Thrift 2004 PDF

Intensities of Feeling: Towards a Spatial Politics of Affect
Author(s): Nigel Thrift

Source: Geografiska Annaler. Series B, Human Geography, Vol. 86, No. 1, Special Issue: The
Political Challenge of Relational Space (2004), pp. 57-78
Published by: Wiley on behalf of the Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography
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INTENSITIES OF FEELING:
TOWARDS A SPATIAL POLITICS OF AFFECT
by
Nigel Thrift
Thrift., N. 2004: Intensities of feeling: Towards a spatial politics diacy of Nazi rallies comes to mind. So does Rich-
of affect. Geogr. Ann., 86 B (1): 57-78.
ard Sennett's summoning of troubled urban bodies
in Flesh and Stone. But, generally speaking, to read
ABSTRACT. This paper attempts to take the politics of affect as
not just incidental but central to the life of cities, given that cities
about affect in cities it is necessary to resort to the
are thought of as inhuman or transhuman entities and that politics pages of novels, and the tracklines of poems.
is understood as a process of community without unity. It is in Why this neglect of the affective register of cit-
three main parts. The first part sets out the main approaches to af- ies? It is not as if there is no history of the study of
fect that conform with this approach. The second part considers
the ways in which the systematic engineering of affect has become
affect. There patently is, and over many centuries.
central to the political life of Euro-American cities, and why. The For example, philosophers have continually debat-
third part then sets out the different kinds of progressive politics ed the place of affect. Plato's discussion of the role
that might become possible once affect is taken into account. of artists comes to mind as an early instance: for
There are some brief conclusions.
Plato art was dangerous because it gave an outlet
Key words: affect, politics, space for the expression of uncontrolled emotions and
feelings. In particular, drama is a threat to reason
Nobody knows how many rebellions besides political rebel- because it appeals to emotion.4 No doubt one could
lions ferment in the masses of life which people earth
track forward through pivotal figures such as Ma-
Jane Eyre, 1847/1993 p. 115
chiavelli, Rousseau, Kant and Hegel, noting vari-
ous rationalist and romantic reactions, depending
Introduction upon whether (and which) passions are viewed
Cities may be seen as roiling maelstroms of affect.favourably or with suspicion5. Similarly, though at
a much later date, scientists have recognised the
Particular affects such as anger, fear, happiness and
importance of affect. At least since the publication
joy are continually on the boil, rising here, subsid-
ing there, and these affects continually manifest of Charles Darwin's (1998) The Expression of the
themselves in events which can take place either Emotions
at in Man and Animals in 1872, and no
doubt
a grand scale or simply as a part of continuing eve- before that, there has been a continuous his-
tory of the systematic scientific study of affect, and
ryday life.1 So, on the heroic side, we might point
although it would be foolish to say that we now
to the mass hysteria occasioned by the death of
Princess Diana or the deafening roar from a sports know all there is to know about the physiology of
stadium when a crucial point is scored. On the pro-emotions, equally it would be foolish to say that we
saic side we might think of the mundane emotional know nothing. In turn, literatures such as these have
labour of the workplace, the frustrated shouts and been replete with all kinds of more or less explicit
political judgements - about which passions are
gestures of road rage, the delighted laughter of chil-
wholesome and which are suspect or even danger-
dren as they tour a theme park, or the tears of a sus-
pected felon undergoing police interrogation.2 ous, about the degree to which passions can or
should be allowed untrammelled licence, and about
Given the utter ubiquity of affect as a vital ele-
how passions can be amplified or repressed.
ment of cities, its shading of almost every urban ac-
tivity with different hues that we all recognise, you So why the neglect of affect in the current urban
would think that the affective register would form literature, even in the case of issues such as identity
a large part of the study of cities - but you wouldand belonging which quiver with affective energy?
be wrong.3 Though affect continually figures in A series of explanations come to mind. One is a re-
sidual cultural Cartesianism (replete with all kinds
many accounts it is usually off to the side. There are
a few honourable exceptions, of course. Walter of gendered connotations): affect is a kind of friv-
Benjamin's identification of the emotional imme- olous or distracting background to the real work of
Geografiska Annaler ? 86 B (2004) ? 1 57
NIGEL THRIFT
deciding our way through the city. It cannot be a and to produce the beginnings of a sy
ideology,
part of our intelligence of that world. Another is
optic commentary. Accordingly, in the first part
concerned with the cultural division of labour.
the The
paper, I will describe some of the different p
creative arts already do that stuff and there is no
sitions that have been taken on what affect actuall
is. This
need to follow. A third explanation is that affect fig-is clearly not an inconsequential exerc
and it has a long and complex history which tak
ures mainly in perceptual registers like propriocep-
tion which are not easily captured in print. No
in luminaries as different as Spinoza and Darw
doubt other explanations could be mustered.and Freud. But, given the potential size of the agen
Perhaps, at one time, these may have beenda, this
seen as has meant pulling out four key traditio
valid reasons, but they are not any more. I would
rather than providing a complete review. This wo
point to three reasons why neglecting affect is, as
of definition over, in the second part of the paper
will sys-
much now as in the past, criminal neglect. First, then describe some of the diverse ways
which the use and abuse of various affective pra
tematic knowledges of the creation and mobilisation
of affect have become an integral part of thetices is gradually changing what we regard as t
every-
day urban landscape: affect has become partsphere
of a re-of 'the political'. In particular, I will point
flexive loop which allows more and more four sophisti-
different but related ways in which the man
ulation
cated interventions in various registers of urban of affect for political ends is becoming n
life.
Second, these knowledges are not only being de-
just widespread but routine in cities through n
kinds po-
ployed knowingly, they are also being deployed of practices and knowledges which are a
redefining
litically (mainly but not only by the rich and power- what counts as the sphere of the poli
ful) to political ends: what might have been cal. These practices, knowledges and redefinitio
painted
as aesthetic is increasingly instrumental. Third,
are not af-
all by any means nice or cuddly, which
one all too common interpretation of what addi
fect has become a part of how cities are understood.
As cities are increasingly expected to have affect
'buzz', will
to contribute. Indeed, some of them ha
be 'creative', and to generally bring forth powers
the potential
of to be downright scary. But this is pa
invention and intuition, all of which can be andforged
parcel of why it is so crucial to address aff
now: in
into economic weapons, so the active engineering ofat least one guise the discovery of n
means of
the affective register of cities has been highlighted as practicing affect is also the discovery
a whole
the harnessing of the talent of transformation. new means of manipulation by the pow
Cities
must exhibit intense expressivity. Each ful.of these
In the subsequent part of the paper, I will foc
three reasons shows that, whereas affect hasmore explicitly on the way in which these develo
always,
of course, been a constant of urban experience,
ments now
are changing what we may think of as bo
affect is more and more likely to be actively engi-
politics and 'the political', using the four traditio
that I outlined previously. I will not be making t
neered with the result that it is becoming something
silly that
more akin to the networks of pipes and cables argument that just about everything whi
are of such importance in providing the basic me- up is political, in some sense or the oth
now turns
but I will be arguing that the move to affect sho
chanics and root textures of urban life (Armstrong,
1999), a set of constantly performing relays
up new andpolitical registers and intensities, and
junctions that are laying down all mannerlows
of us to work on them to brew new collectives in
new
emotional histories and geographies. ways which at least have the potential to be pro-
In this paper I want to think about affect gressive.
in citiesThen, in the penultimate part of the paper,
and about affective cities, and, above all, about
I will briefly consider in more detail some of the
what the political consequences of thinkingkindsmore
of progressive political interventions into af-
explicitly about these topics might be - once it is
fect that might legitimately be made, using the ide-
accepted that the 'political decision is itself pro-
as stimulated by recent work on virtual art and,
duced by a series of inhuman or pre-subjective
most notably, the work of Bill Viola. Finally, I
present
forces and intensities' (Spinks, 2001, p. 24) which some too brief conclusions which argue
the idea of 'man' has reduced to ciphers. that
My theaims
current experiments with a 'cosmopolitics'
will be threefold: to discuss the nature of affect, to
of new kinds of encounter and conviviality must in-
clude affect.
show some of the ways in which cities and affect in-
teract to produce a politics which cannot In
bewriting
re- this paper in such a way that it does not
duced to simply a shifting field of communal self-
simply become a long and rather dry review, I have
had to
reflection or the neat conceptual economy ofmake
an some draconian decisions. First, in
58 Geografiska Annaler * 86 B (2004) ? 1
INTENSITIES OF FEELING: TOWARDS A SPATIAL POLITICS OF AFFECT
general I have concentrated on current Euro-Amer- theory has informed both domains in diverse
ican societies. This means that I have generally ne- ways and, consequently, we seem to be entering
glected both the rich vein of work (chiefly from an- a period in which poststructuralism is likely to
thropology) which has offered up cross-cultural be renewed by its forebear, structuralism.
comparisons and the equally rich vein of work (3) Human language is no longer assumed to offer
which has examined the historical record for evi-the only meaningful model of communication.
dence of broad shifts in emotional tone and even in
(4) Events have to be seen as genuinely open on at
what is regarded and named as emotion.6 Too often, least some dimensions and, notwithstanding
the extraordinary power of many social sys-
then, in the name of brevity, this paper will presume
an affective common-sense background whichtems, 'revolt, resistance, breakdown, conspira-
does not exist. Sensoriums vary by culture and
cy, alternative is everywhere' (Latour, 2002, p.
through history (Geurts, 2002). The paper therefore
124). Hence a turn to experiment and the alche-
risks ethnocentrism in an area which, more than my of the contingent form that such a turn ap-
most, has been aware of difference. plies (Garfinkel, 2002).
Second, I have concentrated mainly on theoret-
(5) Time and process are increasingly seen as cru-
ical explorations of affect, although many of these cial to explanation (Abbott, 2001) because they
explorations are backed up by solid empirical
offer a direct challenge to fixed categories
work. This means, in particular, that I have tended
which, in a previous phase of social and cultural
to pass by the very large amount of material in so-
theory, still survived, though complicated by
cial psychology and cognitive science. This is un- the idea that one considered their workings in
fortunate since this work is now going beyond the more detail. The multiplication of forms of
crude behaviourism of the past, but incorporating itknowledge and the traffic between them is tak-
would have necessitated not just a supplement buten seriously (Rabinow, 2003).
a complete new paper (cf. Davidson et al, 2003). (6) Space is no longer seen as a nested hierarchy
Third, my approach is constrained, if that is the moving from 'global' to 'local'. This absurd
right word, by a specific theoretical background scale-dependent notion is replaced by the no-
which arises from a particular time in the history of tion that what counts is connectivity and that
social theory, one in which we are starting to grasp the social is 'only a tiny set of narrow, stand-
elements of what constitutes 'good theory' in ways ardised connections' out of many others
that have been apprehended before, but often only (Latour, 2002, p. 124).
(7) In other words, what is at stake is a different
very faintly. I will pull out just a few of the princi-
ples which are intended to produce new conceptual model of what thinking is, one that extends re-
and ethical resources, mainly because they are so flexivity to all manner of actors, that recognises
germane to what follows. reflexivity as not just a property of cognition
and which realises the essentially patchy and
(1) Distance from biology is no longer seen as material
a nature of what counts as thought.
prime marker of social and cultural theory
(Turner, 2002). It has become increasingly ev-
What is affect?
ident that the biological constitution of being
(so-called 'biolayering') has to be taken intoThe
ac-problem that must be faced straight away is
that there is no stable definition of affect. It can
count if performative force is ever to be under-
stood, and in particular, the dynamics of birth mean a lot of different things. These are usually as-
(and creativity) rather than death (Battersby, sociated with words such as emotion and feeling,
1999). and a consequent repertoire of terms such as hatred,
(2) Relatedly, naturalism and scientism are no shame, envy, jealousy, fear, disgust, anger, embar-
longer seen as terrible sins. A key reason for this rassment, sorrow, grief, anguish, pride, love, hap-
is that developments like various forms of sys- piness, joy, hope, wonder, though for various rea-
tems theory, complexity theory and nonlinear sons that will become clear, I do not think these
dynamics have made science more friendly to words work well as simple translations of the term
social and cultural theory. Another reason is 'affect'. In particular, I want to get away from the
that, increasingly, the history of social and cul- idea that some root kind of emotion (like shame)
tural theory and science share common fore- can act as a key political cipher (Nussbaum, 2002).
bears. For example, since the 1940s systems In the brief and necessarily foreshortened review
NIGEL THRIFT
which follows, I will set aside approaches that tendfrom the setting itself, but this setting is
the body,
to work with a notion of individualised emotions cancelled out by such methods as questionnaires
(such as are often found in certain forms of empir- and other such instruments. In the second case, the
ical sociology and psychology) and stick with ap-problem is that emotions are largely non-represen-
proaches that work with a notion of broad tenden-tational: they are 'formal evidence of what, in one's
cies and lines of force: emotion as motion both lit- relations with others, speech cannot conceal'
erally and figurally (Bruno, 2002). I will consider(Katz, 1999, p. 323);
four of these approaches in turn but it is important
not to assume that I am making any strong judge- Studies almost always end up analysing how
ments as to their efficacy: each of these approaches people talk about their emotions. If there is an-
has a certain force which I want to draw on as well ything distinctive about emotions, it is that,
as certain drawbacks. However, it is extremely im- even if they commonly occur in the course of
portant to note that none of these approaches could speaking, they are not talk, not even just forms
be described as based on a notion of human indi- of expression, they are ways of expressing
viduals coming together in community. Rather, in something going on that talk cannot grasp.
line with my earlier work, each cleaves to an 'in- Historical and cultural studies similarly elide
human' or 'transhuman' framework in which indi- the challenge of understanding emotional ex-
viduals are generally understood as effects of the perience when they analyse texts, symbols,
events to which their body parts (broadly under- material objects, and ways of life as represen-
stood) respond and in which they participate. An- tations of emotions.
other point that needs to be made is that each of (Katz, 1999, p. 4)
these approaches has connections (some strong,
some weak) to the others.7 Then one last pointBecause there is no time out from expressive being,
needs to be noted; in each approach affect is under-perception of a situation and response are inter-
stood as aform of thinking, often indirect and non- twined and assume a certain kind of 'response-abil-
reflective, it is true, but thinking all the same. And,ity' (Katz, 1999), an artful use of a vast sensorium
similarly, all manner of the spaces which they gen-of bodily resources which depends heavily on the
erate must be thought of in the same way, as means actions of others (indeed it is through such re-ac-
of thinking and as thought in action. Affect is a dif-tions that we most often see what we are doing).8
ferent kind of intelligence about the world, but it isMost of the time, this response-ability is invisible
intelligence none-the-less, and previous attemptsbut when it becomes noticeable it stirs up powerful
which have either relegated affect to the irrationalemotions:
or raised it up to the level of the sublime are both
equally wrong-headed. Blushes, laughs, cryings, and anger emerge on
The first translation of affect which I want to ad- faces and through coverings that usually hide
dress conceives of affect as a set of embodied prac- visceral substrata. The doing of emotions is a
tices that produce visible conduct as an outer lining. process of breaking bodily boundaries, of tears
This translation arises chiefly out of the phenome- spilling out, rage burning up, and as laughter
nological tradition but also includes traces of social bursts out, the emphatic involvement of guts as
interactionism and hermeneutics (cf. Redding, a designated source of the involvement.
1999). Its chief concern is to develop descriptions (Katz, 1999, p. 322)
of how emotions occur in everyday life, understood
as the richly expressive/aesthetic feeling-cum-be- In other (than) words, emotions form a rich moral
haviour of continual becoming that is providedarray through which and with which the world is
chiefly by bodily states and processes (and whichthought and which can sense different things even
is understood as constitutive of affect). This hasthough they cannot always be named.
meant getting past two problems that have plagued
the sociology of emotions in the past: the problem Between oneself and the world there is a new
of decontextualisation and the problem of repre- term, a holistically sensed, new texture in the
sentation. In the first case, the problem is that, more social moment, and one relates to others in
than normally, context seems to be a vital element and through that emergent and transforming
in the constitution of affect. Very often, the source experience. A kind of metamorphosis occurs
of emotions seem to come from somewhere outside in which the self goes into a new container or
60 Geografiska Annaler * 86 B (2004) ? 1
takes on a temporary flesh for the passage For to

