Massumi, B., & McKim, J. (2009). Of microperception and micropolitics: An interview with Brian Massumi, 15 August 2008. Inflexions: A Journal for Research-Creation, 3 (Micropolitics: Exploring Ethico-Aesthetics), October 2009. https://www.inflexions.org/n3_massumihtml.html. Reprinted as “Of microperception and micropolitics”, ch. 2 of Massumi, Politics of Affect (Polity, 2015), LIT-1907.
Read in full in NOTE-1488.
Key takeaways
- Affect is “an event, or a dimension of every event” (p. 1). The base definition is Spinoza’s “ability to affect or be affected”, with its second part as Deleuze took it up: “a power to affect and be affected governs a transition, where a body passes from one state of capacitation to a diminished or augmented state of capacitation. This comes with the corollary that the transition is felt” (p. 1).
- The definition is offered as a problematic field: “It’s not a general definition that you can apply … Rather than a definition, what you have is a proposition” (p. 3). “To start in the middle is precisely not to perform a phenomenological reduction” (p. 3).
- The subject emerges from affect, not the reverse. Calling affect “intersubjective” misleads if it assumes preconstituted subjects (p. 3).
- Bodies cued by the same microshock are “attuned – differentially”; there is “affective difference in the same event” (p. 6).
- Affect “is not a content that can be transported from one event to another … It’s an event logic, not a logic of transmission or communication” (p. 9).
- Micropolitics re-cues the “surplus of unacted-out potential that is collectively felt” (p. 7). Its aim is not consensus but to modulate contrasting tendencies “into a symbiosis: a cross-fertilization of capacitations” (p. 12).
Why this is here
Bencherki, Brummans & Vézy (LIT-1902) take their definition of affect from Massumi 2015, p. 48, which reprints this interview. They quote it on p. 1353: “a power to affect and be affected [that] governs a transition, where a body passes from one state of capacitation to a diminished or augmented state of capacitation. This comes with the corollary that the transition is felt”. They also quote “a dimension of every event” (p. 47). Both are word for word here (p. 1); the bracketed “[that]” is theirs. “Emphasis in original” could not be checked from the text extraction.
On reading, the quotation is accurate and the use is partly faithful:
- Whose definition. The parent says “Massumi consequently defines affect as”. Massumi gives it as “the second part of the Spinozan definition taken up by Deleuze”, and declines to treat it as a definition at all: “It’s not a general definition that you can apply” (p. 3). The parent then applies it, “Extending Massumi’s work, we define agency as the affective force that governs the transition from a lesser to an augmented ability to act” (p. 1354).
- Direction. Massumi’s transition runs both ways, “diminished or augmented”. The parent keeps only the augmenting direction for agency. That is the parent’s choice, not Massumi’s account (THEORY-1280).
- Transmission. The parent says that what “passes” or “is communicated” from one individuation to another is “excess action” (p. 1356). Massumi says affect “is not a content that can be transported from one event to another … not a logic of transmission or communication” (p. 9). The parent’s “communication” is transduction, not transmission (p. 1356), which narrows the gap, but its examples (an employee’s indignation that “spills over into her inert colleagues”, p. 1354) read as transfer. Massumi’s term for the shared case is differential “affective attunement” (p. 6). See THEORY-1286.
- Starting in the middle. The parent’s “start in the middle” (p. 1358) is cited to Manning 2013 and Massumi 2011; this interview states it directly (pp. 1, 3).