Comparative Analysis Of The Studies Of Brian Massumi And Sara Ahmed Concerning Affect Theories
In the field of cultural studies, academics Brian Massumi and Sara Ahmed have been vocal in moving beyond the theories established by past scholars. Instead of further relating our world with concepts of structuralism, post-structuralism and essentialism, they suggest theories relating to affect and emotion as an alternative way of approaching how we perceive and understand the humanities. Despite their similar ambitions to move away from discussions relating to discourse, knowledge and power, Ahmed’s book The Cultural Politics of Emotion and Massumi’s paper The Autonomy of Affect have differing approaches as to how they interpret affect. For Massumi, affect indicates a degree of autonomy as “the autonomy of affect is its participation in the virtual. Its autonomy is its openness. Affect is autonomous to the degree to which it escapes confinement in the particular body whose vitality, or potential for interaction, it is. ” On the other hand, relating her affect and emotion theory to Karl Marx’s theories on the economy and Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic approach, Ahmed illustrates that “affect does not reside in an object or sign, but is an effect of the circulation between objects and signs the accumulation of affective value. Signs increase in affective value as an effect of the movement between signs: the more signs circulate, the more affective they become. Emotions do not positively inhabit anybody or anything, meaning that ‘the subject’ is simply one nodal point in the economy rather than its origin and destination”. For the purpose of this paper, the aforementioned quotations will form the basis of my comparison of the works on affect theory of both Ahmed and Massumi. Before I dive into the detailed workings of their affect theory, I will firstly provide definitions of “affect” by both theorists. Secondly, I will analyze how Ahmed and Massumi perceive bodily response in affect theory. Last but not least, the functions of affect will be analyzed in relation to its role in reality and in the virtual world.
Through analyzing their approaches to affect theory from a linguistic, biological-cognitive and functional angle, I argue that Sara Ahmed’s affect theory is more convincing than that of Brian Massumi’s. Unlike Massumi, Ahmed grounds her affect theory with an awareness of how our past influences our present and future. Not only does she provide alternative ways of perception, she also shows how affect could also be conscious decisions that our mind and body makes collectively. Before we come to understand Brian Massumi and Sara Ahmed’s understanding of the impact of affect on the bodily and societal level, it is helpful to firstly distinguish both theorists’ definitions of affect. For Massumi, “the primary of the affective is marked by a gap between content and affect”. He emphasizes that affect could be found in this “gap” before we make decisions, between the presentation of the “content” before us and our acknowledgement of a single situation that comes to fruition. In his affect theory, he puts emphasis on the role of physical sensations, which are sometimes unconscious pre-personal forces which are later personally understand as feeling by the self and are socially perceived as emotion. When affect gains recognition, it becomes emotion, with emotion being “a subjective content” defined by the linguistic forces of language.
Reflecting on Massumi’s affect theory, Ahmed pointed out that “for Massumi, if affects are pre-personal and non-intentional, emotions are personal and intentional; if affects are unmediated and escape signification, emotions are mediated and contained by signification”. By seeing the body and the mind as a collective entity participating in affect, Ahmed suggested the interchangeable nature of affect and emotion. For her, she takes into account her readers’ past background knowledge informed by their surrounding and perhaps awareness of theoretical frameworks in the field of cultural studies. Unlike Massumi who merely focused on the unconscious functions and impact of affect, Ahmed strengthens her affect theory by additionally identifying the conscious ways as to how affect determines our decision-making process. Being aware of the definitions of affect (and emotion) for Massumi and Ahmed will help us make sense of how they perceive the role of bodily responses and the impact of affect socially. Through the analysis of how they interpret bodily responses in affect theory, one can assert that Massumi believes that affect has more autonomy than Ahmed perceives. Massumi references an experiment where the brain waves of volunteers were monitored on a troencephalograph (EEG machine). They were asked to flex their fingers whenever they desired when the experimented commenced and researchers discovered that “the flexes came 0. 2 seconds after they clocked the decision. But the EEG machine registered significant brain activity 0. 3 seconds before the decision”. For Massumi, this empirical experiment suggests that our bodies unconsciously interpret affect before the mind, that “the body is radically open, absorbing impulses quicker than they can be perceived, and because the entire vibratory event is unconscious, out of mind”, thereby implying that body plays a significant role in affect as it perceives our environment before our minds can assert understanding.