Tomkins, affect is not subservient to a suppos-
edlyof
an altered state of social being. The subjects primary drive system. In many cases the ap-
our analysis in the first place own the parent
poetic urgency of the drive system results from its
devices. co-assembly with appropriate affects which act as
(Katz, 1999, p. 343) necessary amplifiers. Indeed, affects may be:
The second translation of affect is the most cultur- either much more causal than any drive could
ally familiar in that its vocabulary is now a part of be or much more monopolistic... .Most of the
how Euro-American subjects routinely describe characteristics which Freud attributed to the
themselves. It is usually associated with psychoan- Unconscious and to the Id are in fact salient
alytic frames and is based around a notion of drive. aspects of the affect system....Affect enables
Often, it will follow the Freudian understanding both insatiability and extreme lability, fickle-
that one's physiological drive - sexuality, libido, ness and finickiness.
desire - is the root source of human motivation and (Tomkins cited in Sedgwick, 2003, p. 21)
identity. Emotions are primarily vehicles or mani-
festations of the underlying libidinal drive; varia-Significantly, for Tomkins, it is the face that is the
tions on the theme of 'desire'. A conception such aschief site of affect: 'I have now come to regard the
this, which reduces affect to drive, may be too stark,skin, in general, and the skin of the face in partic-
however. As Sedgwick (2003, p. 18) puts it, such aular, as of the greatest importance in producing the
move 'permits a diagrammatic sharpness of feel of affect' (Tomkins cited in Demos, 1995, p.
thought that may, however, be too impoverishing in89).11 But, for Tomkins, it is important to note that
qualitative terms'. the face was not the expression of something else,
Sedgwick tries to solve this problem by turningit was affect in process.
to the work of Silvan Tomkins (Demos, 1995; The third translation of affect is naturalistic and
Sedgwick and Frank, 1995). Tomkins distinguishes hinges on adding capacities through interaction in
between the drive and the affect system. The drivea world which is constantly becoming. It is usually
system is relatively narrowly constrained and in- associated first of all with Spinoza and then subse-
strumental in being concentrated on particular aims quently with Deleuze's moder ethological reinter-
(e.g. breathing, eating, drinking, sleeping, excret-pretation of Spinoza.
ing), time-limited (e.g. stopping each of these ac- Spinoza set out to challenge the model put for-
tivities will have more or less deleterious conse- ward by Descartes of the body as animated by the
quences after a period of time) and concentrated will on of an immaterial mind or soul, a position which
reflected Descartes' allegiance to the idea that the
particular objects (e.g. getting a breath of air or a li-
world consisted of two different substances: exten-
tre of water). In contrast, affects9 such as anger, en-
joyment, excitement or sadness, shame and distress sion (the physical field of objects positioned in a
can range across all kinds of aims (one of which geometric space which has become familiar to us as
may simply be to stimulate their own arousala Cartesian- space) and thought (the property which
what Tomkins calls their autotelic function), can distinguishes conscious beings as 'thinking things'
continually redefine the aim under consideration1?, from objects).
can have far greater freedom with respect to timeIn contrast, Spinoza was a monist. He believed
than drives (an affect such as anger may last forthat a there was only one substance in the universe,
few seconds but equally may motivate revenge that 'God or Nature' in all its forms; human beings and
spans decades) and can focus on many different
all other objects could only be modes of this one
kinds of object: unfolding substance. Each mode was spatially ex-
tended in its own way and thought in its own way
Affects can be, and are, attached to things, and unfolded in a determinate manner. So, in
people, ideas, sensations, relations, activities,
Spinoza's world, everything is part of a thinking
ambitions, institutions, and any other number and a doing simultaneously: they are aspects of
of other things, including other affects. Thus the same thing expressed in two registers.12 In
one can be excited by anger, disgusted byturn, this must mean that knowing proceeds in
shame, or surprised by joy. parallel with the body's physical encounters, out
(Sedgwick, 1993, p. 19) of interaction. Spinoza is no irrationalist, howev-
er. What he is attempting here is to understand
NIGEL THRIFT
thoughtfulness in a new way, extending its activ-

