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Affect
Brian L. Ott
Subject: Critical/Cultural Studies Online Publication Date: July 2017
DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.56
Approaching Affect
Affect is a complex and often contentious concept. So much so that one is likely
to encounter nearly as many conceptions and uses of affect as there are scholars
of affect. Seigworth and Gregg (2010), for instance, have identified at least eight
“main orientations” toward affect (pp. 6–8). This complexity can sometimes be
seen even within a single scholar’s understanding of affect. The 17th-century
Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677), for instance, held a
multifaceted view of affect that entailed two distinct, but related dimensions:
affectus and affectio. Spinoza (1992) maintained that a “body can be affected in
Affect 2
many ways by which its power of activity is increased or decreased” (p. 103);
affectus is his term for “a body’s continuous, intensive variation (as increase-
diminution) in its capacity for acting” (Seigworth, 2011, p. 184). The Spinozian
notion of affectus dramatically shaped the thinking of the 20th-century French
philosopher Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995) and his popular view of affect as a force,
as a “prepersonal intensity corresponding to the passage from one experiential
state of the body to another and implying an augmentation or diminution in that
body’s capacity to act” (Massumi, 1987, p. xvi).1 But Spinoza proposed a second
dimension of affect, affectio, which refers to the particular state of one body’s
reaction to another body’s having affected it (Seigworth, 2011, p. 184). The
Spinozian notion of affectio underpins many contemporary psychological and
neurological understandings of affect as an elemental state, and Spinoza himself
associated it with three such states: desire, pleasure, and pain (Spinoza, 1992,
p. 141).
For Spinoza, then, affect involves both the intensive force that bodies exert upon
one another, increasing or decreasing their capacity to act (affectus) and the
elemental state generated by an encounter between two or more bodies (affectio).
Lundberg (2009) usefully describes the distinction between affectus and affectio
as that between affect as “productive force” and affect as “manifest emotion” (p.
401). Since first proposing this framework, however, Spinoza’s two dimensions
of affect have developed largely independent of one another, each becoming its
own account of affect. Indeed, consider one of the most well-known academic
squabbles surrounding affect. In 1991, the Marxist literary scholar Fredric
Jameson famously identified “the waning of affect” as one of “the constitutive
features of the postmodern” (Jameson, 1991, p. 6). After making this assertion,
Jameson was widely criticized by scholars of the “affective turn” in the
humanities who saw not a waning but “a magnification of affect” (see Shaviro,
2010, p. 4). Social theorist Brian Massumi (1995), for instance, argued that, “If
anything, our condition is characterized by a surfeit of [affect]” (p. 88).
In this section, two leading theories of affect that treat it as an elemental state
are explored. The first is psychologist Silvan S. Tomkins’s theory of primary
affects, and the second is neuroscientist Antonio Damasio’s theory of basic
emotions. By his own account, Tomkins (1982) began to recognize the
importance of affect in the early 1940s, though at the time, he notes, “affect was
in deep trouble and disrepute” (p. 353). Affect’s unfavorable status in academic
circles was principally a product of two intellectual traditions: behaviorism and
psychoanalysis. In the early 20th century, a behavioral approach held sway in
psychology. This approach concerned what could be objectively observed and
tested, which according to one of its most famous proponents, John B. Watson,
was restricted to the public behaviors and reactions of individuals.
Consequently, private behaviors, like thoughts and emotions, were excluded
from serious study. Affect fared little better in the psychoanalytic tradition,
where Freud subordinated it to the drives, which he believed “to constitute the
primary motivational system” (Tomkins, 2008, p, 4). With respect to both
behaviorism and psychoanalysis, then, affects were seen as playing an
inconsequential or secondary role in human motivation and action.