However, Ahmed disagreed with Massumi in that she believed that affect are not only acknowledge by our physical sensations, but are also shaped by how our past experiences shape our present perceptions about the future. Ahmed suggested “the immediacy of bodily reactions is mediated by histories that come before subjects. She references the case of the black man Trayvon Martin who was shot by an officer of his Neighbourhood Watch Programme George Zimmerman. Being trained to watch for “suspicious behavior”, Zimmerman assumed danger in his surroundings due to Martin’s act of “walking while black”. Through this example, Ahmed suggests that our past “histories” indeed inform our emotions, as evidenced by this case where race issues are still prominent in society. In a similar way as Massumi, Ahmed acknowledged how our body perceives fear through the example of the immediate shooting of the Martin before the mind can make sense of all surroundings but her theories shows greater strength as it also incorporates the conscious workings of the body in affect.
Apart from the role of affect on the body, both theorists Ahmed and Massumi also related their theory on a societal level. Massumi further developed his affect theory by focusing on the role of affect in actuality and virtuality while Ahmed grounded her affect theory merely in reality. In a similar way to how money is transferred from individual to individual in the economy, Ahmed states that emotions “stick” themselves to different surroundings through constant movement in the affective economy. With reference to Marxian economics where capital increase through the increasing activity of economic circulation, emotions “work as a form of capital: affect does not reside positively in the sign or commodity, but is produced as an effect of its circulation”.
Affect do not exist in the physical realm, but they “stick” to subjects and objects, and these subjects and objects become “sites of personal and social tension”. For example, emotions of anger by the mother could be transferred to her children when in reality, her heated emotions were just brought along by her anger towards her husband from a previous couple argument. Whereas, for Massumi, the impact of affect on a societal level could be viewed by how the virtual world informs actual reality. Massumi stated that things are often in “incipience” where the incipience of multiple situations “are then reduced, inhibited, prevented from actualizing themselves completely – all but one. This shows that the state of incipience, where things are about to happen, shows how the virtual world intrudes into the actual, by filtering all the various possibilities in our decision-making process and having only situation decided to occur in reality, thereby suggesting that affect plays a role in mediating our decisions. He cites the example of the charisma of past-US president Ronald Reagan whose affect was “prolonged” and relayed” by both the media and the community, with the media, like affect, filtering the complete perception of Reagan through the deliberate cutting of scenes in commercials and videos.
However, despite Massumi’s relation of affect theory into the functioning of politics, he lacks evidence in his analysis of how our pre-social connections in history also play a role in affect. Ahmed’s affect theory trumps Massumi’s as she shows awareness of the wider scope of our understanding contributed by our past experiences, pointing out how the “sticky” capabilities of our emotions mean that our conscious minds and bodies still have a way of determining how we perceive reality. Both Massumi and Ahmed’s enthusiasm for defining new grounds to explore our culture and history could be captured in their understandings of the impact of affect in language and on both a bodily and societal level. Perhaps, Ahmed’s theory was more grounded and acceptable cultural studies as she takes into account the past developments of theorists in cultural studies, also showing that our perceptions of the world are not only informed by our sometimes-unconscious bodily reactions, but also our conscious sense of beings informed by our past experiences.
On a side note, it is worthwhile to also keep in mind that the idea of affect and emotion might also be a social construct itself, instead of being a combination of sensations that are grounded in reality and/or unconscious chains of responses that transcend our realms of understanding of the world.
