Massumi, B. (2017). The Principle of Unrest: Activist Philosophy in the Expanded Field. London: Open Humanities Press (Immediations). doi:10.26530/oapen_630732. CC BY-SA 4.0.
Skimmed in NOTE-1486.
Key takeaways
- Movement is not displacement but “the index of a becoming”, a “transformation in relation” (p. 8). The human “is a carrier of a movement of relational transformation, one that swept it up, and sweeps through it” (p. 8).
- There is always “an excess of activity over action” (p. 29): activity not yet mobilized into a function.
- Micropolitics is “the modulation of this dynamic differential mutual inclusion, tending toward greater field-intensities”, that is, “a maximally inclusive co-patterning of contrasting tendencies” (p. 64). The co-patterning “is aesthetic”; it requires “an affirmation of discord”. Massumi grants that it “sounds utopic” (all p. 64).
Why this is here
Bencherki, Brummans & Vézy (LIT-1902) take two things from it.
- Co-patterning (p. 1358). “Organizational becoming is constituted by the micropolitics of attempting to reach ‘a maximally inclusive co-patterning of contrasting tendencies, co-habiting the field in a way that facilitates each fully realizing itself’ (Massumi, 2017, p. 64)”. The quotation is word for word, and on p. 64. Massumi’s sentence defines what micropolitics aims at, oriented “toward joy”, and calls it aesthetic, granting that it “sounds utopic” (p. 64). The parent turns an ideal into a constitutive claim: organizational becoming is the attempt. The word “attempting” keeps it close. Its gloss, “finding ways for different trajectories to inhabit the same space, rather than denying those differences”, is faithful. See THEORY-1283.
- Vector of becoming (p. 1364). “Robert is not an agent, but a vector of becoming (Massumi, 2017)”. Massumi uses the phrase of “the neoliberal moment” (p. 9), and the idea of the human as “carrier” of a movement that sweeps through it (p. 8). Applying it to a person in a meeting is an extension, but in keeping with the text.