The Autonomy of Affect

The political theorist and a prominent affect philosopher in the contemporary world, Brian Massumi, relates a story with reference to President Reagan. He was known by everyone as the Great Communicator. He was seen as unfathomable by those patients who are suffering with global aphasia and tonal agnosia. Those who have global aphasia could not barely comprehend with words, thus they are just using body language to understand each other. On the other hand, those patients with tonal agnosia could not grasp tone or any pitch that they hear; they are just relying on its grammatical structure and logical thinking.

Astoundingly, both groups of patients have found President Reagan to be a meager presenter who was unsuccessful to influence his listeners. But according to Massumi, Ronald Reagan is as effective as he is being regarded by other people who might have been listening to him when he speaks. As for Massumi, Reagan was an affective speaker. He characterized Reagan’s accomplishments in politics to his capacity to generate philosophical effects by means of non-ideological way that were affective.

Furthermore, the article gave emphasis to the importance of our body’s way of communicating and relating to other people. Massumi depicted this as a peripheral starting place in order for human beings to give a perception on what they think about our world. It is mainly a demonstration beyond belief and a set of restrictions and boundaries which transpire in people’s consciousness and ability to realize what was really important to them in this world.

True enough that the power of affect is mainly connected with politics. It instantaneously put forward a political intention mindfully looking over the conception of people’s open- mindedness or acceptance to the intense impact of the power to affect as well as the factor in which a person is being intensity. This intensity gives details as to why affect theory can every so often expedite what can be the effect of an affect. Affect can also be categorized as a cluster of intensities or emotions converging and joining each other in order to observe and explain how an emotion can affect every people who have seen and felt the latter

Hence, the term Affect engrossed on how the world is able to accept as well as to adapt to changes that are constantly happening in every second of a lifetime. The power or force that comes to pass from real passages and intensity can be the result of our connection to ourselves, our beliefs, the people we are interacting with and the coercion we are experiencing from within us. 

To sum up, affect is the coming out and the materialization of definite and genuine associations and the fall back hooked on implicit relations. There were different kinds of affection that can be related to emotion and this is because many of us cannot comprehend well by just having one intense feeling on something or someone we experience, rather we are full of notions that we are dealing in terms of our sentiments as human beings.

In conclusion, Brian Massumi’s explanation on affect is that the varying ability of our body to play a part and be included in the world. But nothing is constant but change. That is why our body has the capacity to shift or transform this power of affect to become a changing movement in one’s existence.

Works Cited

Massumi, B. “Cultural Critique: The Autonomy of Affect.” University of Minnesota Press. 1995