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How to Use Affective Competencies in Late Capitalism

Abstract: This paper brings together writings from political sociology, the New Left, and

Italian autonomist thinking to contribute to the on-going conversation on the relation

between governmentality and the spirit of capital. I argue that the function of neoliberal

government is to produce types of subjects and social relations that are congruent with

the logic of flexible accumulation. But I take issue with the idea that, in doing so,

neoliberalism extends economic rationality to all areas of life. This model of

subjectivization tends to exaggerate the role of rationality in producing entrepreneurial

forms of being. It neglects the fact that the knowledge economy relies in equal measure

upon innovation, accountability, spontaneity, cooperation, and mobility to generate

value. I provide examples from three areas of contemporary life (i.e., the transformation

of work, the global passion for compassion, and the cosmetics of existence) to

demonstrate how affective competencies are conducive to entrepreneurial action.

In the opening pages of Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections (2001) the readers are introduced to

Chip Lambert’s failures in critical pedagogy. Thirty three and well-published, Chip is hired by a

small college with “elite reputation” on a five-year tenure-track position to teach undergraduate

courses in literature and cultural studies (ibid. 38). For the last meeting of “Consuming

Narratives”, a first-year core course in cultural studies, Chip asks his students to watch a soap

opera about women struggling with breast cancer. The show is produced by a major high-tech

corporation, which has donated more than $10 million to the American Cancer Foundation for

research purposes (ibid. 45-6). Evidently, a “critical (correct) reading” of the show would take

issue with the fact that the corporation producing it exploits women’s fear of breast cancer and

sympathy for cancer victims to emotionally invest them in purchasing their IT products and

services. But to Chip’s dismay his students disagree:

“Excuse me,” Melissa said, “but that is just such bullshit.”

“What is bullshit?” Chip said.

“This whole class,” she said. “It’s just bullshit every week. It’s one critic after

another wringing their hands about the state of criticism. Nobody can ever say what's

wrong exactly. But they all know it's evil. They all know ‘corporate’ is a dirty word. And if

somebody who’s having fun, or getting rich is disgusting! Evil! And it's always the death

of this and the death of that. And people who think they're free aren't ‘really’ free. And

people who think they’re happy aren't really ‘happy’. And it's impossible to radically

critique society anymore, although what's so radically wrong with society that we need

such a radical critique, nobody can say exactly. It is so typical and perfect that you hate

those ads! […] Here things are getting better and better for women and people of color,

and gay men and lesbians, more and more integrated and open, and all you can think

about is some stupid lame problem with signifiers and signifieds.”

[…]

“OK,” Chip said. “On that note. You’ve now satisfied your Cultural Studies core

requirement. Have a great summer.” (2001:50-1)

The argument that, as earlier modes of critique have been co-opted or recuperated by the

dominant mode of rule (Frank 1998; Boltanki and Chiapello 2005) there is no longer an

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“outside” to capital, is by now a familiar lamentation of the left. Confronted with a spirit of

capitalism that is more savvy, seductive, and satisfying than anything predicted by the

traditional Marxist narrative of tensions and contradictions, the phrase “the end of capitalism

(as we knew it)” makes sense only to the extent that it announces the beginning of a more

tolerable, equitable, and pleasurable phase/face of capitalism. As the above passage shows, to

take issue with a mode of social organization that is increasingly inclusive, open, and integrated,

is not just logically impossible, but comical. It is ridiculous, outlandish even, to criticize a system

of profitable enjoyment/joyful profit that can improve the lives of those marginalized on

account of their gender, race, and sexually. “It has become easier to imagine the end of the

earth and of nature than the end of capitalism” (Jameson cited in Giroux and Szeman 2001:95)

because critique has been reduced to a comical farce, the necessity of which can only be

maintained through increasingly dangerous acrobatics.

