radical.
is in fact largely complicit with entirely mainstream currents irr
contemporarypublic culture -. all the way from the depoliticizing
sensuoustheodicy of consumeristgratification to the neoliberirl
will to allow the 'spontaneous'logic of the market to displacc
the 'artificial' mediations of human institutions.

WHvWr AneAr-lPeRveRse,
On,THrOperu
Eoceor
MassPueLrcrrY
Maffesolinotesthe derivationof the term 'perverse'fromthe Latin
per uia ('by way of ). Perversion,then, would be the symptom ol
a detour through somethingexternalto ourselves.For Maffesoli,
committed as he is to recuperatinga 'proxemics'that woulcl
amelioratethe alienatedabstractionsof the rationalized society,
'
perversionreallyis a pathologr- at besta'simulatedacquiescence
to the c<lmmandments
of an intolerableorder (1996 [1988]:49).
But one might also think as follows: insofar as the perversc
detour is the mark of all mediation,and insofaras any notion ol
'identity' relies upon a mediated relation
between two or morc
terms,then it would appearthat we must all be perverse.Rathcr'
than seekingto recuperatean emergentnon-alienatedstate,wc
might instead productively pervert Massumi'sterminology,ancl
acknowledgethat the condition of our becoming is indeed a
negatively dialectical one, in which we are always moving be
tween immanence and qualification.
This is not just an existentialpredicament,but also the con
dition of our public cultural engagements.A distinctive featurc
of modern democratic orders as well as of mass publicity is an
uneasyoscillation betweenbounded categoriesof socio-cultural
identification (by region,by class,by sex,by ethnicity) and the in
finitely capaciousuniversal containersof modern self-hood (the
consumer,the citizen, the consumer-citizen).Partha Chatterjec
(2004) has rightly critiqued Benedict Anderson's insistenceirr
The Spectreof Comparisons(1998) on calling the 'bound serialities' of closed, ethnic identity claims socially regressivewhilc
grantingprogressivestatusto the open,'unbound serialities'of abstractlyinclusivenon-localizedcategorieslike citizenship.Rather
than any reactivechampioning of the creativity or differenceol

whatis it Goodfor?t 305

Affect:
be to recognize
the local, it seemsto me that our proiect should
and that
ittuttnes" are in fact separabledomainsonly in discourse'
potiti"t in practice uhtuvt involves an ongoile ii1 n::^":l:;
'sive
hnlte and
meaiation between' on the one hand' claims to
universal
to
io"ut.a identificationu.ri, on the other, an aspiration
-_Thisisnotsirnplytheresultoftheinabilityofuniversalizing
relevance.
of lives as lived
abst.uctio.,sto contain the concreteparticularity
and a forrn
order
in tt e wortd.8Ratherit is the outcomeof a social
at once
ins.ists
oi lir,.r"uringly prevalent) governmentalitythatis
insistence
rhis
aid formal freedom.
;;;;i;;;iioi_iv_ia""tity
paper
to
attempt
tit, itt turn, simply a contradictory or flawed
social form
o.r"i tt contradictionsarising out of an impersonal
Katner lt ls
"
that neverthelessrequiresour affectivecommitment'
by which
dialectic
iii" iJrofogical formili zation of the negative
crowd is
The
publics'
we are all today constitutedas memberi of
these
people'
these
alwaysat once a concrete,particular crowd
bodiesinthisplace-andaninfinitelyexpansiveformation.lnthat
antitypeof the
r"..., tn" crowd is both theDoppelgangerandthe
figure
puUfii. And becauseit embodiesin a utopian-dystopiT
mobilization'
mass
itr" aynurni. tensionbetweenmassaffectand
of
the starting point for an adequatereading
il'ir;iil"rhaps
the politics of Public culture.
'Public culture' - the phrase itself is perverse'If publics-are'
principle.belong
as Warner argues,collectivitiesto which we in
'culvltuntarity, tlien what doesit meanto itxtapose'public'with
hype tut.; u" iiio- of belonging that despitethe marketing
would seemto be markid most stronglyby an involuntary'.even
is its simul
unconscious stamp? The puzzle of public address
an
suggests'
is,
Warner
taneous intimacy and anonymity' This
resonate
may
intimacy of strangers.A public communication
'Yet we know that it was addressednot
p"rronuf*uy'
i; ;
moment we
""ti
eiactly io us, but to the strangerwe were until the
paradoxic.al
The
tr"pp.""a to be addressedb! it (20.02:57)'
finds its
only
it
tli,Lt
is
.oiiitio" of effectivepublic speech,then,
aimed
be
to
time
rp""iti. target insofar'as it seemsat the same
TThebenefit in this practice is that it gives social reeise*here.
yet this open
i.uun." to private thought and life' (ibid': 58), and
is by the
strangers'
mass publicityltnis solicitation of
"t
"Jg.
sametoken unnerving.