properties which belong to it in the same way
ity into nature. as heat, cold, storm, thunder and the like be-
Spinoza's metaphysics was accompanied by
longato the nature of the atmosphere.
particular notion of what we might nowadays call (Ethics, Pref.: C492)
human psychology. For Spinoza, human psycholo-
gy is manifold, a complex body arising out of
But inter-
affect will present differently to body and mind
at each
action which is an alliance of many simple encounter. In the attribute of body, affect
bodies
and which therefore exhibits what nowadays wouldencounters so that bodies are disposed for
structures
be called emergence - the capacity to demonstrate
action in a particular way. In the attribute of mind,
affect structures
powers at higher levels of organization which do encounters as a series of modifica-
not exist at other levels; 'an individual may tions
be char-
arising from the relations between ideas which
acterised by a fixed number of definite properties may be more or less adequate and more or less em-
(extensive and qualitative) and yet possess an in-In other words, the issue is the composi-
powering.
definite number of capacities to affect and be tion of an affective relationship. So 'euphoria and
affect-
ed by other individuals' (DeLanda, 2002, p. 62). Inare not the ground of any given emotion
dysphoria
turn, this manifold psychology is being continually any more than musical harmony is the ground of the
modified by the myriad encounters taking place simultaneous
be- tones which give rise to it. The names
tween individual bodies and other finite things. The emotions we experience are merely the
of the many
exact nature of the kinds of modifications that namestake
given to differently assembled euphoric or
place will depend upon the relations that are dysphoric
possi-relations, akin to chords' (Brown and
ble between individuals who are also simultaneous- Stenner, 2001, p. 95).
ly elements of other complex bodies. Spinoza de- This emphasis on relations is important. Though
scribes the active outcome of these encounters to af- Spinoza makes repeated references to 'individuals'
fect or be affected by using the term emotion or af- it is clear from his conception of bodies and minds
fect (affectus) which is both body and thought. and affects as manifolds that for him the prior cat-
egory is what he calls the 'alliance' or 'relation-
By EMOTION (affectus) I understand the ship'. So affects, for example, occur in an encounter
modifications of the body by which the power between manifold beings, and the outcome of each
of action of the body is increased or dimin- encounter depends upon what forms of composition
ished, aided or restrained, and at the same time these beings are able to enter into.
the idea of these modifications. Such a way of proceeding from relations and en-
(Ethics. III,def.3) counters has many echoes in contemporary social
science and forms the touchstone of much recent
So affect, defined as the property of the active out- work in human geography. Most especially, it
come of an encounter, takes the form of an increase shows up in work which is concerned to find com-
or decrease in the ability of the body and mind alikemon complexes of relation, such as that informed
to act, which can be positive - and thus increase thatby contemporary philosophers and most notably
ability (counting as 'joyful' or euphoric) - or neg-Gilles Deleuze. Deleuze (1988, 2003) added what
ative - and thus diminish that ability (counting asmight be called an ethological spin to Spinoza's as-
'sorrowful' or dysphoric). Spinoza therefore de-sertion that things are never separable from their re-
taches 'the emotions' from the realm of responses lations with the world by drawing on the work of
and situations and attaches them instead to action writers such as von Uexktill on the perceptual
and encounters as the affections of substance or of worlds of animals and then applying the same kind
its attributes and as greater or lesserforces of ex- of thinking to human beings. Thus Deleuze (1988)
isting. They therefore become firmly a part of 'na- considers the simplest of von Uexkiill's animals, a
ture', of the same order as storms or floods. tick, whose raison d'etre is sucking the blood of
passing mammals. It appears to be capable of only
The way of understanding the nature of any- three affects: light (climb to the top of a branch),
thing, of whatever kind, must always be the smell (fall on to a mammal that passes beneath the
branch) and heat (seek the warmest spot on the
same, viz. through the universal rules and laws
mammal). Deleuze then applies the same kind of
of nature.... I have therefore regarded passions
reasoning to human beings. But there he has to
like love, hate, anger, envy, pride, pity, and
other feelings which agitate the mind ... as make the considerable reservation that we really
62 Geografiska Annaler ? 86 B (2004) ? 1
have no idea either what affects human bodies or separable from but unassimilable to any par-
minds might be capable of in a given encounter ticular, functionally anchored perspective.
ahead of time or, indeed, more generally, what That is why all emotion is more or less disori-
worlds human beings might be capable of building, enting, and why it is classically described as
so affects are 'the nonhuman becomings of man' being outside of oneself, at the very point at
(Deleuze and Guattari, 1994, p. 169). He is there- which one is most intimately and unshareably
fore led towards a language/practice of different in contact with oneself and one's vitality ....
speeds and intensities which can track all the com- Actually existing, structured things live in and
positions and combinations that human beings through that which escapes them. Their auto-
might be able to bring into play. nomy is the autonomy of affect.
The escape of affect cannot but be per-
If we are Spinozists we will not define a thing ceived, alongside the perceptions that are its
by its form, nor by its organs and its functions, capture. This side-perception may be punctual,
nor as a substance or a subject. Borrowing localised in an event .... When it is punctual, it
terms from the Middle Ages, or from geogra- is usually described in negative terms, as a
phy, we will define it by longitude or latitude. form of shock (the sudden interruption of
A body can be anything; it can be an animal, a functions of connection). But it is also contin-
body of sounds, a mind or an idea; it can be a uous, like a background perception that ac-
linguistic corpus, a social body, a collectivity. companies every event, however quotidian.
We call longitude of a body the set of relations When the continuity of affective escape is put
of speed and slowness, of momentum and rest, into words, it tends to take on positive conno-
between particles that compose it from this tations. For it is nothing less than the percep-
point of view, that is, between unformed ele- tion of one's own vitality, one's sense of alive-
ments. We call latitude the set of affects that ness, of changeability (often described as
occupy a body at each moment, that is, the in- 'freedom'). One's 'sense of aliveness' is a
tensive states of an anonymous force (force for continuous nonconscious self-perception (un-
existing, capacity for being affected). In this conscious self-reflection or self-referentiali-
way we construct the map of the body. The ty). It is the perception of this self-perception,
longitudes and latitudes together constitute its naming and making conscious, that allows
Nature, the plane of immanence or consisten- affect to be effectively analysed - as long as a
cy, which is always variable and is constantly vocabulary can be found for that which is im-
being altered, composed and recomposed by perceptible but whose escape from perception
individuals and collectivities. cannot but be perceived, as long as one is
(Deleuze, 1988, pp127-128) alive.
This Spinozan-Deleuzian notion of affect as always I want to foreground one last translation of affect
emergent is best set out by Massumi (2002, pp. 35- which we might call Darwinian. For Darwin, ex-
36, my emphasis) when he writes: pressions of emotion were universal and are the
product of evolution. Neither our expressions nor
Affects are virtual synesthetic perspectives an-our emotions are necessarily unique to human be-
chored in (functionally limited by) the actuallyings. Other animals have some of the same emo-
existing, particular things that embody them. tions, and some of the expressions produced by an-
The autonomy of affect is ... its openness. Af- imals resemble our own. Expressions, which typi-
fect is autonomous to the degree to which it es-cally involve the face and the voice, and to a lesser
capes confinement in the particular bodyextent body posture and movement, have a number
of cross-cultural features. In contrast, gestures,
whose vitality, or potential for interaction, it is.
Formed, qualified, situated perceptions and which typically involve hand movement, are not
cognitions fulfilling functions of actual con-
universal: generally, they vary from culture to cul-
ture in the same way as language.
nection or blockage are the capture and closure
of affect. Emotion is the most intense (most Though scientific work on emotions flourished,
Darwin's work on emotions was all but ignored for
contracted) expression of that capture - and of
the fact that something has always and again a hundred years or so. However, it has recently en-
escaped. Something remains unactualised, in- joyed something of a revival, associated in particu-
NIGEL THRIFT
lar with the work of Ekman (1995, 2003; Ekman