Based on his research, Tomkins identified nine primary affects, “the inborn
protocols that when triggered encourage us to spring into action” (Nathanson,
2008, p. xiii). He arranged these nine primary motivating mechanisms into the
categories of positive, neutral, and negative. According to Tomkins, there are two
positive affects: (a) interest-excitement and (b) enjoyment-joy; one neutral affect:
(c) surprise-startle; and six negative affects: (d) distress-anguish, (e) fear-terror,
(f) anger-rage, (g) shame-humiliation, (h) disgust, and (i) dissmell. Over time,
Tomkins has reworked some of the affects on this list, but he has consistently
described the first seven in pairs that encompass varying intensities of the same
affect. Rage, for instance, is an intensified version of anger, while excitement is
an intensified version of interest. The final two affects, disgust and dissmell, are
protective ones related to food; they work to prevent humans from eating or
drinking things that are toxic or harmful. Since affect amplifies “anything with
Affect 5
That is not to say that personal experience plays no role whatsoever in basic
emotions, but it is indirect. From a neurological perspective, the activation of
emotion (for our purposes, fear) looks like this. A threatening object or event is
registered via an exteroceptive sense (e.g., the sight of a bear). This sends a
neural signal to the amygdala, which recognizes the object or event as an
emotionally competent stimulus (ECS). The ECS, which is a pattern that has
evolved biologically over time to ensure a safe homeostatic range for the body,
triggers an automated response or program of action (i.e., the amygdala sends
predetermined commands to the hypothalamus and brain stem). The state of the
body changes to fear (i.e., heart and respiratory rates increase, cortisol and
adrenaline are secreted into the blood stream, blood vessels in the skin contract,
etc.). These changes in the body state are sensed by the interoceptive system and
mapped (i.e., a feeling develops). While fear is, for Damasio, a largely universal
experience, fear of bears is not. Personal life experiences with bears (e.g., perhaps
one is an animal trainer), as well as the context in which one encounters a bear
(e.g., while camping versus at the zoo), modulate whether or not seeing a bear
qualifies as an ECS.
… radically open to the world” (Labanyi, 2010, p. 225). In this view, “a body is
defined not by the form that determines it,” but as an individual thing
distinguished from others things in respect to motion and rest, that is, a body
without organs (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 260; see also Spinoza, 1992, p.
63). Virtually anything, human or nonhuman, can function as a body so long as
it has the capacity to affect and be affected. “Bodies,” explains Barbara Kennedy
(2000), “might be technological, material, organic, cultural, sociological, or
molecular” (p. 98).
Among the most prominent scholars to take up these ideas is Brian Massumi, a
cultural theorist, who is one of the chief translators of Deleuze and Guattari’s
work. Following Deleuze and Guattari, Massumi (2002) equates affect with
“intensity,” which he argues is not “semantically or semiotically ordered,” but
which “is embodied in purely autonomic reactions most directly manifested in
the skin—at the surface of the body, at its interface with things” (pp. 24–25).
Massumi’s insistence that affect is “the body’s response to stimuli at a
precognitive and prelinguistic level” (Labanyi, 2010, p. 224) that involves the
brain but not consciousness is perhaps most evident in the strong divide he
draws between affect and emotion. Indeed, as Ruth Leys (2011) explains in a
Affect 11
One of the unique aspects of Thrift’s NRT is its explicit emphasis on politics, on
showing how the study of affect can enhance our understanding of politics, as
well as using affect theory to generate new forms of politics. In Thrift’s (2008)
words: “the envelope of what we call the political must increasingly expand to
take note of ‘the way that political attitudes and statements are partly
conditioned by intense autonomic bodily reactions that do not simply reproduce
the trace of a political intention and cannot wholly be recuperated within an
ideological regime of truth’” (p. 182) As a geographer, Thrift is interested in how
the study of affect influences and impacts the politics of space, especially, urban
space. In that regard, Thrift points to four developments. First, he suggests there
is a general altering of the form of politics, expanding the modes of political
involvement beyond traditional means (Massumi, 1995, pp. 100–103). Second,
there is a growing “mediatization” of politics in which “political presentation
increasingly conforms to media norms” (Thrift, 2008, p. 184). Massumi (2002)
agrees. Citing the example of Ronald Reagan, he argues that the timbre and
“beautiful vibratory” quality of Reagan’s voice made him appealing even though
his thoughts were incoherent (p. 41). Third, the political is spreading into new
sensory registers, creating microgeographies governed by biopolitics. Fourth,
urban space is increasingly designed to elicit political response through
strategically engineered landscapes.
