INTENSITIES OF FEELING: TOWARDS A SPATIAL POLITICS OF AFFECT INTENSITIES OF FEELING: TOWARDS A SPATIAL POLITICS OF AFFECT by Nigel Thrift Thrift., N. 2004: Intensities of feeling: Towards a spatial politics diacy of Nazi rallies comes to mind. So does Rich- of affect. Geogr. Ann., 86 B (1): 57–78. ard Sennett’s summoning of troubled urban bodies in Flesh and Stone. But, generally speaking, to read ABSTRACT. This paper attempts to take the politics of affect as not just incidental but central to the life of cities, given that cities about affect in cities it is necessary to resort to the are thought of as inhuman or transhuman entities and that politics pages of novels, and the tracklines of poems. is understood as a process of community without unity. It is in Why this neglect of the affective register of cit- three main parts. The first part sets out the main approaches to af- ies? It is not as if there is no history of the study of fect that conform with this approach. The second part considers the ways in which the systematic engineering of affect has become affect. There patently is, and over many centuries. central to the political life of Euro-American cities, and why. The For example, philosophers have continually debat- third part then sets out the different kinds of progressive politics ed the place of affect. Plato’s discussion of the role that might become possible once affect is taken into account. of artists comes to mind as an early instance: for There are some brief conclusions. Plato art was dangerous because it gave an outlet Key words: affect, politics, space for the expression of uncontrolled emotions and feelings. In particular, drama is a threat to reason Nobody knows how many rebellions besides political rebel- because it appeals to emotion.4 No doubt one could lions ferment in the masses of life which people earth track forward through pivotal figures such as Ma- Jane Eyre, 1847/1993 p. 115 chiavelli, Rousseau, Kant and Hegel, noting vari- ous rationalist and romantic reactions, depending Introduction upon whether (and which) passions are viewed Cities may be seen as roiling maelstroms of affect. favourably or with suspicion5. Similarly, though at Particular affects such as anger, fear, happiness and a much later date, scientists have recognised the joy are continually on the boil, rising here, subsid- importance of affect. At least since the publication ing there, and these affects continually manifest of Charles Darwin’s (1998) The Expression of the themselves in events which can take place either at Emotions in Man and Animals in 1872, and no a grand scale or simply as a part of continuing eve- doubt before that, there has been a continuous his- ryday life.1 So, on the heroic side, we might point tory of the systematic scientific study of affect, and to the mass hysteria occasioned by the death of although it would be foolish to say that we now Princess Diana or the deafening roar from a sports know all there is to know about the physiology of stadium when a crucial point is scored. On the pro- emotions, equally it would be foolish to say that we saic side we might think of the mundane emotional know nothing. In turn, literatures such as these have labour of the workplace, the frustrated shouts and been replete with all kinds of more or less explicit gestures of road rage, the delighted laughter of chil- political judgements – about which passions are dren as they tour a theme park, or the tears of a sus- wholesome and which are suspect or even danger- pected felon undergoing police interrogation.2 ous, about the degree to which passions can or Given the utter ubiquity of affect as a vital ele- should be allowed untrammelled licence, and about ment of cities, its shading of almost every urban ac- how passions can be amplified or repressed. tivity with different hues that we all recognise, you So why the neglect of affect in the current urban would think that the affective register would form literature, even in the case of issues such as identity a large part of the study of cities – but you would and belonging which quiver with affective energy? be wrong.3 Though affect continually figures in A series of explanations come to mind. One is a re- many accounts it is usually off to the side. There are sidual cultural Cartesianism (replete with all kinds a few honourable exceptions, of course. Walter of gendered connotations): affect is a kind of friv- Benjamin’s identification of the emotional imme- olous or distracting background to the real work of Geografiska Annaler · 86 B (2004) · 1 57 NIGEL THRIFT deciding our way through the city. It cannot be a ideology, and to produce the beginnings of a syn- part of our intelligence of that world. Another is optic commentary. Accordingly, in the first part of concerned with the cultural division of labour. The the paper, I will describe some of the different po- creative arts already do that stuff and there is no sitions that have been taken on what affect actually need to follow. A third explanation is that affect fig- is. This is clearly not an inconsequential exercise ures mainly in perceptual registers like propriocep- and it has a long and complex history which takes tion which are not easily captured in print. No in luminaries as different as Spinoza and Darwin doubt other explanations could be mustered. and Freud. But, given the potential size of the agen- Perhaps, at one time, these may have been seen as da, this has meant pulling out four key traditions valid reasons, but they are not any more. I would rather than providing a complete review. This work point to three reasons why neglecting affect is, as of definition over, in the second part of the paper I much now as in the past, criminal neglect. First, sys- will then describe some of the diverse ways in tematic knowledges of the creation and mobilisation which the use and abuse of various affective prac- of affect have become an integral part of the every- tices is gradually changing what we regard as the day urban landscape: affect has become part of a re- sphere of ‘the political’. In particular, I will point to flexive loop which allows more and more sophisti- four different but related ways in which the manip- cated interventions in various registers of urban life. ulation of affect for political ends is becoming not Second, these knowledges are not only being de- just widespread but routine in cities through new ployed knowingly, they are also being deployed po- kinds of practices and knowledges which are also litically (mainly but not only by the rich and power- redefining what counts as the sphere of the politi- ful) to political ends: what might have been painted cal. These practices, knowledges and redefinitions as aesthetic is increasingly instrumental. Third, af- are not all by any means nice or cuddly, which is fect has become a part of how cities are understood. one all too common interpretation of what adding As cities are increasingly expected to have ‘buzz’, to affect will contribute. Indeed, some of them have be ‘creative’, and to generally bring forth powers of the potential to be downright scary. But this is part invention and intuition, all of which can be forged and parcel of why it is so crucial to address affect into economic weapons, so the active engineering of now: in at least one guise the discovery of new the affective register of cities has been highlighted as means of practicing affect is also the discovery of the harnessing of the talent of transformation. Cities a whole new means of manipulation by the power- must exhibit intense expressivity. Each of these ful. In the subsequent part of the paper, I will focus three reasons shows that, whereas affect has always, more explicitly on the way in which these develop- of course, been a constant of urban experience, now ments are changing what we may think of as both affect is more and more likely to be actively engi- politics and ‘the political’, using the four traditions neered with the result that it is becoming something that I outlined previously. I will not be making the more akin to the networks of pipes and cables that silly argument that just about everything which are of such importance in providing the basic me- now turns up is political, in some sense or the other, chanics and root textures of urban life (Armstrong, but I will be arguing that the move to affect shows 1999), a set of constantly performing relays and up new political registers and intensities, and al- junctions that are laying down all manner of new lows us to work on them to brew new collectives in emotional histories and geographies. ways which at least have the potential to be pro- In this paper I want to think about affect in cities gressive. Then, in the penultimate part of the paper, and about affective cities, and, above all, about I will briefly consider in more detail some of the what the political consequences of thinking more kinds of progressive political interventions into af- explicitly about these topics might be – once it is fect that might legitimately be made, using the ide- accepted that the ‘political decision is itself pro- as stimulated by recent work on virtual art and, duced by a series of inhuman or pre-subjective most notably, the work of Bill Viola.