tarily on the face. How might we think about t
and Rosenberg, 1997). As Ekman has shown, Dar-
politics of affect, given that these different notio
win's work was important for three reasons. wouldFirst,
seem to imply different cues and even ont
it tried to answer the 'why' question: Whyogies?
are par-To begin with, we need to think about ge
ticular expressions associated with particular
eral emo-
changes in the affective tone of Euro-Ameri
tions? Second, it drew on a wide range of cultures
evidence,that are busily redefining the political lan
not only of a peculiar quantity (Darwin drew scape.onThat
a is the function of the next section.
large amount of international correspondents) but
also of a peculiar quality: Darwin's use of engrav-
The politics
ings and photographs of the face, using a number of of affect
sources, has become iconic. Third, thereOf was his affect has always been a key element
course,
politics
claim that there is a strong line of emotional descent and the subject of numerous powerful p
running from animals to humans, born out of litical
the ev-technologies which have knotted thinkin
olution of affective expression as a meanstechnique
of pre- and affect together in various pote
combinations.
paring the organism for action, a claim arising in One example is the marshalling
part out of a desire to answer critics of evolution.
aggression through various forms of military trai
What Darwin omitted from his study ings was such
any as drill. From the seventeenth century o
communicative aspect of emotion and it isward this these
as- kinds of training have become more
pect which has been added in today. Flying more
in thesophisticated, running in lockstep with '
face of total cultural relativism, neo-Darwinians
vances' ar-in military technology. These trainin
were used
gue that there are at least five emotions which areto condition soldiers and other combat-
common to all cultures: anger, fear, sadness,ants to kill, even though it seems highly unlikely
disgust
that thisis
and enjoyment,13 and that each of these emotions would be the normal behaviour of most
manifested in common facial expressions. These
people on the battlefield. These trainings involved
common facial expressions are involuntarybodilysignsconditionings
of which allowed fear to be con-
internal physiological changes and not just trolled.
a part They
of allowed anger and other aggressive
emotions to be channelled into particular situations.
the back-and-forth of the communicative repertoire.
But this is not to say that emotions operate They
likedamped
in- down revenge killings during bursts
stincts, uninfluenced by cultural experience. Com-
of rage, and they resulted in particular effects (e.g.
increased firing rates and higher kill ratios) which
munication has its say. 'Social experience influenc-
es attitudes about emotions, creates display the
andmilitary
feel- had not been achieving heretofore (see
Keegan,
ing rules, develops and tunes the particular 1976; Grossman, 1996; Bourke, 2000).
occa-
sions which will most rapidly call forth an emotion'
This may appear to many to be an extreme exam-
(Ekman, 1998, p. 387).14 In particular, different cul-
ple. But I think it is illustrative of a tendency towards
the greater
tures may not have the same words for emotions or and greater engineering of affect, not-
withstanding
may explain a particular emotion in a radically dif- the many covert emotional histories
that
ferent way.15 Further, the specific events that are only now beginning to be recovered (cf. Ber-
trigger
particular emotions can, of course, be quite lant, 2000). Similar processes have been happening
different
between cultures; for example, disgust is triggered
in many other arenas of social life, whether on a do-
by quite different kinds of food according tomestic or larger scale, sufficient to suggest that the
cultural
norms of what is nice and nasty. envelope of what we call the political must increas-
Four different notions of affect, then,inglyeachexpand
of to take note of 'the way that political
attitudes
which depends on a sense of push in the world butand statements are partly conditioned by
intense
the sense of push is subtly different in each autonomic bodily reactions that do not sim-
case. In
the case of embodied knowledge, that push plyisreproduce
pro- the trace of a political intention and
vided by the expressive armoury of thecannot human be wholly recuperated within an ideological
body. In the case of affect theory it is provided
regime of bytruth' (Spinks, 2001, p. 23). In this section
I want to
biologically differentiated positive and negative af-illustrate how this envelope is expanding
in cities
fects rather than the drives of Freudian theory. In the by reference to four developments. The first
world of Spinoza and Deleuze, affect is theofcapacity
these developments consists of the general chang-
of interaction that is akin to a natural forceesof
inemer-
theform of such politics which are taking place
gence. In the neo-Darwinian universe, affect is a
in the current era, changes which make affect an in-
deep-seated physiological change written involun-
creasingly visible element of the political. In partic-
ular, I want to point towards so-called 'agencies of the media, as well as similar appeals whic
ent upon
choice' and 'mixed-action repertoires' in lineendeavour
with a to reduce these affective impacts (e.g. b
general move to make more and more areasreferring
of life to science, by various means of decon
the subject of a new set of responsibilitiesstruction
called of the 'reality' of an image and so on
'choice'. As Norris (2002, p. 222) puts it: (Boltanski, 2002).
This brings me to the second development which
The expansion of the franchise during the heavy and continuing mediatization of poli-
is the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries tics.
gener- We live in societies which are enveloped in an
ated the rise of traditional channels for saturated
politi- by the media: most importantly, it is dif-
ficult to escape the influence of the screen which
cal mobilisation and expression in representa-
tive government, particularly the growth now
of ex-stares at us from so many mundane locations
tra-parliamentary party organizations, the almost every room in the house to doctor
- from
spread of cheap mass-circulation newspapers,
waiting rooms, from airport lounges to shops and
shopping
and the establishment of traditional groups in malls, from bars to many workplace
(Knorr
civic society, exemplified by the organized la- Cetina, 2001; McCarthy, 2001), from the in
bour movement, civic associations, voluntary
sides of elevators to whole buildings - that it is pos-
groups, and religious organizations. By the
sible to argue that the screen has taken on a number
1940s and 1950s, these channels had settled
of the roles formerly ascribed to parent, lover
teacher
and consolidated and were taken for granted as and blank stooge, as well as adding a whol
series
the major institutions linking citizens and the of 'postsocial'16 relations which seem to li
state within established democracies. Rising
somewhere between early film theory's brute trans-
lation of screen-ic force (Kracauer, 1960; Balasz
levels of human capital and societal moderni-
zation mean that, today, a more educated 1970)
citi-and cognitive film theory's later, more nu
zenry ... has moved increasingly from ancedagen- interpretation in which cognitive processe
cies of loyalty to agencies of choice, andare
fromstrained through various conventions and style
electoral repertoires toward mixed-action (see Bordwell and Carroll, 1996; Thrift, 2004b)
rep-
This
ertoires combining electoral activities and pro- mediatization has had important effects. A
test politics. In postindustrial societies, the
McKenzie (2001) has pointed out, its most impor
younger generations, in particular, have tant effect has been to enshrine the performativ
be-
principle at the heart of moder Euro-American so
come less willing than their parents and grand-
parents to channel their political energies
cieties and their political forms. This has occurred
through traditional agencies exemplified in abynumber of ways. To begin with, the technica
parties and churches, and more likely formto ex-of moder media tends to foreground emo
press themselves through a variety of ad hoc,
tion, both in its concentration on key affective site
contextual, and specific activities of choice,
such as the face or voice and its magnification of th
increasingly via new social movements, small
inter-details of the body that so often signify emo-
net activism, and transnational policy net- Political presentation nowadays often fixe
tion.17
works. Conventional indicators may blind on such
us small differences and makes them stand for
a whole.
to the fact that critical citizens may be becom- One line of movement can become a pro
ing less loyalist and deferential in orientation
gression of meaning, able to be actualised and im-
toward mass branch parties ... at the sameplanted
time locally. Massumi (2002, p. 41, my empha
sis) observes this quality in Ronald Reagan:
that they are becoming more actively engaged
via alternative means of expression.
That is why Reagan could be so many things
Many of these new forms of choice politics rely toonso many people; that is why the majority of
an expansion of what has been conventionallythe re- electorate could disagree with him on ma-
garded as the urban political sphere. For example, jor issues but still vote for him. Because he
the political nowadays routinely takes in all manner.was actualised, in their neighbourhood, as a
of forms of culture-nature relation (e.g. environ- movement and meaning of their selection - or
mental politics, animal rights politics, pro-choice ator
least selected for them with their acquies-
cence. He was a man for all inhibitions. It was
anti-life politics). In turn, this redefinition of what
counts as political has allowed more room forcommonly ex- said that he ruled primarily by pro-
plicitly affective appeals which are heavily depend-jecting an air of confidence. That was the emo-
NIGEL THRIFT
knowledge. These knowledges construct power in

tional tenor of his political manner, dysfunc-
tion notwithstanding. Confidence is the a number
emo- of ways - by delivering messages with
tional translation of affect as capturable life
passion, for example (indeed, it is often the force
potential; it is a particular emotional with
expres-
which passion is delivered which is more im-
portant
sion and becoming - conscious of one's side-than the message), by providing a new
perceived vitality. Reagan transmitted vitality, minute landscape of manipulation (Doane, 2002),
virtuality, tendency, in sickness and interrup- by adding new possibilities for making signs, and
tion. generally by adding new openings out of the event.
But, most importantly, they provide a new means of
Thus, political presentation conforms increasingly creating 'fractal' subjects challenged to perform
to media norms of presentation which emphasize across a series of different situations in a way which
the performance of emotion as being an index of demands not so much openness as controlled flex-
credibility. Increasingly, political legitimation aris- ibility.18 As McKenzie (2001, p. 19) puts it:
es from this kind of performance (Thompson,
2001). And, as a final point, these kinds of presen- The desire produced by performative power
tation chime with the increasingly 'therapeutic' and knowledge is not moulded by distinct dis-
form of selfhood which is becoming common in ciplinary mechanisms. It is not a repressive
Euro-American societies (cf. Giddens, 1991; Rose, desire: it is instead 'excessive', intermittently
1996). Indeed, Nolan (1998) argues that this ther- modulated and pushed across the thresholds
apeutic or 'emotivist' ethos is embedding itself in of various limits by overlapping and some-
the structures of the American state to such a degree times competing systems. Further, diversity is
that it is becoming a key technology of governance, not simply integrated, for integration is itself
both challenging and to some extent replacing the becoming diversified. Similarly, deviation is
affective background of older bureaucratic 'ma- not simply normalised, for norms operate and
chine' technologies, by, for example, recognising transform themselves through their own trans-
emotional labour, emotion management and emo- gression and deviation. We can understand
tional learning as key skills (Smith, 2002): this development better when we realise that
the mechanisms of performative power are
Life in the machine has made appeals to the nomadic and flexible more than sedentary and
older [traditional] systems of meaning impos- rigid, that its spaces are networked and digital
sible. Instead the individual is encouraged to more than enclosed and physical, that its tem-
escape from within and to refer to the lan- poralities are polyrhythmic and non-linear and
guage of emotions. The emotivist motif, then, not simply sequential and linear. On the per-
is the 'dictum that truth is grasped through formative stratum, one shuttles quickly be-
sentiment or feeling, rather than through ra- tween different evaluative grids, switching
tional judgement or abstract reasoning'. It en- back and forth between divergent challenges
courages a particular ontology that replaces to perform - or else.
the Cartesian maxim 'I think, therefore I am'
with the emotive 'I feel, therefore I am'. This A third development is closely linked to mediati-
emotivist understanding of the self shapes the zation and the rise of performance knowledges. It
way in which individuals participate and com- is the growth of new forms of calculation in sensory
municate in societal life. In the contemporary registers that would not have previously been
context, as Jean Bethke Elshtain observes, 'all deemed 'political'. In particular, through the ad-
points seem to revolve around the individual's vent of a whole series of technologies, small spaces
subjective feelings - whether of frustration, and times, upon which affect thrives and out of
anxiety, stress, fulfilment. The citizen recedes; which it is often constituted, have become visible
the therapeutic self prevails'. and are able to be enlarged so that they can be
(Nolan, 1998, p. 6) knowingly operated upon. Though it would be pos-
sible to argue that outposts were already being con-
Thus, a series of heterogeneous knowledges of per- structed in this continent of phenomenality back in
formance move to centre stage in modem societies the seventeenth century with, for example, the
which constitute a new 'disaggregated' mode of growth of interest in conditioning the military body
discipline, an emergent stratum of power and through such practices as drill, I would argue that
the main phase of colonisation dates fromThat the insight