animate. One useful way to think about this is in terms of what Jane Bennett
(2004) calls thing-power, “which figures materiality as a protean flow of matter-
energy and figures the thing as a relatively composed form of that flow” (p. 349).
Bennett further describes thing-power as “the lively energy and/or resistant
pressure that issues from one material assemblage and is received by others” (p.
365). Though asignifying, matter is nonetheless expressive, for the aesthetic
qualities of things elicit sensations as bodies come into contact with one another
(see Hawhee, 2015).
A third middle ground of inquiry into affect is reflected by Sara Ahmed’s work
exploring the “sociality of emotion.” Rejecting the notion that emotions are
psychological states, she draws upon Marxism to advance the idea of an
“affective economy,” which holds “that it is the objects of emotions that circulate,
rather than emotion as such” (Ahmed, 2004, p. 11). In this framework, emotions
reside neither in individuals nor objects, but move in association with the
movement of objects, which become sticky or saturated with affect. This
perspective assists critics in analyzing how affect flows through contemporary
politics and, indeed, numerous rhetorical scholars have drawn upon this
perspective to examine the affective dimensions of diverse rhetorical phenomena.
While any attempt to survey those efforts is necessarily selective and partial, it
is worth highlighting a few of the key voices and views in this arena.
In a frequently cited review essay, Jenny Edbauer Rice (2008) examines Ahmed’s
The Cultural Politics of Emotion along with three other recent contributions to
critical affect studies (CAS), which she defines as “the interdisciplinary study of
affect and its mediating force in everyday life” (pp. 201–202). In doing so, she
draws attention to the broad ways that affect theory shapes “how we
conceptualize the public space;” challenges “us to rethink the telos of rhetorical
publics;” and invites “more complex understanding of pathos (beyond emotion),
increased attention to the physiological character of rhetoric, and a rethinking
of ideological critique” (pp. 209, 210, 211). Taking up these varied charges,
scholars such as Erin J. Rand (2015, 2014), Caitlin Bruce (2015), Catherine
Chaput (2011), and Dana L. Cloud and Kathleen Eaton Feyh (2015) have all
sought to clarify “the intersection of the somatic and the social” (Cloud & Feyh,
2015, p. 303). Brent Malin’s (2001) work on “emotions as public, embodied
practices” is also of note, though his discussion of emotion is closely tied to
discourse and processes of meaning-making, which is precisely the view many
scholars of affect wish to upend.
While Grossberg, Lundberg, Ahmed, and Böhme differ in their assumptions and
approaches, each is concerned with finding some middle ground between a view
of affect as an elemental state, which has been rightly criticized for being too
fixed and, thus, failing to capture the processual character of becoming, and
affect as an intensive force, which has justifiably been criticized as being too
theoretically abstract and, therefore, of limited heuristic value. That these
“middle grounds” as I have dubbed them raise their own questions and
paradoxes is not a limitation so much as it is a testament to the complexity of
affect.
Further Reading
Ahmed, S. (2004). The cultural politics of emotion. Edinburgh, U.K.: Edinburgh
University Press.
Böhme, G. (2014). The theory of atmospheres and its applications (A.-C. Engels-
Schwarzpaul, Trans.). Interstices: Journal of Architecture and Related Arts, 15,
92–99.
Clough, P. T., & Halley, J. (Eds.). (2007). The affective turn: Theorizing the social.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Damasio, A. (2003). Looking for Spinoza: Joy, sorrow, and the feeling brain.