This paper is an acrobatic exercise of this sort. Its aim is to show how we have become

emotionally invested in the present structures of government. This is not to say that, like Chip’s

students, we have “sold out” to or been “duped” by a system of material profitability and

libidinal enjoyment, or that we have to shake off this “false consciousness” in exchange for

something purer. We have never been untouchable to begin with. But it is neither meant to say

that engaging in a hermeneutics of ourselves, our passions and complicities – as an exercise in

self-care or a Socratic dialogue, perhaps – is a waste of our energies. To what do we owe the

uncontested moral consensus around capitalist practices, instruments, and ambitions? Why has

it become enjoyable, admirable even, to contribute to the reproduction and innovation of its

ethos? What kind of moral legitimating structure does the spirit of capitalism rely on that makes

critique appear so amusing and/or exasperating? Finding answers to these questions will not

help resuscitate earlier forms of political analysis, identity, and hope (what J.K. Gibson-Graham

(2006:5) and Wendy Brown (1999) call “left melancholia”). The aim of this paper is far more

modest: to question our most intimate and pleasurable attachments to capitalist forms of

labour, identity, aesthetics, and community.

Contemporary critical inquiry has not remained oblivious to the above aporias. Specifically,

Slavoj Zizek (1999), Wendy Brown (2003), Hardt and Negri (2000, 2004), and Boltanski and

Chiapello (2005) have tried to make sense of the increasingly sophisticated and seductive logic

of capitalism by connecting Marxian analysis with theories of governmentality, psychoanalysis,

political sociology, and cultural studies. Although they work within distinct theoretical

parameters, what all of these writers share in common is the idea that contemporary capitalism

is more concerned with the social reproduction of its ethos than with producing goods and

services. Far from being a self-sufficient machine that operates according to some larger-than-

life internal logic, capitalism is conceived as an almost fragile mode of social organization, the

perpetuation of which depends on the existence of hospitable life forms (e.g. bodies,

subjectivities, social relations, material processes, desires, and fantasies). This is especially true

for late (aka flexible or communicative) capitalism which requires subjects to act like virtuosos of

entrepreneurship (Virno 2004). It is not the case that social reproduction is a novel dimension of

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capitalism, but that “the production of social relations [has become its] immediate end/goal”

(Zizek 2005). Trying to make sense of “the new spirit of capitalism” – an ideological amalgam

that, simultaneously, invests capitalism with a moral justification and subjects it to normative

scrutiny (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005) – leftist writers supplemented historical materialism with

theories of social construction, textuality, and psychoanalysis instead.

In particular, Foucault’s analytics of government and his later Collège de France lectures (2007,

2008), where he describes modern government as the extension of economic rationality to all

areas of life, proved helpful in showing how neoliberal government mobilizes freedoms and

responsibilities to produce subjectivities, social relations, and modes of conduct conducive to

capitalism. The arranged marriage between Marx and Foucault reached its limits, however, as

soon as it overemphasized the extent to which the modern narrative of accumulation relies on

rationality and its related tropes, like economic calculations, private interests, competition,

masculinity, and hyperindividualism. The entrepreneurial orientation of late capitalism is not

exhausted through rationality. Instead, the hegemony of late capitalism is being fought on

territories which used to be ornamental or external (if not outright inimical) to the operation of

capitalism, such as the personal, the affective, and the aesthetic. The emotive dispositions and

qualifications mobilized in flexible accumulation (e.g. innovation, compassion, and indulgence)

may not be structurally different from rationality, but they at least demonstrate that economic

calculability is no longer sufficient for navigating our uncertain social landscape. A series of

affective competencies must be mobilized to ensure the spontaneous and enthusiastic

participation of individuals and, ultimately, to invest capitalism with a moral ethos that will

conceal its tensions and postpone its crises.

The contribution of this paper is, first, to summarize, converge, and advance what otherwise

looks less like a comprehensive critique of capital and more like a series of disparate texts. At

least three strands of literature hinge on the crossover between capitalism and government:

research in political sociology on government as it applies to areas traditionally imagined to be

outside the purview of power (Rose 1991; Rose and Miller 1992; Barry et al. 1996; Lemke 2001,

2007); New Left writings interested in the production and reproduction of life forms hospitable

to the capitalist logic of accumulation (Zizek 1999; Brown 2003; Boltanski and Chiapello 2005;

Dean 2006, 2008, 2009; Michaels 2008); and Italian autonomist thinking on the immaterial and

affective aporias of post-Fordist modes of organization (Lazzarato 1997; Hardt 1999; Negri 1999;

Hardt and Negri 2000, 2004; Virno 2004; Bifo 2009). Unfortunately, to this date, there is no

consistent dialogue between these camps or comprehensive overview of their overlaps and

disparities. The second objective of this paper is to present an overview of three areas of

contemporary everyday life in which these transformations are most evident, namely, in the

transformation of work, the global passion for compassion, and the cosmetics of existence.

