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From Opinions to Images: Essays Towards a Sociology of Affects Ulus S FROM OPINIONS TO IMAGES: ESSAYS TOWARDS A SOCIOLOGY OF AFFECTS ULUS S. BAKER EDITED BY ARAS ÖZGÜN AND ANDREAS TRESKE A SERIES OF READERS PUBLISHED BY THE INSTITUTE OF NETWORK CULTURES ISSUE NO.: 37 FROM OPINIONS TO IMAGES: ESSAYS TOWARDS A SOCIOLOGY OF AFFECTS ULUS S. BAKER EDITED BY ARAS ÖZGÜN AND ANDREAS TRESKE FROM OPINIONS TO IMAGES 2 Theory on Demand #37 From Opinions to Images: Essays Towards a Sociology of Affects Ulus S. Baker Edited by Aras Özgün and Andreas Treske Cover design: Katja van Stiphout Design and EPUB development: Eleni Maragkou Published by the Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, 2020 ISBN print-on-demand: 978-94-92302-66-3 ISBN EPUB: 978-94-92302-67-0 Contact Institute of Network Cultures Phone: +31 (0)20 595 1865 Email: [email protected] Web: http://www.networkcultures.org This publication is available through various print on demand services. EPUB and PDF edi- tions are freely downloadable from our website: http://www.networkcultures.org/publications. This publication is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommer- cial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International. FROM OPINIONS TO IMAGES 3 Cover illustration: Diagram of the signifier from Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 1987. 4 THEORY ON DEMAND CONTENTS PASSING THROUGH THE WRITINGS OF ULUS BAKER 5 1. A SOCIOLOGY OF AFFECTS 9 2. WHAT IS OPINION? 13 3. WHAT IS AN AFFECT? 59 4. WHAT IS AN IMAGE? 86 5. TOWARDS A NEO-VERTOVIAN SENSIBILITY OF AFFECTS 160 6. ON CINEMA AND ULUS BAKER 165 BIBLIOGRAPHY 180 BIOGRAPHIES 187 FROM OPINIONS TO IMAGES 5 We have lived at least one century within the idea of opinion which determined some of the major themes in social sciences... In short, social sciences were designed in terms of opinion; asking people what they think about themselves, their lives, their stories, their issues, their problems. And I believe that social sciences have been transformed into a kind of doxology, but I'm tending rather to oppose this status of sociological research. My problem here is that; sociology is epistemologically—or logically—tending rather to become a general opinion about opinions; of what people are supposed to think about themselves and others. And this a clear distinction from the early emergence of so- cial sciences and social research in general... And, through this, in social sciences, we have lost the ability to create (what we may call) the life of affects—an affective life... — Ulus Baker, from What is Opinion? video lecture1 1 See: Ulus Baker, What is Opinion? Video prod. Aras Özgün, 2001. http://www.vimeo.com/465275260. 6 THEORY ON DEMAND PASSING THROUGH THE WRITINGS OF ULUS BAKER Ulus Baker (1960 - 2007) was a Turkish-Cypriot sociologist, philosopher, and public intel- lectual. He was born in Ankara, Turkey in 1960, to Sedat Baker, a prominent Cypriot psychiatrist, and Pembe Marmara, a well-known Cypriot poet. He studied Sociology at Middle East Technical University in Ankara, where he taught as a lecturer until 2004. Ulus wrote prolifically in influential Turkish journals such as Birikim, Toplum ve Bilim, and Virgul among others; made some of the first Turkish translations of various works of Gilles Deleuze, Antonio Negri, and other contemporary political philosophers; actively contrib- uted to körotonomedya collective (an Ankara based collective of young radical artists and intellectuals which had been influential with their online publications between 1996-2008); and frequently gave public lectures and seminars in alternative scholarly spaces as well as teaching as a lecturer at Middle East Technical University and Istanbul Bilgi University. Baker’s prolific and accessible work, the novelty of issues he introduced to Turkish speak- ing intellectual circles enthusiastically, and his humble social manners and appearance, earned him a widely shared positive reputation in early age. Baker died in 2007 in Istanbul, where he mostly lived in the final years of his life. The following texts in this edition are edited from essays and notes Ulus Baker wrote between 1995 and 2002. They have been with us for many years. We have observed and sometimes participated in their development, witnessed their lengthy writing process, shared notes and fragments in a continuing discussion with Ulus Baker, but also with many of our friends, his students, colleagues, and professors. After he died in 2007, many of his friends started to collect and share his plethora of unpublished writings (which proved once again what a productive mind he had, considering the amount of his published work despite his early death). Parts of the following text have been published in Turkish already in various publications1 