London: William Heinemann.
Damasio, A. R. (1994). Descartes’ error: Emotion, reason, and the human brain.
New York: Avon Books.
Damasio, A. R. (1999). The feeling of what happens: Body and emotion in the
making of consciousness. New York: Harcourt Brace & Co.
Damasio, A. R. (2010). Self comes to mind: Constructing the conscious brain. New
York: Pantheon.
Deleuze, G. (2003). Francis Bacon: The logic of sensation (D. W. Smith, Trans.).
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1994). What is philosophy? (H. Tomlinson & G.
Burchell, Trans.). New York: Columbia University Press.
Gregg, M., & Seigworth, G. J. (Eds.). (2010). The affect theory reader. Durham,
NC: Duke University Press.
Grossberg, L. (1992). We gotta get out of this place: Popular conservatism and
postmodern culture. New York: Routledge.
Affect 18
Protevi, J. (2009). Political affect: Connecting the social and the somatic.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Spinoza, B. (1992). Ethics: Treatise on the emendation of the intellect and selected
letters (S. Shirley, Trans.). Indianapolis, IN: Hacket.
References
Ahmed, S. (2004). The cultural politics of emotion. Edinburgh, U.K.: Edinburgh
University Press.
Batson, C. D., Shaw, L. L., & Oleson, K. C. (1992). Differentiating affect, mood,
and emotion: Toward functionally based conceptual distinctions. In M. S. Clark
(Ed.), Review of personality and social psychology (Vol. 13, pp. 294–326).
Newbury Park, CA: SAGE.
Bergson, H. (1991). Matter and memory (N. M. Paul & W. S. Palmer, Trans.). New
York: Zone Books.
Böhme, G. (2013). The art of the stage set as a paradigm for an aesthetics of
atmospheres. Ambiances: International Journal of Sensory Environment,
Architecture, and Urban Space, 2.
Böhme, G. (2014). The theory of atmospheres and its applications (A.-C. Engels-
Schwarzpaul, Trans.). Interstices: Journal of Architecture and Related Arts, 15,
92–99.
Brinkema, E. (2014). The forms of the affects. Durham, NC: Duke University
Press.
Bruce, C. (2015). The balaclava as affect generator: Free Pussy Riot protests and
transnational iconicity. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 12(1), 42–
62.
Cloud, D. L., & Feyh, K. E. (2015). Reason in revolt: Emotional fidelity and
working class standpoint in the “Internationale.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly,
45(4), 300–323.
Colman, F. J. (2010). Affect. In A. Parr (Ed.). The Deleuze dictionary (pp. 11–13).
Edinburgh, U.K.: Edinburgh University Press.
Damasio, A. (2003). Looking for Spinoza: Joy, sorrow, and the feeling brain.
London: William Heinemann.
Damasio, A. R. (1994). Descartes’ error: Emotion, reason, and the human brain.
New York: Avon Books.
Damasio, A. R. (1999). The feeling of what happens: Body and emotion in the
making of consciousness. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company.
Damasio, A. R. (2010). Self comes to mind: Constructing the conscious brain. New
York: Random House.
Damasio, A., & Carvalho, G. B. (2013). The nature of feelings: Evolutionary and
neurobiological origins. Neuroscience, 14(2), 143–152.
Deleuze, G. (2003). Francis Bacon: The logic of sensation (D. W. Smith, Trans.).
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1994). What is philosophy? (H. Tomlinson & G.
Burchell, Trans.). New York: Columbia University Press.
Dickinson, G., Ott, B. L., & Aoki, E. (2013). (Re)imagining the West: The Whitney
Gallery of Western Art’s sacred hymn. Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies,
13(1), 21–34.
Eakin, E. (2003, April 19). I feel, therefore I am. New York Times.
Grossberg, L. (1992). We gotta get out of this place: Popular conservatism and
postmodern culture. New York: Routledge.