Although these are merely heuristic categories, it is useful to pull out these examples from the

hands of pop sociologists and journalists (Brooks 2001; Florida 2002; Bolz 2009) to expose the

disquietudes they harbor. What this paper cannot offer, however, is a definitive answer to the

question tearing up the heart of contemporary capitalist critique. It remains unclear to me

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whether politics needs to use the communicative instruments of late capitalism (as they are

manifested in identity politics, immaterial labour, networked communication, etc.) to advance

radical action (Brown 1999; Hardt and Negri 2004) or whether these should be refused on the

grounds of their emotional and libidinal complicity with power (Zizek 2005, 2009).

Before we can proceed, however, a word of warning is in order. The inherent danger in trying to

make sense of the new spirit of capitalism is that dwelling on the novelty of this ethos implies a

radical temporal rupture in the history of capitalism. We need to refrain from or, at least, be

cautious about locating the origins of flexible capitalism in the neo-conservative reforms that

swept across the Anglo-American space in the early 70s. Although the demise of the Bretton-

Woods system has had a significant impact upon the way in which finance capital, public

institutions, social services, human resources, and consumer behavior are organized, the logic of

market rationality has remained constant since the days of Adam Smith. Locating contemporary

capitalism in a separate temporal ontology is tempting, but it is ultimately a debilitating

strategy. It invites a presentist reading of history that ignores the fact that, it is not so much the

grammar of capitalist production that has changed than the techniques of social reproduction.

Reversely, we cannot lock time out of this enquiry by ignoring the distinctly innovative trends in

social organization, professional development, lifestyle choices, and personal conduct

announcing a shift in the operationalization of capitalism. Although we have not entered a new

era of capitalist production, the strategies and technologies we use to sell our labour, buy

commodities, and organize communities are increasingly more subtle and more astute. They

penetrate deeper into the crevices of our lives blending value production with personal self-

esteem and intimate desire with worker discipline. Market rationality continues to be about the

realization of private interests through competition. The only difference is that this logic now

reaches into “our intimate lives, our feelings, desires and aspirations”, forcing us to realize that

all areas that seemed “quintessentially personal” are in fact “intensely governed” (Rose,

1991:1).

Neoliberal Government Revisited

Why is it that, just as government control is withdrawing from the market, we are being

confronted with more and more disciplinary injunctions for how to conduct ourselves? This is

the double movement to which the term neoliberal government seeks to provide an

explanation. This somewhat oxymoronic phrase expresses our confusion but does little to

explain the sources responsible for our current predicament. To resolve the philosophical

tension between its Marxian and Foucaultian etymology, we need to revisit both terms

separately (neoliberalism and government).

Neoliberalism, in its most popular usage, refers to a free market economy which operates

smoothly and harmoniously without state intervention. From the classical liberalism of Adam

Smith and David Ricardo all the way to the Chicago School of economic theory, the liberal

doctrine presupposes the relative autonomy of the economic from the political sphere. The

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market is conceived as an autonomous and self-regulating entity functioning according to the

naturalist rules of competition. Government in this equation is a “spatial-cum-institutional

container” (Walker 1991:450) charged with overseeing but never creating or interfering with

these mechanics. The events that shook the economies of the Global North during the 70s and

their political repercussions led many to believe that neoliberalism is liberalism with a

vengeance. The story goes like this: The demise of the Bretton Woods system of trade and

exchange in 1973 culminated in the removal of capital controls in 1974 in the US and in 1979 in