mid- was subsequently formalised in the
1960s by Libet using new body recording technol-
nineteenth century and rests on four developments
(Thrift, 2000). First, there is the ability toogies.
senseHethewas able to show decisively that an action
small spaces of the body through a whole is array of
set in motion before we decide to perform it: the
new scientific instruments which have,'average
in turn,
readiness potential' is about 0.8 seconds,
although
made it possible to think of the body as a set of mi- cases as long as 1.5 seconds have been re-
corded.
cro-geographies. Second, there is the related In other words, 'consciousness takes a rel-
ability
to sense small bodily movements. Beginning ativelywith
long time to build, and any experience of it
being instantaneous
the photographic work of Marey, Muybridge and must be a backdated illusion'
others and moving into our current age in (McCrone,
which the1999, p. 131). Or, as Gray (2002, p. 66)
camera can impose its own politics of puts
time and skeletally; 'the brain makes us ready
it more
space, we can now think of time as minutely seg-then we have the experience of acting.' 19
for action,
mented frames, able to be speeded up, slowed To summarize, what we are able to see is that the
down, even frozen for a while. Third, numerous
space of embodiment is expanded by a fleeting but
crucial rely
body practices have come into existence which moment, a constantly moving preconscious
on and manage such knowledge of small timesfrontier. and
This fleeting space of time is highly polit-
spaces, most especially those connectedical. with Thetheby now familiar work of Heidegger, Wit-
tgenstein, Merleau-Ponty, Bourdieu and Varela
performing arts, including the 'underperforming'
of film acting, much modem dance, theshows insistent
the ways in which the structure of expecta-
cross-hatched tempo of much modern music, tion of the and world (the background) is set up by body
so on. Special performance notations, like Laban-
practices which have complex and often explicitly
otation and other 'choreo-graphics', allow this
political genealogies: the smallest gesture or facial
minute movement to be recorded, analysed expression
and rec-can have the largest political compass
(Ekman,
omposed. Then, finally, a series of discourses con-1995, 2003). More recent work has added
cerning the slightest gesture and utterance of understanding
to this the by emphasising the degree to
body have been developed, from the elaborate
whichturn-these body practices rely on the emotions as
taking of conversational analysis to thea intimate
crucial element of the body's apprehension of the
world; emotions
spaces of proxemics, from the analysis of gesture to are a vital part of the body's an-
the mapping of 'body language'. ticipation of the moment. Thus we can now under-
stand emotions as a kind of corporeal thinking (Le
Thus, what was formerly invisible or impercep-
Doux, 1997, Damasio, 1999, 2003): 'through our
tible becomes constituted as visible and perceptible
through a new structure of attention which emotion,is in-we reach back sensually to grasp the tacit,
creasingly likely to pay more than lip-service
embodiedto foundations of ourselves' (Katz, 1999 p.
those actions which go on in small spaces 7).20 and
times, actions which involve qualities likeThe antici-
result is that we now have a small space of
time which
pation, improvisation and intuition, all those things is increasingly able to be sensed, the
which by drawing on the second-to-second re-which shapes the moment. Of course,
space of time
sourcefulness of the body, make for artfulonce
conduct.
such a space is opened up it can also be oper-
Thus perception can no longer 'be thought ated on.of in
As Foucault and Agamben make clear, bi-
terms of immediacy, presence, punctuality' opolitics is now at the centre of Western modes of
(Crary,
1999, p. 4) as it is both stretched and intensified,
power. But what is being ushered in now is a micro-
widened and condensed. biopolitics, a new domain carved out of the half-
In turn, this new structure of attention, ironicallysecond delay which has become visible and so
enough through the application of greater speed,available to be worked upon through a whole series
has allowed us to gain a much greater understand-of new entities and institutions. This domain was al-
ing of what is often nowadays called 'bare life'ready implicitly political, most especially through
(Thrift, 2000). An undiscovered country has grad-the mechanics of the various body positions which
ually hoved into view, the country of the 'half-sec-are a part of its multiple abilities to anticipate. Now
ond delay'. This is the period of bodily anticipationit has become explicitly political through practices
originally discovered by Wilhelm Wundt in theand techniques which are aimed at it specifically.
mid-nineteenth century. Wundt was able to show A fourth development which involves affect is
that consciousness takes time to construct; we arethe careful design of urban space to produce polit-
'late for consciousness' (Damasio, 1999, p. 127). ical response. Increasingly, urban spaces and times
NIGEL THRIFT
these ac-
are being designed to invoke affective response developments as rather worrying - and i
deed that
cording to practical and theoretical knowledges as likely to lead to a new kind of velvet dic
have been derived from and coded by atorshiphost of - to produce their own analyses and poli
sources. It could be claimed that this has always
cal agendas. As part of the general move towar
been the case - from monuments to triumphal thinking
pro- democracy as a process of 'communi
cessions, from theatrical arenas to mass body without
disunity' (Castronovo and Nelson, 2003)
want to try to address this task.
plays - and I would agree. In the twentieth century,
Butde-
it could be argued that much of the activity of the how to frame such an agenda? In a gener
sign of space was powered up again, becoming sense,en-one might argue that the goal is a kind
tangled with the evolution of knowledges 'emotional
of shap- liberty'. But this goal must be temper
ing the body (such as the microbiopolitics by referred
the familiar realisation, going back to Plato a
before, that the untrammelled expression of em
to above), often in a politics of the most frightening
sort.21 But what I would argue is different tions
now is is
not necessarily a good thing at all. In oth
words, of
both the sheer weight of the gathering together what is being aimed for is a navigation
feeling which goes beyond the simple romanticis
formal knowledges of affective response (whether
from highly formal theoretical backgroundsof somehow
such as maximising individual emotions. Th
psychoanalysis or practical theoretical back-
navigation must involve at least three moment
grounds like performance), the vast numberFirst of all, it needs to be placed within a set of di
of prac-
ciplinary
tical knowledges of affective response that have be- exercises if it is to be an effective forc
come available in a semi-formal guise (e.g.taking
design,in the various forms of agonistic and ethi
lighting, event management, logistics, music, per- that Foucault grouped under 'care of th
reflexivity
formance), and the enormous diversity of self',
available
forms of reflexivity that were intended to p
cues that are able to be worked with in the duce
shape 'an
of athlete of the event' (cited in Rabino
the profusion of images and other signs, the2003, p. 9). It will therefore defacto involve vario
wide
forms
spectrum of available technologies, and the of channelling and 'repression'. Second,
more
general archive of events. The result is that requires
affective a more general expressive exploration
response can be designed into spaces, often existential
out of territories of the kind that Guattari
(1995) gives at least a flavour of when he writes
what seems like very little at all. Though affective
that:fact is
response can clearly never be guaranteed, the
that this is no longer a random process either. It is
a form of landscape engineering that is graduallythere is an ethical choice in favour of the rich-
pulling itself into existence, producing new forms ness of the possible, an ethics and politics of
of power as it goes. the virtual that decorporealizes and deterrito-
rializes contingency, linear causality and the
pressure of circumstances and significations
Changing the political which besiege us. It is a choice for processual-
What might these four developments and others ity, irreversibility and resingularization. On a
like them mean for the practice of the politicalsmall (and scale, this redeployment can turn itself
into the mode of entrapment, of impoverish-
by implication the definition of the political itself)?
In what I hope is a recognisable echo of the papersment, indeed of catastrophe in neurosis. It can
by Ash Amin and Doreen Massey in this issue, take upI reactive religious references. It can an-
would want to point to a number of shifts, each nihilate
ofitself in alcohol, drugs, television, an
which focuses on new intensities and speedsendless thatdaily grind. But it can also make use
have heretofore not so much been neglected asofbeen other procedures that are more collective,
more social, more political.
kept firmly in the realm of either the utterly practi-
cal or heavily theoretical realms. But now all kinds
Third,
of corporate and state institutions are trying to itfor-
will attempt to engage a productive, for-
mulate bodies of knowledge of these realms wardwhich
sense of life (Thrift, 2001/2004, 2004a,b)
are both systematic and portable (Thrift, which2003),
strives to engage positively with the world
knowledges of complex affective states ofratherbecom- than make private bargains with misery, a
ing, 'regimes of feeling' which are bound to politics of hope which must necessarily be, in part,
be con-
an affective
stitutive of new political practices. It therefore be-exercise of what Bloch (1986, Vol. 1, p.
comes incumbent on those forces which143) calls 'productive premonition':'It is openly
regard
the West in what it strives for: a kind of free to do

conscious of itself, precisely as a Not-Yet-Con-
scious, demonstrates in its alertness thewhat
desire
one to
likes goal-oriented selfishness which ac-
learn, shows the capacity to be circumspect inflies
tually its in the face of all the evidence that human
foreseeing, to have circumspection, even individuals
foresight(or perhaps better 'dividuals') only ex-
in its fore-sight'. This is a kind of practical
ist asutopi-
faint traces in much larger and more extensive
circuits en-
anism, if you like, an anticipatory intelligence of social relation (Porter, 2003). As Reddy
(2001, p.'its
grained in going forward, a sense of tendency: 114) puts it:
support and correlate is process, which has not yet
surrendered its most immanent What-content, Canbut
a person who feels that an emotion is a
which is still under way' (Bloch, 1986, Vol.learned 1, p. response, a product of social construc-
146). tion, be oppressed - in the political sense of
And why the necessity of sticking to this agen- the term - by this feeling? The concept of
da? In order to begin to forge a politics of affect. For emotions as used in the West is closely associ-
it is quite clear that there are enormous emotional ated with the individual's most deeply es-
costs and benefits for individuals or groups in being poused goals; to feel love for one's spouse or
shaped by particular institutions in particular ways. fear of one's opponent, presumably, is to be
However, it is often quite difficult to show what is moved by those things one most authentically
at stake for the individual or groups in submitting wants. It is hard to see how a person can be op-
to such institutions and embracing certain affective pressed by his or her most authentic, most
styles that render them deferential, obedient or deeply held goals. To make such a claim, that
humble - or independent, aggressive and arrogant. a certain person, group, or community is polit-
Yet, equally, we can all attest to the fact that there ically oppressed - without knowing it - would
are many 'hidden injuries' in the systems that we require that one be prepared to assert some-
inhabit and, equally, all manner of proto-political thing about the nature of the individual. Such
longings to change our situation that we cannot an assertion, by definition, would have to ap-
necessarily articulate but which drive us along: 'as ply to the individual as universally constitut-
you said all along, you had no idea what you were ed, outside the parameters of any given 'cul-
doing. You were feeling your way toward some- ture'. Who would have the temerity, today, to
thing maybe, but you don't know what' (Kipnis, make positive claims about this politically
2000, p. 44). For example, Kipnis (2000, pp. 42- charged issue?
43) cites the example of the emotional enterprise of
adultery as a behaviour which very often involves In what follows, I therefore want to point to four
a kind of affective utopianism in among all the 'venturings beyond' (Bloch, 1986), attempts to
mess:
form new political intensities and the attendant ex-
plorations of discipline, expressive potential and
No, of course, we don't want to elevate
hope which areindi-
grouping around them, each of
vidual experiences like these into
whichimaginary
corresponds to one of the forms of affect in-
forms of protorevolutionary praxis,
troducedorintothe hold
first part of this paper. In each case,
up private utopias as models for there are some
social complexities. Foremost among
trans-
formations. Adultery doesn't necessarily
these is the fact that these knowledges are not in-
present you with models of utopian
nocent. Eachworlds;
represents a striving for new forms of
power-knowledge
instead the utopianism is contained in the feel- of the kind that John Allen
ings it embodies - an experience, not
points a his
to in blue-
paper as well as a new kind of po-
print. litical ethic. So, for example, each of the kinds of
thinking about affect that I want to foreground have
Disciplines like psychoanalysis have been very already been drawn on by large capitalist firms,
good at searching out the violence done and the both to understand their environment and to design
costs that have to be borne and laying them bare new products. But they also provide, along with
through such indices as physical trauma and tears. some recent experiments in cosmopolitics, one of
But, at the same time, we still lack a politics of emo- the best hopes for changing our engagement with
tional liberty22 or hope which can be both produc- the political by simply acknowledging that there is
tive and not so attached to Euro-American individ- more there there.
ualism that it simply reproduces the assumptions of I will begin by considering the kind of affect as-
NIGEL THRIFT
(an extreme of the same 'negative relation

