Posthegemonic Comments
Why would ideologies of authenticity not also (and by necessity) be affective rapports?
Why "by necessity"? I'd agree that ideologies of authenticity--or any other ideologies, for that matter--might also accompany or be accompanied by, or have a range of other relations to, affective rapport. But I don't see any necessity.
After all, ideologies of authenticity (also discussed here) might just as easily be a matter of anxious narcissism.
Jon, your last paragraph is really brilliant. Have you ever read Martin Glaberman? That's his basic take, I think, grounded in a lot of well detailed experiences. He never manages to pose it so well and so clearly as you do, though.
take care,
Nate
Nate, thanks. Nope, I've not even heard of Glaberman, for my shame. Worth reading, then? If so, which book?
Hmm, then maybe I don't understand how you're using the notion of an affective rapport. For an anxious narcism to rise to the level of an ideology, it seems to me that some affect must be shared between the projection of the self and the experience of anxiety (an experience that strikes me as particularly affected when it comes to anxiety). My intuition is that no ideology exists - especially an ideology of the authentic, of the ownning of one's own, of the reality of the self - without a corresponding and necessary shared affect. You seem to imply something different, something very substantively different, as if the two somehow oppose each other and relate in only the most casual way, and I'm just not following the argument from its start to its conclusion. Maybe I'm too slow, maybe the arguments is too quick, I don't know.
Kenneth, thanks again. We may be talking at cross-purposes, and these comments boxes may not be the best place to unravel those cross-purposes. And I don't know if my comment at "I cite" helps or hinders.
Yes, affect is always present. It is not that narcissism is unaffective or unaffected. But by affective "rapport," I'm reaching towards a particular modality of affect: an affect of good encounters (in the Spinozan sense), an affect that conjoins rather than divides. A resonance by and in which the larger body of the multitude is formed.
As to the relation between affect and ideology: I wouldn't say that it was necessarily oppositional, or necessarily casual. But nor am I sure that you can read one off the other. This deserves further thought, however.
Now, I wouldn't go as far as suggesting your last paragraph is "really brillant" (no need to fuel your already more than robust ego!) but your conclusions did put me in mind of rather an interesting book by Luc Boltanski, translated as -Distant Suffering-, which is about how we respond to media coverage of the suffering of others in wars, famines etc.. Shamefully, I still haven't managed to finish the book but it starts with some interesting stuff on discourses of sensibility, aesthetics, and affect from the C18th onward into more recent sociologies of the emotions, before turning to the question of media coverage and our responses to it. Might be worth a look...
Jeremy.
Hehe, I'll take that as almost a compliment from you, Jezzer. I'll check out the Boltanski. Meanwhile, apparently his big book is now out in English.
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