Britain. Faced with floating currencies and unhindered exchange of goods, services, and finance

across borders, advanced industrial nations entered a series of de- and re-regulation waves that

had a profound political impact (Olssen 2006:217). National healthcare schemes were

privatized; educational reforms were introduced to increase competition between higher

learning institutions; the public sector was modeled after the private one; and new forms of

expertise, accounting, and communication emerged to make all forms of social organization

leaner, flatter, and more flexible (Isin 2000:154). In response to these changes the Reagan-

Thatcher Right introduced a pure market economy that corroded the structures of social

democracy and brought about the “end of politics” (Lemke 2007:16). Convincing as this account

of neoliberalism may be, it rests on two factually incomplete and methodologically flawed

assumptions.

The first of these assumptions is that government institutions speak with one voice and act upon

a coherent volition. Similar to a conspiracy theory, the Reagan and Thatcher administrations are

accused of opposing liberal democracy ex officio and wanting to put an end to it at all cost.

Although various neo-conservative regimes have been elected since the 70s all across the Anglo-

American space, they lacked a clear and coherent political response to the economic crises they

were faced with. As policy solutions were devised to address problems in finance, capital, and

trade, these were codified under the rubric of neoliberal government, which is not so much the

retrenchment of the state than the state refocusing its strategies and priorities. Empirical data

shows that despite severe cutbacks across the public sector, government spending as GDP

percentage has been on the rise since the 70s. “The irony that should not be lost on anyone is

that neoliberal regimes have enacted more legislation and regulation than social democratic

ones” (Isin 2000:162). Neoliberal government is not about less government, but about

governing more efficiently with other rationalities, programs, and means. It is about shifting the

focus and priorities of government, not about pushing government out of the equation. The

market reforms introduced across the Anglo-American space (and beyond) since the 70s

onwards produced flatter and faster state organizations, rather than plain weaker ones.

Ultimately, liberal democratic states may have regained some of their historic strength as a

result of these neoliberal disciplining processes (ibid. 154-5).

The second misconception is a methodological one. It assumes that global economy and

national sovereignty are two separate and mutually exclusive sites tied in a zero-sum game:

when one is on the rise, the other is on the fall, and vice versa (Sassen 2000:372). Whether the

state is viewed as a barrier to economic profit (like in liberalism) or a protector of collective

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rights and benefits (as in Marxist and communitarian critiques of globalization), the idea that a

strong government can limit the legroom of transnational capital and that, reversely, expansive

transnational forces risk corroding national sovereignty is widely propagated. Hence, all the

nostalgic talk about the “retrenchment” or “demise” of the nation state in times of neoliberal

globalization. This not only an ontologically impossible proposition, it also exaggerates the

autonomy of the economic from the political. Globalization notwithstanding, market economy

depends upon certain state-sanctioned conventions regarding money, labour power, and the

value of commodities. Even keeping state regulation and protection at a bare minimum, markets

still rely upon business-friendly fiscal, monetary, and social policies (Brown 2003:3). Thinking

that the global and the national form an ontological duality prevents us from seeing how

government stands to gain from defying the classic spatio-temporal coordinates of territorial

sovereignty by creating new zones of profitability and authority beyond the container of the

state (ibid.).

Contrary to these ideas, neoliberalism is neither the ideology of neo-conservative policy-makers,

nor a historical period marked by the withering away of the state at the hand of a global market

economy. It is “neither an ideology nor a worldview, but […] the name we give to a way of

thinking about the objects, targets, mechanisms, and limits of government” (Isin 2000:164). In

Foucault’s (2008) conception, neoliberalism is a mode of social organization wherein the

rationality of economic calculation is exported to all areas of life, from macroeconomic policies,

to public policy, education, recreation, and personal conduct. Foucault traces this alternative

notion of neoliberalism back to the post-war German economic school of Ordoliberalen.