sociated with embodied practices. The political
that had, in Foucault's argument, defined th
goal of this strand of work might best be described
as skilful comportment which allows us to berepressive
open hypothesis in the first place).... An
to receiving new affectively charged disclosive other problem with reifying the status quo
spaces. This privileging of receptive practiceswhat is in it does to the middle ranges of agenc
contrast to much that currently goes on in Euro- One's relation to what is risked becoming r
American culture which 'while still structured active
by and bifurcated, that of a consumer:
receptivity to changing styles of practice, seems one'stochoices narrow to accepting or refusing
be replacing the substantive good of openness(buying,
with not buying) this or that manifestatio
that of controlled flexibility' (Spinosa, et al. of1997,
it, dramatizing only the extremes of com
p. 180). Thus the political project in all casespulsion
is to or voluntarity. Yet it is only the midd
make receptivity into the 'top ontological good' ranges of agency that offer space for effectu
creativity or change.
(Spinosa et al. 1997); but, of course, no clear prin-
ciple of receptivity can be adduced. Rather, what is (Sedgwick, 2003, pp. 12-13)
being stated is something like a political ethic of the
kind laid out by such writers as Varela. Here,In Iparticular,
want it is here that it is possible to work
to point to Varela's emphasis on the potentialnegative foraffects (e.g. paranoia) by taking up repa
understanding new forms of affect born out ative positions that undertake a different range
of the
task of producing new practices which are not re-ambitions and risks and thereby allow t
affects,
liant on an implicit or explicit promise to satisfy
release of positive energies which can then be fu
some request. For Varela, it is possible to ther
learn worked
to upon. Seek pleasure rather than j
be open through a combination of institutionalforestall pain. Again, what we find here is an ethi
transformation and body trainings whichprinciple.
use the
half-second delay to act into a situation with Such projects of reparative knowing are, of
good
judgement.23 Such a politics might be one of becoming
course, at- commonplace as means of pro-
ducing affective orientations to knowledge which
tempting to redefine education so that it emphasises
good judgement (cf. Claxton, 2000) or, at adda another
more dimension to what knowing is. I am
thinking here of many studies in the spheres of
mundane level, designing new 'affective' computer
interfaces which can wrap themselves aroundpostcolonial
theirstruggles or struggles over sexual or
subjects' concerns in ways which do not, ethnic
however,
identity in which a coalition of activists has
act only as a confirmation of the world butbeen
alsogradually
pro- able to change the grain and content
vide challenges. of perceptual systems by working on associating
affective
The second kind of affect is associated with psy-response in both thought and extension.
The third kind of affect is that in the tradition of-
choanalytic models of affect of the kind produced
by Tomkins and is an attempt to move outsidefered by Spinoza and Deleuze. I want to point to
'the
relentlessly self-propagating, adaptive structure of
two possibilities of a politics. One is a very general
the repressive hypothesis' (Sedgwick, 2003, one.p. 12).
That is a model of tending. Here the simple po-
In one sense, this is clearly an attempt to litical
continue
imperative is to widen the potential number
the Foucauldian project. In another sense itofis an at- a living thing can enter into, to wid-
interactions
tempt to move beyond it by valorising what en the margin of 'play', and, like all living things,
Sedg-
wick (2003) calls the 'middle ranges of agency'.
but to a greater degree, increasing the number of
transformations of the effects of one sensory mode
into another. Massumi frames this kind of 'inter-
[Foucault's] analysis of the pseudodichotomy
between repression and liberation has led, approach
cessor' in in relation to the future mission of
cultural studies.
many cases, to its conceptual reimposition in
the even more abstractly reified form of the
hegemonic and subversive. The seeming ethi- If radical cultural studies semi-artistically
cal urgency of such terms masks their gradualrefuses to set itself up as a model of any kind,
evacuation of substance, as a kind of Gram- yet lacks powers of contagion, how can it be
scian-Foucauldian contagion turns 'hegem- effective? What mode of validity can it
onic' into another name for the status quo achieve
(ie for itself? Consider that the expanded
everything that is) and defines 'subversive' in,
empirical field is full of mutually modulating,
increasingly, a purely negative relation to battling,
that negotiating process lines liberally en-
couraged to develop and sharply express self- simply by engraining other new concepts
changed
interest across their collectively remaindered,
and beliefs. It might be possible to point to (and do-
ongoing transformations. The anomaly of an the vagaries of thinking in everyday life
mesticate)
affectively engaged yet largely disinterested
via a concept like habitus but that is about it. But
process line could be a powerful presence if it and identity isn't like that. It operates on
difference
were capable of conveying its (masochistic?)
several registers, each with their own organisations
removal of self-interest. The reciprocaland complexities. So,
re-ad-
justments always under way in the empirical
field make the pursuit of politics an ecological
on one register it is a defined minority that de-
undertaking, whether it thinks of itself that viates from the majority practice. On a sec-
way or not..... This is a political ecology. The
ond, it is a minority that varies from other con-
'object' of political ecology is the coming-to-
stituencies in a setting where there is no defin-
gether or belonging-together of processually itive majority. On a third, it is that in an iden-
unique and divergent forms of life. Its objecttity
is (subjective or intersubjective) that is
'symbiosis' along the full length of the na- obscured, suppressed, or remaindered by its
ture-culture continuum. The self-disinterest own dominant tendencies - as in the way de-
of cultural studies places it in a privileged po- vout Christians may be inhabited by fugitive
sition to side with symbiosis as such. What forgetfulness and doubts not brought up for
cultural studies could become, if it finds a way review in daily conversations or in church, or
of expressing its own processual potential, is a in the way that militant atheists may tacitly
political ecology affectively engaging in sym- project life forward after death when not con-
biosis-tending. centrating on the belief that consciousness
stops with the death of the body. The third reg-
This approach will appear a little high and mighty ister of difference fades into a fourth, in which
to some. So let us turn in a slightly different direc- surpluses, traces, noises, and charges in and
tion to end this catalogue of new political direc- around the beliefs of embodied agents express
tions. proto-thoughts and judgements too crude to
Here I want to concentrate on the idea of a pol- be conceptualised in a refined way but still in-
itics aimed at some of the registers of thought that tensive and effective enough to make a differ-
have been heretofore neglected by critical thinkers, ence to the selective way judgements are
even though, as already pointed out above, those in formed, porous arguments are received, and
power have turned to these registers as a fertile new alternatives are weighted. And in a layered,
field of persuasion and manipulation. The motto of textured culture, cultural argument is always
this politics might be Nietzsche's (1968, p. 263) porous. Some of the elements in such a fugi-
phrase 'Between two thoughts all kinds of affects tive fund might be indicated, but not of course
play their game; but their motions are too fast, represented, by those noises, stutters, ges-
therefore we fail to recognise them'. But today 'the tures, looks, accents, exclamations, gurgles,
dense series of counterloops among cinema, TV, bursts of laughter, gestures and rhythmic or ir-
philosophy, neurophysiology and everyday life' rhythmic movements that inhabit, punctuate,
mean that we do recognise the realm between inflect and help to move the world of concepts
thinking and affects and are beginning to outline a and beliefs.
'neuropolitics' (Connolly, 2002) that might work (Connolly, 2002, pp. 43-44)
with them. It is a politics which recognises that po-
litical concepts and beliefs can never be reduced toSo we require a microbiopolitics of the subliminal,
'disembodied tokens of argumentation. Culture has much of which operates in the half-second delay
multiple layers, with each layer marked by distinc- between action and cognition, a microbiopolitics
tive speeds, capacities and levels of linguistic com-
which understands the kind of biological-cum-cul-
plexity' (Connolly, 2002, p. 45). Take differencetural gymnastics that takes place in this realm
and identity as one example of this geology of which is increasingly susceptible to new and some-
thinking. The political literature in this area has
times threatening knowledges and technologies
tended to foreground signification at the expense of
that operate upon it in ways that produce effective
affect and has therefore enacted culture as a flat outcomes, even when the exact reasons may be
world of concepts and beliefs which can be opaque, a micropolitics which understands the in-
Geografiska Annaler * 86 B (2004) ? 1 71
NIGEL THRIFT
available technologies have become more adapt-

