THEORY-1283: Micropolitics is the modulation of a relational field toward a maximally inclusive co-patterning of contrasting tendencies, in which each realizes itself without curtailing the others; the co-patterning is aesthetic, an affirmation of discord rather than its resolution

Source

Massumi (2017), The Principle of Unrest, LIT-1910, p. 64, skimmed in NOTE-1486. Earlier, Massumi & McKim (2009), LIT-1905, p. 12, read in NOTE-1488.

What was actually shown

A statement of an aim, in an interview. “Micropolitics is the modulation of this dynamic differential mutual inclusion, tending toward greater field-intensities. What I mean by that is a maximally inclusive co-patterning of contrasting tendencies, co-habiting the field in a way that facilitates each fully realizing itself … The challenge of the co-patterning is to facilitate this passage to the limit of tendencies’ intensive becoming in way that they do not oppose and curtail each other” (p. 64). It is “aesthetic”, after Whitehead’s beauty, which “requires an affirmation of discord”. In 2009 the same aim is “not to resolve the tension through a choice, but to modulate it into a symbiosis” (p. 12).

The record checked the quotation that Bencherki, Brummans & Vézy (LIT-1902, p. 1358) give, and found it exact and on p. 64.

What this does not say

• That organizations are like this. Massumi states what micropolitics aims at, and grants that it “sounds utopic”. The parent paper says “organizational becoming is constituted by the micropolitics of attempting to reach” it. That is a descriptive claim about organizations, which the source does not make, though “attempting” keeps it close.
• That differences are to be reconciled. The co-patterning keeps discord; it is the opposite of reducing equivocality. On this the parent’s use is faithful (“rather than denying those differences”).
• How to tell success from failure. Massumi calls the outcome “always as-yet unknowable”, so the ideal gives no criterion. That is why this stays Proposed.

Connections to the record’s own argument

Added 2026-10-31 by a pass connecting the readings of Bencherki, Brummans & Vézy 2024 and the works it leans on to the record’s lines. Analogies are marked as such.

Pragmatic transport

• CLAIM-496. It is the record’s case of incoherence without loss, and it supplies the task-relative criterion this ideal lacks.

Distributed agency and individuation

• QUESTION-281: the discord route, by analogy only.

Will-organization, organizational affect and authenticity

• CLAIM-358, CLAIM-362, and CLAIM-353: CLAIM-353 is the formal limit if a choice is required.