Against 18th and 19th century liberalism, the Ordoliberalen, also known as the Freiburg School,

dismissed the laissez-faire approach to economic thinking as “naïve naturalism”. The driving

principle of the market, they argued, was not the exchange of good and services, but

competition. It is the principle of competition that produces goods, sets prices, and extracts

value (Foucault 2008:118-20). Different from exchange, which was said to respond to the

spontaneous needs and demands of free individuals, competition is not a natural occurrence. It

is a carefully orchestrated activity to be nurtured and sustained through conducive policy-

making. “Competition is […] an historical objective of governmental art and not a natural given

that must be respected” (ibid. 120). The neoliberal doctrine of the Freiburg School expanded the

responsibility of government from the passive task of writing legislation conducive to market

competition to the active duty of making sure that all social realms are hospitable to the

implementation of market mechanisms. The purpose of responsible government is to promote

cultural and moral orders that are conducive to entrepreneurial behavior and oppose all forms

of life that stifle competition (Olssen 2006:218). It is also the responsibility of government to

operate according to the same principles of efficiency and calculability as the market to avoid

the disastrous effects of strong government intervention associated both with the Weimar

regime and National Socialism (ibid. 220). This way, the Ordoliberalen were the first to charge

the state and its agencies of power with the social reproduction of capital.

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Neoliberalism, then, is a type of government, whereby government is not the concretization of

legal and administrative codes in the form of a state or a set of institutions, but rather a political

rationality that renders social reality understandable and programmable. Government has both

an epistemological and a moral function: it tells us something about the nature of the objects to

be governed and it indicates the proper way to govern these objects by designating the

authorities in charge, the instruments of power, the problems to be addressed, and the

programs to be pursued (Rose 1991:42). Government, in this sense, is a method of exercising

power and structuring social reality, rather than a specific political program. It does not acquire

a life of its own until it can sketch out who should govern, what is to be governed, by what

means, and to what effect. The answer to these questions has varied throughout history. In

ancient and medieval times, for instance, the king, prince, or pope had a “relationship of

externality and transcendence” to those it governed, hence maintaining an (arbitrary) “right to

take life or let live” over their subjects. With the advent of popular democracy, following the rise

of the third estate in 1789 and the plebeian revolutions of 1848, government enters a relation of

immanence with its population, whose welfare it suddenly has a responsibility to protect and

foster. In modern times, the rationality of government becomes biopolitical: to regulate and

optimize the livelihood, productivity, and longevity of a population. The numbers and

complexity of the body politic being constantly on the rise, this is realized by extending

economic principles to all areas of social life all the way into the deepest corners of personhood.

At the end of the 18th century, political economy, rather than philosophy, religion, or military

strategy, becomes the knowledge necessary to distribute resources, calculate maximum returns,

fulfill certain rational targets, and maximize the wealth and happiness of the population

(Foucault 2007:91-106).

In conclusion, what is known as neoliberal government today is not an economic theory (the

repudiation of state intervention from market economy), a political regime (a form of

government concentrated in bureaucratic institutions and territorial jurisdictions), or a historical

period (the effect of economic globalization upon national sovereignty). It is a mode of social

organization whose biopolitical ambition is realized through a distinctly liberal economic

rationality. Most critical discussions on biopolitics apply the term to discuss violent interventions

in the biology of life and reproduction, the surveillance of public space, or the control of

mobility across borders. These analyses focus exclusively on the emergency and exceptionality

of biopolitics – as if the biopolitical rationality of government manifested itself only in the

absence of “normal” liberal democratic politics (Neal 2008), when in fact it is the mundane

fabric that sustains it. Biopolitics is present not only in exceptions to the law or violations of our

human rights. It is also active in producing a healthy, productive, and fulfilled workforce. The

positive, if not outright utopian, content of biopolitics rests in its ability to (re)produce

subjective forms (i.e. modes of conduct, affects, attitudes, social relations, and lifestyles) that

are congruent with the capitalist logic of accumulation and competition. “Every mode of

production necessarily presupposes and reproduces particular forms of sociality and

subjectivity” (Read 2003:135). The question we need to ask ourselves is: what types of subjects

and social relations does a flexible mode of accumulation require?