sufficiency of argument to political life without,
able to expression25 and has gradually been able to
however, denying its pertinence. That micropolitics
may be thought to be composed of three forge
main aandcommon vocabulary of spacing and timing
closely related components. One is quasi-
differently which can travel across a number of
Foucauldian and consists of attention to the arts ofmedia and which is now also becoming
screened
the self of the kind already signalled. The interactive
second is (film, video, web, virtual reality). The
an 'ethic of cultivation', an ethico-political per-
blurred and crudely lit video art of the past, often
spective which attempts to instil generosity to-more than a means of recording perfor-
not much
mance art, has been replaced by degrees of colour,
wards the world by using some of the infrasensible
knowledges that we have already encountered onand
texture a motion that make genuine and concert-
whole series of registers (Connolly, 2002). The
ed demands on attention (Campbell, 2003). Third,
third involves paying much greater attention because
to hownew developments such as the web give
video artists large and culturally primed audiences
new forms of space and time are being constituted.
In an era in which several new forms of time and which were not available when works had to be sit-
space have been born (e.g. cinematic time and theed in the aspic of galleries and which spread out be-
movement image, standardised space and the abil- yond self-defined cultural elites. Fourth, because
ity to track and trace) this latter component seems this work has engaged explicitly with affect. A
particularly pressing. good example is Roy Ascott's notion of telematic
The fourth kind of affect is that associated with love, built on Charles Fourier's theory of 'passion-
a neo-Darwinian approach. That approach tends toate attraction' (see Amin and Thrift, 2002), which
focus on the face and faciality as an index of emo- was described by him as 'the drive given us by na-
tion and it is this aspect that I want to take up in the ture prior to any reflection ... toward the co-ordi-
next section by concentrating on a particular case nation of the passions ... and consequently toward
study. After all, for most of us, 'the living face is theuniversal unity' (Fourier, cited in Shanken, 2003, p.
most important and mysterious surface we deal 75). On this base, Ascott builds a kind of telematic
with. It is the center of our flesh. We eat, drink, cosmopolitics, in which telematics forms the be-
breathe and talk with it, and it houses four of the ginnings of a global networked consciousness26
five classic senses' (McNeill, 1998, p. 4). So let's based on continuous exchange which is both cog-
face it, most especially through the medium of the nitive and affective. Ascott has built a set of art-
screen which has now become such a dominant works on this premise which act as a machine for
means of connecting western cultures. imagining life as it could be.
However, it is not only for these reasons that I
want to turn to video art. It is also because it can
I do not know what it is i am like24
show something about the energetics of movement
The discussion so far will be trying for some andbe- emotion and how that relationship is formed
cause of its lack of concreteness. So, in this final
and made malleable in cities in which, as I pointed
out above, screens, patches of moving light popu-
section I want to bring some of the elements of my
argument together in a concrete example which lated chiefly by faces, have increasingly become a
takes elements from the four approaches to affect
ubiquitous and normal means of expression, popu-
that I have identified (and especially the neo-Dar-
lating more and more urban spaces and producing
winian obsession with the face) and extends thema postsocial world in whichfaces loom larger than
into politics conceived as an art of showing lifeup (Balazs, 1970).27 To help me in this endeavour,
I want to call on the work of Bill Viola (1995,
showing up differently. I want to set out at least
2002).
some elements of the last kind of politics I want to Why Viola?28 I want to point to three rea-
sons. First, and very importantly for me, because he
further by venturing into the realm of video art (tak-
ing in any screened art) (Rush, 1999; Ascott, 2003).
gets real audience response: his works have grip.
I have chosen this field for four reasons. First, The
the mix of unnatural naturalism and magical real-
film and video screen have become a powerful
ism he projects in his works stirs spectators and
means of conveying affect in our culture, drawing sometimes stirs them mightily. His exhibitions are
on a set of historically formed stock repertoires not
for only popular but they also regularly produce ex-
treme emotional responses in their audiences
manipulating space and time which have existed
which sometimes seem to cross over into the ther-
now for nearly a century (Doane, 2002). Second,
because video art has slowly come of age as apeutic
the (cf. Gibbons, 2003).
Second, because he is intent on engaging affect

iognomy in the use by directors of actresses and
actors whose facial deftness allows them to dis-
but through a series of depictions which knowingly
play
engage the unconscious history of affect, pulling on a map of emotions, and involves the spec-
heart-strings developed over many centuries.
tator
In in an intricate process of watching and
searching for clues (Taussig, 1999; Bruno,
other words, in what is often only a few seconds,
2002).
Viola is producing an archaeology of the contem-
porary past which is both transcendent and- the cliches of moder press reporting and pho-
thera-
peutic and perhaps, in certain senses, redemptive
tography which provide a kind of habitual vis-
(Buchli and Lucas, 2001). At a minimum, this ualar-
taxonomy through which we face/feel the
chaeology recalls the following histories andworld
car-which is thing-like in its material pres-
tographies of the contemporary past; ence.
- the oligoptic gaze of the dry schemata o

- the history of the representation of the agonies
ern facial recognition systems that are i
of Christ and other Christian imagery fromingly
the being used in a plethora of systems o
Middle Ages and the Renaissance. This is a veillance
tra- and whose genealogy again re
dition of depiction which harks back to the back
an- to physiognomy (Elkins, 1999).
- the recent struggles of performance and
cient Greek termpathos (which simply signified
'anything that befalls one') and the way that this
kinds of performance art to capture the ke
term became mixed up with the Christian notionthe videoed face, building on the legac
of passion which named the suffering and cru- movements like behaviorist art, various
cifixion of Jesus and was heavily loaded with netic models, kinetic art and interactivit
emotion (Meyer, 2003). erally (Ascott, 2003).
- the history of exact scientific representation of
the expressive face from the early days of Viola
phys- enacts this multiple historical/carto
iognomy (as in Le Brun's seventeenth-century
legacy by, for example, using close-up an
motion29
depiction of faces transported by extreme emo- on state-of-the art LCD flat screens
recall the multiple screens of medieval poly
tion) through the writings of nineteenth-century
anatomists and physicians on facial muscula-
The depictions stretch out time in such a w
ture and expression to Rejlander's carefully
they allow nuances of feeling to be observ
staged photographic contributions to Darwin's
would barely be noticed in the to and fro of
work and on to the current interest in the face
daytolife. They are carefully staged and sc
be found in the so-called affective sciences. sometimes involving a huge cast of actors,
- the hop, step and jump delay of scientific exper- as stunt people, hundreds of extras, and a p
iment on human perception, as found in, for ex- of scene designers, plus set builders, a dire
ample, nineteenth-century German psycho- photography, wardrobe, makeup, lights, an
physics. This genealogy may be best tracked all for takes which may be less than one mi
through the history of the invention and opera- length, given the limited capacity of a film
tionalization of the feedback loops of cybernet- zine at high speed (Wolff, 2002). The intent i
ics and so on into the elementary forms of cap- ly to let facial expression or other body mov
italist life to be found in the minimal presences (and, most obviously, the hand), patterns o
of the brand and other such sigils. and different spatial formations interact in
- the sensate assault on vision which begins with ways, providing 'turbulent surfaces' in whic
the technological reproduction of reality in the tional and physical shape coincide in arcs of
linked images of silent film flitting by and which sity. At the same time, the depictions point
allows a certain type of intense faciality of the ingly to their own operations, pulling in para
kind found especially in the close-up observa- elements (e.g. like frames and times) as i
tions of silent film (Moore, 2000), the 'raw vi- parts of the performance.
sion' so beloved of Benjamin and Epstein which Third, Viola's works point to aspects of
presses too close and hits us between the eyes in which are too often neglected. In particular
its jerky nearness (Crary, 1999); 'film moves, been concerned to highlight the face as a p
and fundamentally "moves" us, with its ability composer of affect and maker of presence (
to render affects and, in turn, to affect' (Bruno, 1999). Viola sees the face as a colour wheel o
2002, p. 7). Again, there are direct links to phys- tions and constantly places emotions togethe
NIGEL THRIFT
are still
quences which illustrate this shifting spectrum ofcomprehensible to a critically alert audi-
affect. But it is not just the face, it has to be ence
said. as
Vi-various forms of (e)motion. Their visual
ola also considers the hand as an index of affect 'vocabulary' cracks open familiar horizons of
(Tallis, 2003). He also uses the whole body to index space and time and shows the way that wheres can
more general affective practices of coping, ofalso be elsewheres, and how these new alignments
which the most notable is probably crying (cf. might offer new affective resonances and resourc-
es. By operating on space and time (stretching,
Thrift, 2004). So, the city as a sea of faces, a forest
of hands, an ocean of lamentation: these are the transforming, miniaturizing) they become a kind of
building blocks of modem urbanism just as much threshing floor for the emotions from which new
as brick and stone. In other words, Viola provides instinctual traffic may come. Kracauer once argued
an affective history of the city, understood asthat a film was a redemptive art of estrangement that
chronicle of faces and hands and tears. This is an in-could put us back in touch with reality (Carter,
timate geography through which and as which af- 2002).32 Too grand a statement, no doubt. But, in
fect makes its way, a set of histories of the way Viola's
in case, it seems to bear some relevance to his
which affect takes hold told by foregrounding a setambitions (cf. Viola, 2003).
of affective practices which are too often neglected: Third, Viola is able to show something about the
seeing visions, praying, crying, each of which has elementary affective forms of the modem world as
its own cultural history. But Viola is also quite they are produced on screens and then transmitted
aware that these ecstatic practices are usually part into urban bodies and other byways as a kind of vis-
of a daily round which can itself become his focus ceral shorthand existing only in very small sublim-
of attention; a chain of ordinary tasks themselves inal spaces and times. Marcus (2002) puts it well
become a spiritual practice, a set of margins con- when he writes: 'When a movie has become part of
stantly edging forward, recomposing as they go. the folklore of a nation, the borders between the
movie and the nation cease to exist. The movie be-
But what, then, is the political import of Viola's
comes a fable; then it becomes a metaphor. Then it
'slowly turning narratives'? I think it is threefold,
with each succeeding element more important than becomes a catch-phrase, a joke, a shortcut.' Viola
the one before. One element is showing the complexshows us all the affective catch-phrases, jokes and
process of mimesis by which we learn to generate short-cuts that typify Western cultures but through
slow motion and close-up restores them to their
affect. Viola is able, by slowing things down, to
show how each element of the body (and most es-original step-by-step nature so that we can see them
pecially the face) takes its part in a show of emotion
at work. They may be difficult to describe in words
which has its own contested cultural history. He pre-since they are non-representational but we can still
detect them through Viola's laying out of the
sents us with a kind of affective historical geogra-
minute and diagrammatic clues we usually work on
phy of expressive elements of the body like the face,
maps of the way our bodies are socialized throughin everyday life as something more akin to large
mimesis30 and other processes from birth onward signposts (Ginzburg, 1992).
which have been created over many centuries, quite Of course, what Viola points to is not regular pol-
itics but, unless the matter of how we are made to
literally producing a release of meanings from the
be/be connected is to be regarded as somehow out
past. The mapping of the spatial play of affect may
of court, what he is focusing on is surely an intense-
not be particularly original,31 but Viola does it beau-
ly political process, one which matters to people.
tifully, using all the aesthetic cues that have come
Without this kind of affective politics, what is left
down to us as cultural signifiers of intensity which
of politics will too often be the kind of macho pro-
we learn from infancy on. In turn, the audiences re-
act to their own processes of emotional learning, gramme-making that emaciates what it is to be hu-
playing these corporeal 'memories' back in their man - because it is so sure it already knows what
body and very often amplifying them through the that is or will be.
step-by-step process of Viola's depictions in ways
which may legitimately be described as therapeutic.
Conclusions
Then, second, Viola embeds affect in space and
time. His sets, whether they are an iconic human So let me briefly conclude. There is more to the
face, a country walk or a house in flood are care- world than is routinely acknowledged in too many
fully cued spatial and temporal transformations writings on politics and this excess is not just inci-
which resist the reading-writing-text paradigm but dental. It points in the direction of fugitive work in
the social sciences and humanities which can read Notes

