Affect, state theory, and the politics of confusion

Auteur(s) et Affiliation(s)



Description :
The A. introduces the notion of ‘state affects’ to describe the errancies that often characterize everyday statist relations. Where structured conditions and intelligibilities, such as the government of populations, engender state effects that veil the state's non-existence, state affects, I argue, enroll bodies and differentiate masses through what Secor has called ‘unrecognizable conditions.’ Particularly where such conditions are bungled and baffling, they constitute a field of problems that enable the formulation of an affective ‘politics of confusion.’ Finally, the New York City Police Department's bungled management of protest during the 2004 Republican National Convention offers multiple lenses for reading the spectrum of ways in which deployments of the state's monopoly on violence and the work of its ostensibly dissociated materialities sustain the political tensions between a state's non-existence and its affectiva-emotive power.


Type de document :
Article de périodique

Source :
Political geography, issn : 0962-6298, 2014, vol. 41, p. 21-31, nombre de pages : 11

Date :
2014

Editeur :
Pays édition : Royaume-Uni, Oxford, Butterworth-Heinemann