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The (Seemingly) Schizophrenic Subject of Neoliberal Government

Let us return to the original problem of neoliberal government: Why is it that, just as

government control is withdrawing from the market, we are being confronted with more and

more disciplinary injunctions for how to conduct ourselves? To better answer this question its

variables must be slightly modified. First, the flexible structures of accumulation (Harvey 1990)

(i.e. finance capital, networked communication, immaterial labour, timely production, and

personalized consumption) are less a manifestation of market deregulation or the withdrawal of

state authority, than the product of technological advancements in communication and

transportation (Catells 1996). Second, it is not government per se – its agencies, policies, or by-

laws – that seeks to affect our conduct, but a general imperative for autonomous citizens that

do not rely too heavily on external provisions (Ilcan and Basok 2004:130). With these corrections

in mind, the question can be rephrased as follows: Why is it that, just as strategies for capitalist

accumulation have become more flexible, individuals are being asked to assume increasing

responsibility for their actions? In this latter formulation, the answer seems obvious.

The only way for flexible capitalism to work without distorting or destroying the equilibrium of

the market is for all institutions and social action to assume the model of market rationality.

Only when the state learns to think and conduct itself like a market organ, will its rule not be

considered an intrusive interference (Brown 2003:13). Only when individuals understand the

moral consequences of their financial, professional, and domestic responsibilities, will they stop

relying upon welfare provisions, union benefits, and other types of bailout and realize the full

potential of their productivity. Only when the market stops being an entity external to the body

politic, but becomes part and parcel of our professional development, domestic arrangements,

lifestyle choices, consumer behavior, and personal appearance, can it function smoothly, almost

spontaneously. The task of neoliberal government is to make sure that the appropriate forms of

life, action, and sociality are in place for a flexible market economy to operate effortlessly. (The

2008-2009 economic “downturn” proved that capitalist tensions continue to exist despite

careful biopolitical intervention.) As the literature on neoliberal (alternatively known as

“advanced”) government shows, the key to this objective is to extend the rationality of

economic calculation to all modes of life through mechanisms that “foster and enforce

individual responsibility, privatized risk-management, empowerment techniques, and the play

of market forces and entrepreneurial models in a variety of domains” (Lemke 2007:3). Following

the model of the homo oeconomicus, neoliberal subjects must know how to assess their choices,

make decisions, and bear the consequences of their actions “to give their lives a specific

entrepreneurial form” (Lemke 2001:202 cited in Brown 2003:17). They are “free” to organize

their lives only as long as this “freedom” expresses the rationality of economic calculation that

already permeates the entire structure of government. Their actions are “moral” only if they are

informed by rational choice calculations of risks, benefits, and consequences (ibid. 15).

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It is true that with most of the safety nets guaranteed through welfare provisions and trade

unions gone, individuals must take a preventive and proactive approach to their health,

education, profession, and finances. But this model of subjectivization tends to exaggerate the

role of economic rationality for producing entrepreneurial forms of being. It seems to imply that

neoliberal government produces nothing but a series of Patrick Bateman-like figures obsessed

with assessing their bank accounts, credentials, looks… and body count, to the exclusion of all

social, moral, and affective considerations. It assumes that, to perform as a responsible and self-

reliant agent, individuals need to behave like individualistic, hypermasculinist, and even violent

capitalist predators. This establishes a “causal homology between liberalism and capitalism”

that ignores their respective histories (Isin 2000:153) and presents Foucaultian theories of

government in an uncharacteristically dogmatic light. The enduring mantra of Foucault’s Collège

de France lectures is not that the “effects of the economy are extended across all of society,

rather it is an economic perspective, that of the market, that becomes coextensive with all of

society” (Read 2009:32). The spirit of capitalist is not exhausted in narratives of rugged

individualism, ruthless competition, and excessive consumption. In a sense, these are of

capitalist tropes of the 80s, which continue to linger on in our theoretical accounts. The flexible

economy we are confronted with today is in many ways a lot more rewarding, compassionate,

and creative than the rationalist story of neoliberal government would allow. It is an economy

where capital travels through financial mechanisms, labour is immaterial, casual, and

precarious, production happens just-in-time, consumption is ready-to-assemble, and virtually

every form of communication can generate economic value. Hence, it is also an economy where

innovation, accountability, spontaneity, communication, cooperation, mobility, and general

intellect are key elements of the entrepreneurial spirit (Holmes 2002). As accumulation

strategies are gaining in elasticity, the model of political subjectivization is also becoming more

ambiguous.