or online for many years, mainly in körotonomedya archives,2 or were shared as lecture notes in discussion groups. Some of the texts have been parts of his doctoral thesis at the Sociology Department of Middle East Technical University. We included in this edition an interview one of us gave (in the inherent virtual presence of the other) after Baker’s death: On Cinema and Ulus Baker. Much of Baker’s writing branches out in many directions departing from his criticism of sociological research turning into an analysis of peoples’ opinions. Main lines of discussion that emerge from this question are: a historical exploration of the notion of ‘opinion’ as a specific form of apprehension between knowledge and point of view and a deeper look into ‘social types’ as an analytical device deployed by early sociologists—which form the first part of this edition; followed by the association of the form of ‘comprehension’, the ‘social types’ postulate with Spinoza’s notion of ‘affections’ (as a dynamic, non-linguistic form of the relation between entities)—which forms the second part of the book; and, 1 See for example: Ulus Baker, Kanaatlerden Imajlara: Duygular Sosyolojisinde Dogru, Istanbul: Iletisim Yayınları, 2010. 2 See; Köronotomedya, http://www.korotonomedya.net/kor/index.php?index. FROM OPINIONS TO IMAGES 7 finally, the possibilities of reintroducing this device for understanding our contemporary world through cinema and documentary filmmaking, by reinstating images in general as ‘affective thought processes’. These essays are not structured linearly within and among themselves. Baker’s writing loosely proliferates into many directions, as if circling certain problems rather than tightly developing successive arguments and expositions. Readers will notice frequent parentheses and inserts (references, comments, thought fragments, assertions, proclamations, side notes) in between sentences and paragraphs. These inserts connect to other essays; the fragment of thought they signify becomes a link to another discussion in another essay. Some of the essays end with a feeling of incompleteness remaining as passing notes on the subject, thought frag- ments within themselves. Yet these ideas resonate with larger problematics Baker tackles, sometimes become further explored in other essays, or otherwise, create fissures and layers in the loose texture of ideas Baker intends to weave. This thought process would be familiar to people who had the chance to attend to Baker’s public lectures, seminars, and talks: Tangen- tial threads connect, and the rotating flow of ideas starts to form an outward expanding spiral, reflecting a non-linear thought process that aims to assemble a multidimensional construct with materials gathered from various disciplines of the social sciences and humanities. The terms Baker uses without explaining, or the comments he drops without referencing, together with the breadth of the discussions he pursues may create the impression of an esoteric nar- rative at first sight, particularly to readers who are rather used to following such discussions in academic forms and formats. Creating a ‘narrative’ is certainly what Baker is after, yet, despite such dropped-in comments, mentions and terms, it is also clear that Baker intends this narrative to be accessible to any curious mind, rather than being esoteric, rather than aiming to be understandable only by those who are already equipped with graduate-level of familiarity with philosophy, sociology, film studies, media studies, psychoanalysis, history, political thought, literature, etc. In most of the essays, Baker explains pivotal complex ideas and debates with incredible clarity, in a highly comprehensible manner. Therefore the writing style of his narrative rather reflects his thought-process, a flow of ideas, which he doesn’t mind sharing with his reader. We tried to keep this form of writing intact in our editorial work on the texts. Readers will also notice reappearing and revolving themes and discussions throughout the essays. Ulus revisits certain questions, themes, and arguments again and again in his writing. Yet, the careful readers will also notice that these are not repetitions; every time he revisits a motif, he recomposes it by adding something new or recombines it by positing it next to a new theme or rephrases it with a new intensity. Another peculiarity of Ulus’ writing is his use of terminology; he prefers to summon original French, German, Russian, Greek, and Latin concepts and terms at times or integrates these into the flow of text without the customary reference to their English equivalents. We perceived these as signifying the heterogeneity of his thinking and writing and preserved them with minimal interventions (such as providing explanations
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