the little, the messy and the jerry-rigged as a part 1.ofThis paper was occasioned by a challenge from Doreen
politics and not just incidental to it. It points as well Massey to think more seriously about the politics of affect.
This I have tried to do!
in the direction of work that wants to give up the an-
2. This emotional labour can turn up in unexpected places.
cient settlement between knowledge and passionsTake the example of the trading floors of large investment
(and nature and culture, and people and things, and banks: 'traders frequently and consistently speak of the need
truth and force) in favour of considering what ties to manage emotions, they develop routines for dealing with
these emotions, and they consider emotion management
things together as an explicit politics (Stengers,
part of the expertise and savvy of professional trading'
1997). I think we live in exciting times because (Knorr Cetina and Bruegger, 2002, p. 400). The last three
these two 'traditions' have become mixed up, most examples are all taken from Katz's (1999) seminal book.
3. Why, for example, are there no studies of cities of tears or
especially in experiments in thinking about the pol-
laughter which do not approach these subjects as other things?
itics of encountering the spaces of cities which we
4. Virtues like courage, stamina and bravery arise from restra-
are only at the start of laying out and working with. ing one's immediate desires. Another good illustration of
In particular, I would want to end with the work this point is Sophocles' Antigone, in which, in a medium
currently being undertaken as a result of alliances that Plato deplores, similar criticisms arise (Butler, 2002).
Antigone's claim to a right to grieve and bury her traitorous
between social sciences and artists. The marriage of
brother corrupts the state from within as the spectacle
science and the arts is often called 'engineering', erodes public judgement.
5. Of course, there are emotions through the history of
and this seems to me to be the right term for the kind
of theoretical-practical knowledges that are now be- philosophy which have been considered politically virtuous.
Love for wisdom was an affect that even Plato (in The Sym-
ing derived, ad hoc33 knowledges of the ad hoc
posium) wanted to separate from the dangerous madness of
which can simultaneously change our engagements love and other such waywardnesses. Hegel mentioned love
with the world. In struggling to represent some ofand generosity as desirable emotions. And so on.
the issues dealt with in this paper the foundations6.of
A good review of both areas is provided by Reddy (2001). It
seems likely that there are, in fact, some emotional states
a new kind of cultural engineering are gradually be-
which are common to all societies at all times (e.g. shame)
ing constructed upon which and with which new but, equally, there are some states which are massively at
forms of political practice that value democracy as variance.
7. For example, Ekman's work was strongly influenced by that
functional disunity will be able to be built. I have
of Tomkins on the face. Deleuze's work was influenced by
heard a number of commentators argue that these
Guattari's indebtedness to Bateson. And the ghosts of Gre-
kinds of engineering experiments are essentially gory Bateson and Charles Darwin lurk in the background
trivial and that we need to get back to the 'real' stuff. fairly constantly.
I am not persuaded. I am not persuaded at all. 8.ItThese bodily resources are manifold and many of them have
seems to me that no choice has to be made. We need not been fully considered. For example, one of the most po-
tent means of bodily communication is clearly touch. It can,
to pursue many of the older forms of politics and the according to the type of encounter, produce feelings of af-
political as vigorously as before but we also need fection and joy, and equally feelings of insecurity and inhi-
the 'research and development' that will allow us to bition (Montagu, 1986; Field, 2001). Touch in turn leads on
to consideration of the hand as the chief touching organ, a
expand the envelope of the political and so both re-
haptic extension which has great biological-cultural com-
store the spaces of moral and political reflection that plexity (think only of the handshake or the salute or clap-
'man' has collapsed and bring new forms of politics ping, the various means of writing or the lover's touch) (see
into being. If we don't do it, others most surely will. Tallis, 2003). In turn, development of the hand seems to
have been a crucial factor in the development of our brain.
Similar chains of affect/intelligence/development can be
found for, for example, smell and balance (see Thrift, 2003).
Acknowledgements 9. Thus, for Tomkins, affects are the correlated responses (in-
volving the facial muscles, the viscera, the respiratory sys-
The content of this paper has been aided immeas-
tem, the skeleton, changes in blood flow, vocalizations, and
urably by the comments of Jakob Amoldi, Dag Pe- so on) that an organism makes to a situation, which produce
tersson, Paul Rabinow, Richard Sennett and Kirst- an analogue of the particular gradient or intensity of stimu-
en Simonsen. lation impinging upon it.
10. Sedgwick (2003) gives the example of enjoyment of a piece
of music leading to wanting to hear it over and over again,
Nigel Thrift listening to other music or even training to become a musi-
Division of Life and Environmental Sciences cian oneself.
University of Oxford 11. Tomkins also thought voice and breathing were crucial.
12. In a famous passage from the Ethics Spinoza puts this prop-
Oxford OX1 3UB
osition baldly:
England
The mind and body are one and the same thing, which is
NIGEL THRIFT
27. As the
conceived now under the attribute of thought, now under Sobchack (2000, p. 185) puts it:
attribute of extension. Whence it comes about that the order
A human face ... can be seen with a clarity and dimen-
of the concatenation of things is one, or, nature is conceived
sion impossible in 'ordinary' unmediated, lived-body vi-
now under this, now under that attribute, and consequently
sion. If I get too physically close to another, the other's
that the order of actions and passions of our body is simulta-
face loses its precise visible presence as a figure in my
neous in nature with the order of actions and passions of our
visual field even as it increases its haptic presence. The
mind.
visible face partially blurs as it fills my visual field, thus
(Ethics, III, prop.2, note)
becoming, in part, its ground. Indeed some of the face
flows into indeterminacy and the final invisibility that
13. Other emotions we might identify such as shame and embar-
marks the horizon of my perceptive act. An extreme
rassment, do not seem to have common facial expressions.
close-up of a human mediated for me by the projector ...
14. Ekman (1998, p. 387) goes on to write: 'I believe that much
is given to the experience transformed. It is centered in
of the initial emotion-specific physiological activity in the
my visual field .... Its entirety is the figure of my percep-
first few milliseconds of an emotional experience is also not
tion, not its ground, and thus does not flow into indeter-
penetrable by social experience', a statement which I am
minacy in my vision.
sure is not correct, as may be inferred from what comes later
28. Viola's
in the paper, but this does not mean that I would want to work has been heavily criticised by some for, for
deny the influence of biology. example, its hackneyed aesthetic, its parasitism of great
works of art, its attraction to a narrow spectrum of affects,
15. A term which refers to the thesis that we now live in a 'post-
social' world in which social principles and relations andare
so on. These may or may not be valid criticisms but I
'emptying out' and being replaced by other culturalamele-
more interested in why Viola's work is able to elicit
ments and relationships, and most notably objects. strong emotional reactions in the first place.
29. Often extreme slow motion. For example, film is often shot
Postsocial theory analyses the phenomenon of a disinte- at 300fps and played back at 30fps.
30. It this
grating 'traditional' social universe, the reasons for is worth remembering that in its original Greek form mi-
disintegration and the direction of changes. It attempts mesis
to meant performance (understood as enactment and re-
conceptualise postsocial relations as forms of sociality enactment rather than imitation) and, of course, mimesis is
which challenge core concepts of human interactionstill
andvery rarely the production of an exact copy (Rush, 1999).
31. Slow-motion
solidarity, but which nonetheless constitute forms of film of the face has been a constant in artwork
for some time, but I think Viola has managed to get the right
binding self and other. The changes also affect human
sociality in ways which warrant a detailed analysis speed,
in unlike some earlier, interminable experiments.
their own right. 32. 'It effectively assists us in discovering the material world
(Knorr Cetina, 2001, p. 520) with its psychophysical correspondences. We literally re-
deem this world from its dormant state, its state of virtual
non-existence, by endeavouring to experience it through the
16. For example, it is relatively easy to generate such emotions
camera. And we are free to experience it because we are
as fear by dint of this kind of detail (see Altheide, 2002).
17. For example, interpreting sadness as a sickness. fragmented' (Kracauer, 1960, p. 300).
18. Thus, increasingly, modem educational and training 33. In using
sys-this term, I mean to imply the way in which engi-
tems stress the need for adaptability and creativityneering - but is always born out of concrete encounters which al-
within very narrowly defined parameters. They oftenlow the world to speak back; I am not trying to imply that
use
performance knowledges to inculcate these values engineering
(see is just make-it-up-on-the-spot.
Thrift, 2003).
19. Of course, none of this brief explication of the so-called
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Intensities of Feeling: Towards a Spatial Politics of Affect

Author(s): Nigel Thrift

Geografiska Annaler ? 86 B (2004) ? 1 57

58 Geografiska Annaler * 86 B (2004) ? 1

Geografiska Annaler ? 86 B (2004) ? 1 59

60 Geografiska Annaler * 86 B (2004) ? 1

takes on a temporary flesh for the passage For to

Geografiska Annaler ? 86 B (2004) ? 1 61

thoughtfulness in a new way, extending its activ-

62 Geografiska Annaler ? 86 B (2004) ? 1

Geografiska Annaler ? 86 B (2004) ? 1 63

lar with the work of Ekman (1995, 2003; Ekman

64 Geografiska Annaler ? 86 B (2004) ? 1

Geografiska Annaler ? 86 B (2004) ? 1 65

knowledge. These knowledges construct power in

66 Geografiska Annaler ? 86 B (2004) ? 1

the main phase of colonisation dates fromThat the insight

Geografiska Annaler ? 86 B (2004) ? 1 67

68 Geografiska Annaler ? 86 B (2004) ? 1

the West in what it strives for: a kind of free to do

Geografiska Annaler ? 86 B (2004) ? 1 69

(an extreme of the same 'negative relation

70 Geografiska Annaler ? 86 B (2004) ? 1

Geografiska Annaler * 86 B (2004) ? 1 71

available technologies have become more adapt-

72 Geografiska Annaler ? 86 B (2004) ? 1

Second, because he is intent on engaging affect

- the oligoptic gaze of the dry schemata o

Geografiska Annaler ? 86 B (2004) ? 1 73

74 Geografiska Annaler ? 86 B (2004) ? 1

the social sciences and humanities which can read Notes

Geografiska Annaler ? 86 B (2004) ? 1 75

76 Geografiska Annaler ? 86 B (2004) ? 1

BLOCH, E. (1986): The Principle of Hope. (three vols). Oxford:

Geografiska Annaler ? 86 B (2004) ? 1 77

78 Geografiska Annaler ? 86 B (2004) ? 1

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