306 I William Mazzarella

Un-nerving?Perhapsnot exactlythat, after all. perhapsthinl,

ing affect and thinking the crowd in this connection allows us ,
different vantagepoint on the sensuouslyanonymousdimensi,r.
of public cultural communication.Maybe what is happeninghcrt.
is a doubling where the 'stranger'with whom we feet ourielv.,
curiously aligned is not just the abstract figure of an unknou,'
external other, but equally the impersonallyintimate domain .l
our affectivememory.If public communicationalwaysconveys,irs
a condition of its felicity,the odd sensationof neverquite hivirrg
realizedits addressee,
then perhapsthis is becauseits implicil
destinationis at once more innervatedand more abstractthar,
the 'subject'whosecoherentintentionalityis the preconditiorr
for a liberally-imaginedcivic life.
NOTES
1. Specifying
hisuseof theword,conceptual,'
Silverstein
notes:
I intendthistermto be inclusive,
thusnot makingthedistinctionbetwcerr
'cognition'('ideas') 'affect'
and
(,passions,)
that seemsto be a veryloc.,
sociocultural
legacyof European,
particularly(post)Enlightenmerr(.
discourseabout the mind, the first being equatedwith ultimatery
formalizablerepresentationality,
the secondwith perturbationsin
organicphysiologicalpharmacologrand such.A group,sconcepts,
furthermore,are manifestedthrough any and all semioticarrange
mentsthroughwhich membersparticipatein events,not, of coursc.
,codes'(2004:622
just throughlanguageand language-like
n).
2. lames Scott,in SeeingLihe A State,notesthat immigrantsto the ncw
modernistcity of Brasiliawere shockedto find a 'city without crowds'
( 1 9 9 8 :i 2 5 ) .
3. It is worth noting that the group' of Freud'stitle is an infelicitous(but
quite deliberate)translationof the GermanMasse.
4. Thereis an interestingquestionto be consideredhereaboutthe assumccl
origins of affectiveagitation.Most liberal bourgeoistheorists,largely
disdainfulof the crowd,tend to assumea nativepassivitywhich requl.",
(even attracts) an external infusion of energy.such is the thinkine
elucidated,for instance,in Gertrud Koch's fascinatingspeculativc
etymologyof the 'mass':
'Mass'possibly
stemsfrom the Hebrew,mazzalas in ,matzoh'or un_
leavenedbread,and enteredGreek and Latin as the word denotins
breaddoughor lumpsof dough.Theseoriginsare stiil to be sensedin
the theologicaldebate<lnthe materialnatureofthe breadusedin ritual

Affect:what is it Goodfor? t 307

tosymbolizetransubstantiation.Inthismanner,theword.massa'that
by Christianity
enteredthat form of culturalhistoryaswasinfluenced
formed' and
the
and
unformed
the
hqJ u douUt. meaning,spanned
broughtthe
that
spark
divine
the
then,
was thus redeemable.-since
been
gradually
has
t.it utgi. massto life, or at leastset it in motion'
secularized(2000[1996]: 26)'
JeanBaudrillardhaspropoundedaradicalizedversionofthisview.He
remarks:
of the political' nor good
[The masses]are neither good conductors
in general'
conductorsof the social,nor goodconductorsof meaning
them' but
magnetizes
everything
gt..Vtt i.g flows through them'
do not
They
trace.
a
leaving
[...]
without
them
diffuies thioughout
the
outlying
from
radiate;on the contrary,they absorball radiation
are inertia,
consteliationsof State,History,Culture,Meaning.They
(1985:
2)'
neutral
the
of
strength
the
the strengthof inertia,
prone to electrical
Theoristsin a more vitalist tradition (while no less
the energeticsof
that
suggest
to
conversely,
have tended,
.tt"pft"^l
question'
and that
in
groups
to
the
internal
and
original
cottectivelife are
'on
deities
(whether
by
high'
the ideathat suchenergiesare iniectedfrom
mystification'
ideological
interested
an
o, d"-ugog.,es)is the-resultof
Hardt and Negri
it, fo. initin.g both Ortegay Gassetin the 1930sand
,multitudes'formerthis term
the
for
but
seventyyearslaterwrite otihe
de,c.ib"salocusofinertiawhereasforthelatteritisthe|onsetorigoo|
thoroughnihitism:
uitut .n"tgy. Baudrillard'spositionis notablefor its
equalsdeath and
mediation
that
idea
io
the
sympathetic
oilce
t e is at
'the masses''
to
unwilling to atiribute any originary energy
contrast the rampant
5.
- To be quite fair, even Le Bon appearsat times to
bureaucraticreason,
of
hand
dead
the
with
favorably
crowd
.r.igi"'r .f the
as'irresponsibility'
latter
wherehe identifiesthe sinsof the
asin"thepassage
desPoti-srnoppressive
more
no
is
lhan
impersonalityiandperpetuity'There
: 156)' Here'
(2002
form'
triple
[1895]
this
under
its;lf
tf,at*tti"fr pretenti
LeBon,scadencesarereminiscentofthequasi-aristocraticNietzschean
nostalgiaforaproudaffirmationofindividualbeingthatalsoinfuses
y Gasset('the State
suchliter criticsof the masssocietyas JoseOrtega
1932
supremacy'
[1930]: l21l 19'
anti-vital
its
with
society
overbears
ofcourse'thenmakesamorepopulistreturnintheworkofthel960s
FrenchPost-structuralists'
O.f<oi.u.'rHegelseminarranfromlgSstolgSgandwasadecisiveinfluGeorges
on a whole generationof Frenchintellectuals,including
Sartre'
",,".
and
Lacan'
Jean-Paul
facques
Bataille,NlauriceMerleau-Ponty,
- broldly speaking'
philosophers
ciitical
French
of
ihe next generation
- revoltedagainstthis teleologicalHegelianism
the post_Jtructuralists
texts'
but remainedlargelytied to Koieve'sreadingof the

Affect:what is it Goodforz tiog

308 I William Mazzarella

7. rn a way, the effect is analogous to the manner
in which the anxi.rr.
discourse on the turbulent crowcr served to lend the
embattred figurt,r,r
the calm, critical subject of public reason a coherence
that it othe^r.i,,
might not have enjoyed.
8 Such, for instance, has been the tenor of many critiques
of Habernrrrs
notion of the pubric sphere - namery,that in its radical
abstraction (whiclr
is then equated with the naturalized habitus of middre
classwhite me r
it violates the embodied integrity of other lifeworrds (cathoun
r99l
Robbins 1993).

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aa