Gunn, J. (2010). On speech and public release. Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 13(2),
1–42.
Howes, D. (2003) Sensual relations: Engaging the senses in culture and social
theory. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.
Jenkins, E., & Zhang, P. (2016). Deleuze the media ecologist? Extensions of and
advances on McLuhan. Explorations in Media Ecology, 15(1), 55–72.
Kristeva, J. (1984). Revolution in poetic language (M. Waller, Trans.). New York:
Columbia.
Lacan, J. (1988). The seminar, book 1. Freud’s papers on technique, 1953–54 (J.
Forrester, Trans.). Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
Lacan, J. (1998). The seminar, book 20: Encore, on feminine sexuality, the limits
of love and knowledge. New York: Norton.
Leys, R. (2011). The turn to affect: A critique. Critical Inquiry, 37, 434–472.
Lundberg, C. (2009). Enjoying God’s death: The Passion of the Christ and the
practices of an evangelical public. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 95(4), 387–411.
Mays, C., & Jung, J. (2012). Priming terministic inquiry: Toward a methodology
of neurorhetoric. Rhetoric Review, 31(1), 41–59.
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atmospheres: The rhetorical workings of biopower at The CELL. Communication
and Critical/Cultural Studies, 13(4), 346–362.
Ott, B. L., & Keeling, D. M. (2011). Cinema and choric connection: Lost in
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Paasonen, S., Hillis, K., & Petit, M. (2015). Introduction. In K. Hillis, S. Paasonen,
& M. Petit (Eds.), Networked affect (pp. 1–24). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Rand, E. J. (2014). “What one voice can do”: Civic pedagogy and choric
collectivity at Camp Courage. Text and Performance Quarterly, 34(1), 28–51.
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& Public Affairs, 18(1), 161–176
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Soler, C. (2015). Lacanian affects: The function of affect in Lacan’s work. New
York: Routledge.
Spinoza, B. (1992). Ethics: Treatise on the emendation of the intellect and selected
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Notes:
(1.) Elaborating on this view, Brinkema (2014) explains, “Affects for Deleuze are
not feelings, emotions, or moods but autonomous potentialities, pure ‘possibles’
that are linked to a complex series of highly specific terms, such as ‘sensation,’
Affect 25
(2.) These are, of course, not the only two ways to conceptualize affect, though
they are regularly highlighted. Seigworth and Gregg (2010), for instance, identify
two key vectors of affect theory: “affect as the prime ‘interest’ motivator that
comes to put the drive in bodily drives (Tomkins); [and] affect as an entire, vital,
and modulating field of myriad becomings across human and nonhuman
(Deleuze)” (Seigworth & Gregg, 2010, p. 6). These two vectors largely correspond
with what I am calling the “state” and “force” traditions. The centrality of these
two traditions is also highlighted by Paasonen, Hillis, and Petit (2015), who
observe: “In new materialist investigations inspired by the philosophy of Gilles
Deleuze and Félix Guattari, … affect translates as nonsubjective and impersonal
potentiality, intensity, and force… . In contrast, in the work of the psychologist
Silvan Tomkins, … affects are identifiable and specific … physiological reactions”
(Paasonen, Hillis, & Petit, 2015, p. 6).
(3.) Brinkema (2014) posits, for instance, that “Affect is not the place where
something immediate and automatic and resistant takes place outside of
language. … Affect is not where reading is no longer needed” (Brinkema, 2014, p.
xiv). Brinkema is a committed textualist who maintains that any productive
theory of affect would allow critics to “read for affect and affectivity in texts.”
(5.) Lacan (1988), for instance, argues that: “The affective is not like a special
density which would escape an intellectual accounting. It is not to be found in a
mythical beyond of the production of the symbol which would precede the
discursive formulation” (Lacan, 1988, p. 57). In other words, Lacan objects to
treating the affective realm as primary.
Affect 26
Brian L. Ott