Massumi, B. (2002). Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. doi:10.1215/9780822383574.
Key takeaways
Registered from metadata, not a reading. The book revises “The Autonomy of Affect” (LIT-1919) as its first chapter and argues for starting cultural theory from the body in movement rather than from fixed subject positions.
Why this is here
Bencherki, Brummans & Vézy (LIT-1902) quote it for disindividuation (p. 1356): “[t]here is self-activity qualitatively expressed, presenting an affective order that is not yet ‘yours’ or ‘mine.’ There is event. There is anomaly. There are jilted expectations” (Massumi 2002, p. 218). Such “[a]ffective ‘exaggeration’” (p. 219) “must be contained, ordered, distributed”. They then equate their “excess action” with “what Massumi (2002, p. 219) calls ‘affective exaggeration’”. None of this could be checked. One thing should be checked when a copy is supplied: whether Massumi’s “exaggeration” is an excess to be discharged into others, as the parent uses it, or an excess of potential that is never transferred. In his later work it is the latter (LIT-1905, p. 9; LIT-1910, p. 29).