Negative Dialectics and Massumi's Politics of Affect
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University of Denver Digital Commons @ DU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Graduate Studies 1-1-2019 Affect and Critique: Negative Dialectics and Massumi's Politics of Affect Heidi Ann Rhodes University of Denver Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd Part of the Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Rhodes, Heidi Ann, "Affect and Critique: Negative Dialectics and Massumi's Politics of Affect" (2019). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 1685. https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd/1685 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate Studies at Digital Commons @ DU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ DU. For more information, please contact [email protected],[email protected]. Affect and Critique: Negative Dialectics and Massumi’s Politics of Affect __________ A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the University of Denver and the Iliff School of Theology Joint PhD Program University of Denver __________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy __________ by Heidi Rhodes August 2019 Advisor: Dr. Jere Surber Author: Heidi Rhodes Title: Affect and Critique: Negative Dialectics and Massumi’s Politics of Affect Advisor: Dr. Jere Surber Date: August 2019 ABSTRACT Brian Massumi’s concept of affect offers a model of change that relies on sensory modes of resistance to neoliberal power relations. Influenced by Bergson’s concepts of time and space, Massumi develops an account of perception as the capacity to entrain with ontological, affective flows of becoming before they are captured and reduced to quantifiable forms. This requires a radical reconfiguration of the body as a zone of indetermination between the virtual field of unformed potentialities and the realm of determined existence. I argue that affect theory cannot fulfill its promise to open new political possibilities without the negativity of critique that Massumi pointedly rejects. The wholly affirmative ‘Yes’ of affect is not enough to resist the deeply entrenched drive to quantify and commodify life. Adorno’s concept of non-identity offers a way of distinguishing between affective tendencies that deceptively serve the reification and commodification of experience and those that have the potential to resist what Adorno calls the “ontology of the wrong state of things.” Negative dialectics expresses the necessity of a wholly critical ‘No’ within capitalist life. However, this ‘No’ requires extensive qualification in order to clarify what kind of intellectual and somatic commitments are required to engage in non-idealist dialectics. On the one hand, reading Massumi in the context of Adorno’s concept of non- identity provides a critical edge that affect theory needs if it is to live up to its claim to be a force for change. Affect must include dialectical attunement. On the other hand, re- ii examining Adorno’s thought in light of Massumi’s concept of the body considers a more substantial and constitutive role of embodied suffering in what is traditionally interpreted as an epistemological form of critique. There is a radical difference between Adorno’s dialectical critique and Massumi’s dismissal of it. While the latter maintains that the dialectical tradition is too negative, Adorno insists that it is not negative enough. This fundamental tension between the two thinkers creates an opening to consider new political possibilities unencumbered by the privileging of one approach at the exclusion of the other. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter One: Introduction ...........................................................................1 Thesis and Scope ..............................................................................1 Statement of the Problem .................................................................2 Argument .......................................................................................14 Methodology ..................................................................................16 Contribution to the Field ................................................................17 Chapter Outline ..............................................................................17 Chapter Two: The Primacy of Suffering in Negative Dialectics ...............26 Introduction: The Primacy of Suffering .........................................26 Kant’s Prison ..................................................................................31 The Fearlessly Passive Subject ......................................................48 Role of Suffering in Negative Dialectics .......................................54 Aesthetic Theory: Dissonance and Suffering ................................59 Chapter Three: Affect Theory and Perception ...........................................78 Introduction ....................................................................................78 Massumi on the Becoming of Time ...............................................79 Perception is Subtractive ................................................................98 The Need for Memory .................................................................105 Chapter Four: Conclusion ........................................................................117 Neoliberalism and ‘Genuine Pleasure’ ........................................117 Complicity....................................................................................126 Not Negative Enough ...................................................................142 Autonomy ....................................................................................154 The Body ......................................................................................163 Future Directions .........................................................................175 Bibliography ............................................................................................181 iv CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION Thesis and Scope How and why do subjects participate in their own repression? Even more, why do they desire it? This question has long plagued philosophers and cultural theorists. According to affect theorist Brian Massumi, dialectical critiques of ideology and poststructuralist accounts of subjectivity provide inadequate answers to this dilemma because they fail to account for the ontological autonomy of affect and its primary role in all human (and non-human) activity. Although Massumi’s theorization of affect as an affirmative force of difference illuminates a profoundly important dimension of experience that has been largely neglected in cultural theory, I argue that it cannot fulfill its promise to open new political possibilities without the negativity of critique that Massumi pointedly rejects. The wholly affirmative ‘Yes’ of affect is not enough to resist the deeply entrenched drive to quantify and commodify life. Adorno’s concept of non-identity offers a way of distinguishing between affective tendencies that deceptively serve the reification and commodification of experience and those that have the potential to resist what Adorno calls the “ontology of the wrong state of things.”1 Negative dialectics expresses the necessity of a wholly critical ‘No’ within capitalist life. However, this ‘No’ requires extensive qualification in order to clarify what 1 Adorno, Negative Dialectics, 11. 1 kind of intellectual and somatic commitments are required to engage in non-idealist dialectics. On the one hand, reading Massumi in the context of Adorno’s concept of non- identity provides a critical edge that affect theory needs if it is to live up to its claim to be a force for change. Affect must include dialectical attunement. On the other hand, re- examining Adorno’s thought in light of contemporary affect theory considers a more substantial and constitutive role of embodied suffering in what is traditionally interpreted as an epistemological form of critique. To summarize, there is a radical difference between Adorno’s dialectical critique and Massumi’s dismissal of it. While the latter maintains that the dialectical tradition is too negative, Adorno insists that it is not negative enough. This fundamental tension between the two thinkers creates an opening to consider new political possibilities unencumbered by the privileging of one approach at the exclusion of the other. Statement of the Problem Overview of Critical Theory and Negative Dialectics The Frankfurt School was an interdisciplinary network of German intellectuals that formed in affiliation with the Frankfurt Institute of Social Research in the early 1920’s. It is most commonly associated with the term ‘Critical Theory’. It is difficult to summarize the views of the Frankfurt School without glossing the substantial but often fruitful disagreements that emerged from its broad spectrum of theoretical and political positions. Marxist and psychoanalytic traditions were critically mined for alternative ways of thinking and being that were not rooted in the assumptions of scientific positivism or the false desires generated by the mass media. Several members, including 2 Adorno, were meticulously conscientious about the role of idealist thought in critical theory. Despite their differences, most Frankfurt School theorists shared a concern regarding the totalizing tendencies specific to twentieth century capitalist societies. The unprecedented assimilative powers of modern capitalist