Affective Territories
This conception of materiality as the emergence of affective difference, along with the general idea of space delineated in Whitehead’s theory of extension, inspired what I have elsewhere called an “affective territory” (Ramos 2020). This affective territory is an empirical concept that attempts to conceive the extensive character arising within a context of affect proliferation. It is a pragmatic inquiry into the problem of grasping expressiveness on the go, and to track its effects in experience. It is not a matter of individual actual entities that we are dealing with here but a nexus moving in unison. This movable, emergent, qualitative space is a nomadic space: “The continuous variation, continuous development of form; it is the fusion of harmony and melody in favor of the production of properly rhythmic values, the pure act of the drawing of a diagonal across the vertical and the horizontal” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 478, emphasis added). The qualitative difference moves as one contiguity when it acts as a defining trait of a set of actual entities: the diagonal is the surplus-value, a shared expressiveness actualized through the enactment of subjectivity emergence. One of the ways a region can be analyzed is “from the point of view of its impact, as a unity, upon the experience of an external percipient” (Whitehead 1967a: 199). It brings us back to the question of the human contribution. If the actual entity’s role is one of catalyzing affective difference, we may say that the human contribution is similar. Only, we need not fall into the trap of considering it as central or necessary to the act of affective difference. Rather, human experience is taken hostage by the movement of subjective event emergence. Massumi calls it the “expression-event” (2002: 27). The expression-event is the diagonal that moves across human experience. Affect is always ahead of us. In the same way that actual entities need one another for the nexus to emerge, humans are themselves enmeshed as a collective entity. This collective entity is not made up by multiple humans but by relations. The expression-event is always relational.
The psytrance music festival is a great example of the emergence of affective territories. In this party context, vibe is a jargon term used for the general qualitative feeling that arises out of a dancefloor and spreads throughout the whole affective territory (Ramos 2019: 47). The human experience is overtaken by the vibe’s psychedelic sway. Nothing stands alone in the universe: the physical world is an “organic extensive community” (Whitehead 1978: 289). On the dancefloor, the affective territory is a region (Whitehead 1967a) moving as vibe. The emerging expression-event is the vibe. The vibe’s materiality is abstract but real. Its effects may be felt as a surrender to the ecstatic dance. Even though human beings co-create the “immediate concrescent actuality in question” (Whitehead 1978: 284) by giving themselves over to the dance, they do not have control over the vibe since it is precisely a surrender. At the same time, the affective territory does not fully determine the human experience, otherwise it would leave out the workings of creativity and the emergence of novelty. Thus, although the affective territory has a direct influence on the emergence of the human experience by providing data for the experience of the vibe, it really is a question of co-creation. The affective territory’s extensiveness attains its full potential as the actual world carries into effect its role of transmission of feelings. In Whiteheadian terms, the actual world acts as a “medium” (Whitehead 1978: 284). When one moment perishes, its affective quality becomes an object available for experience. This passing along of feeling is the reason why a concern for Whiteheadian ontology is necessarily accompanied by an aesthetic consideration. Indeed, for him, “the question of beauty pertains not just to the creation and reception of works of art, but to sensible experience more generally” (Shaviro 2009: 68). Whitehead has a term for the way an actual entity comes into being: “subjective form.” The subjective form is the way feelings are gathered into one concrescence. Only, an actual entity never stands by itself. As it passes feeling along, it in-forms a certain liveliness. The liveliness of space emergence is that of affect. This liveliness moves the feeling. We can call it an affective territory.
In this empirical case, the emergence of the affective territory does not coincide with what Whitehead calls enduring objects (i.e. a table, a house, a rock). However, in the theoretical context of OOO, the questions that arise are more specifically related to enduring objects encountering one another. How does this encounter make a difference or how is it different from what we may have expected? What kind of knowledge can we produce in this context? Within OOO, we are dealing with difference through relation and not relation as difference. Indeed, relationality alters objects and introduces a certain malleability to fixity. Yet, when speculative pragmatism is at play, there is a difference of nature operating in the questions we ask. Since objects and subjects have interchangeable roles, the only concrete thing is relation. But relation is by nature slippery. How do you grasp it? When you are dealing with relation itself, the problem changes. It becomes a question of understanding how there can be any endurance (in the sense of enduring objects) amid such quicksand. Hence, we start with relation. It is not a matter of relation between objects – and the quicksand moves – but relation between relations. Feeling – that which travels from one relation (actual entity) to the next (actual entity) – is never the same. It snowballs surplus-value. In the end, we are always dealing with sheer value (Massumi 2018) in the purest sense of it: qualitative difference, emergence of novelty. Whitehead has a minor concept that permeates his thought, reaching every possible thought-limit: affective tone. He explains this concept with the word “concern,” and this changes how we may perceive the subject-object relation: “The occasion as subject has a ‘concern’ for the object. And the ‘concern’ at once places the object as a component in the experience of the subject, with an affective tone drawn from this object and directed towards it” (Whitehead 1967a: 176). The affective tone is the surplus-value. It is drawn from the object as though the subject squeezes out the juice available for its own experience. The juice is the surplus-value but, as it is squeezed out of the fruit, it no longer is what it was or could have been: pure potential. It becomes liquid, liberated, ready to taste the world and to be tasted in return. It becomes pure enjoyment of being, (re)created anew. In this context, what does concreteness sound like?