At the risk of oversimplifying matters, it can be said that the neoliberal model of subject

formation has shifted from homo oeconomicus to homo sociologicus, or from the (wo)man of

reason to the (wo)man of affect. It is no longer sufficient for neoliberal individuals to navigate

their social surroundings using only rational choice and cost-benefit calculations to the exclusion

of all other social and moral considerations (Read 2009; Bolz 2009). As capitalism became more

savvy and micropolitical over the last few decades to include networked structures, flexible

accumulation and distribution mechanisms, and more democratic and rewarding production

techniques, the homo oeconomicus model of conduct had to accommodate a range of affective

competencies. Instead of the rational, calculated, and cold-blooded American Psycho we now

have the compassionate entrepreneur, the workaholic with a social conscience, the innovative

worker, and the frugal consumer. Instead of Patrick Bateman we have “the ambitious yet

sensitive young businessperson facing a swiftly changing and increasingly ruthless economy”

(Kuczynski 1998). Tackling the challenges of today’s (and tomorrow’s) flexible capitalism

involves a desire for social change, an ability to operate in distant and diverse settings, and an

interest in experimenting with one’s self and the world around it (see www.fastcompany.com).

It is not the case that rationality, calculability, and good-ol’ fashioned competency no longer

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play a part in neoliberal government, but the Protestant ethic of capitalism (i.e. work, prudence,

frugality, moderation, reliability, and sobriety) has been complicated by the avant-garde values

of artists and activists (i.e. authenticity, trustworthiness, transparency, social responsibility,

sustainability, fairness, respect, care, and civility) (Bolz 2009). As a result, the criteria for

becoming subject in late modernity have shifted from a focus on market rationality to a focus on

emotionality, creativity, and mobility. Unfortunately, critical scholarship has paid very little

attention to these advancements, exceptions being Isin’s “neurotic citizen” (2004) governed

through fear and anxiety and Fortier’s “affective subject” (2010) meant to recover citizens’

capacity for cohesion and interaction. But it was pop sociology that took this unprecedented

zoon politikon most seriously.

David Brooks calls this new specimen the “bourgeois-bohemian”. Returning to the US after a 5-

year long absence, Brooks is confronted with ”a series of peculiar juxtapositions”:

“WASPy upscale suburbs were suddenly dotted with arty coffeehouses where people

drank little European coffees and listened to alternative music. Meanwhile, he

bohemian downtown neighbourhoods were packed with multimillion-dollar lofts and

those upscale gardening stores where you can buy a faux-authentic trowel for $35.99.”

(2000:9)

In the newly revamped spaces of urban rejuvenation, a new political animal is moving about,

reborn from the ashes of antecedent “bourgeois” and “bohemian” class distinctions. Significant

changes in professional conduct, leisurely habits, and moral codes during the 90s, have

reconciled the rebel and the yuppie. Tyler Durden and Patrick Bateman co-exist quite peacefully

and productively, often even within the same person. “It is now impossible to tell an espresso-

sipping artist from a cappuccino-gulping banker”, is Brooks’ bewilderment (ibid. 10). The

individuals walking the line between these older identity categories, those who can combine a

bourgeois work ethic with a bohemian desire for sensorial experimentation, those who can

channel play, pleasure, and passion into productive work and use information, emotions, and

interpersonal relations to generate economic value, that will thrive in the current information

and knowledge economy (ibid. 10-1).

Richard Florida, the author of several nightstand bibles for urban designers, public policy

makers, and start-up entrepreneurs, dwells on the same phenomena, when he announces with

a lot more glee than Brooks, that the rise of the “creative class” is the result of a “big morph”

between the Protestant work ethic and the bohemian spirit (2002:192). His bestselling book The

Rise of the Creative Class and How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday

Life (ibid.) argues that we have entered a new organizational phase, where the main economic

driving forces are no longer technological (land, resources, manpower), but human – hence the

importance of creativity. Florida gives us a meticulous account of the spending patters and

lifestyles of a select few, but nowhere does he define the content of creativity or explain its

value. The little we know about the “creative class” is that it rejects both the austere

conformism of Whyte’s “organization man” and the conspicuous consumerism of Veblen’s

“leisure class”.

