Affective Cities
Nigel Thrift
Cities as “storms of affect” (How Emotions Work, Jack Katz)
Plato studied art and affect, Darwin wrote (in 1872) The Expression of Emotions
Yet affect is neglected in academic discussion. Why?
- residual Cartesiansim
- cultural division of labor – the arts “do” affect
- affect is not easily captured
But we should look carefully at affect b/c it’s part of the political register
- it is deployed to gain wealth/power
- it’s part of how cities are understood – cities must be “expressive” to survive
What is affect (a plane we tap into)?
- embodied practices
phenomenology
states that the body moves through
words are representation of emotional state (Katz)
we see our own emotions through the reactions of other people
- biological drive
in cultural translations of Freud (vehicles of libido)
driving physical reactions (Tompkins), esp in the face
- naturalistic/emergence from interaction
ie, Spinoza
- physiological change, writ on the face (Tompkins, Darwin)
face as screen
the politics of affect
- agencies of choice (mixed activities like electoral activities and protest politics)
- mediatization (screen as alternate surface)
- small spaces and times (using cinema theory to explain engineering time to produce affect based on anticipation and delay)
- design of space (ie, urban lighting consultants and use of music in retail)
changing the politics of affect
- skillful comportment
disciplines for openness (Dryerson, Virella)
- reparative knowing (ie, psychoanalytic strategies)
- tending and neuropolitics (Spinoza, Deleuze)
political ecology: “pruning” bad affect and tending good
William Connolly: Neuropolitics (using layers of attention)
- face (Bill Viola)
gets real audience response
audience constructs an archaeology of affect through the body
points to neglected aspect of cities: as seas of faces
learning how to register affect
embedding affect in space and time
looking at modern affect: visual reference as shortcut (Marcus)
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