Wanda Vrasti 11

Norbert Bolz (2009) picks up on these pseudo-sociological observations and connects them to

the history of capitalism. If 200 years ago it might have seemed paradoxical for the author of

The Wealth of Nations to also be the person behind a Theory of Moral Sentiments, as capitalism

is being re-anchored in social and moral principles, this is no longer surprising. Drawing

inspiration from Ronald Inglehart’s post-materialism thesis (1977), Bolz argues that, as our

economic wellbeing is becoming increasingly secure, we are free to dedicate ourselves to non-

economic pursuits, such as social and moral values, the search for meaning and recognition, and

the other side of reason (stories and emotions). The effect is a so-called “caring capitalism”

where the greatest economic success is to be enjoyed by those who perform on the market

against the market, those who take their business model from non-governmental and non-profit

organizations, along with those who discover the profitable potential of social capital (trust,

commitment, responsibility) and civic virtues (charity, volunteering, activism). Spending the

surplus value generated in such “caring” and “responsible” ways requires as much imagination

as producing it. The new elites must find ways to spend their riches in non-ostentatious ways:

they drink water that is as expensive as wine, wear clothes that look leisurely but are made of

incredibly costly material, on eco-holidays that guarantee they will be the only tourists for miles

around. The labour and consumption habits of new elites help them develop a theatrical

relation to themselves (what Bolz calls “die Kosmetik der Existenz”) that allows them to stage

their lives as an oeuvre, on the one hand, and covers their wealth in a cloth of simplicity, on the

other.

As is to be expected, Zizek’s account of neoliberal subjectivity is the most spirited one. What

Zizek calls “liberal communists” are individuals who claim “that we can have the global capitalist

cake, i.e., thrive as profitable entrepreneurs, and eat it, too, i.e., endorse the anti-capitalist

causes of social responsibility and ecological concerns” (2008:16). These are celebrity figures like

Soros or Gates who have earned their fortunes through a stroke of entrepreneurial genius and

now dedicate their time to sharing their wealth in a way that can appease the crises of

capitalism they themselves created and benefited from (ibid. 23). “Liberal communists” are the

people from “Porto Davos” who use digital communication, social media, transparency, and

networking to achieve increasingly contradictory goals. Worried about “populist

fundamentalists and irresponsible, greedy capitalist corporations”, their goal is not to make

money by changing the world, but to earn money as an unintentional, almost accidental, side-

effect of doing good works (ibid. 20). They are the radical entrepreneurs who are “reinventing

their work to help save the world [because] going good can mean more than volunteering and

philanthropy; earn[ing] our living can actually become the way we give back” (Moulden 2008:3,

original emphasis). They are the environmental pragmatists who understand that “[i]n a

marketplace where other points of competitive differentiation, such as capital or labour costs,

are flattening”, going green is the way to gold (Esty and Winston 2006:4). They are the self-

negating entrepreneurs whom the growing expanse of self-help/business literature speaks to.

Wanda Vrasti 12

While we cannot deny that these texts measure the pulse of the times we live in, the problem is

that their business-friendly style and pop sociological observations resemble too closely the self-

help manuals and philantrepreneurial guides of the new-economy era (Peck 2005:741). Only

Zizek’s account makes an exception, but it too turns out to rely too heavily on anecdotal

evidence to allow serious political engagement. Yet these are the only writings to have drawn

attention to the therapeutic relationship emerging between ethical responsibility and economic

productivity. The problem with academic writing on the subject is that it keeps repeating that

neoliberal government reduces personal responsibility to economic calculations of risks,

benefits, and profits, and it ignores how affective literacy has become a prerequisite for

economic entrepreneurship. The seemingly schizophrenic portrayals of the “bourgeois-

bohemians” or the “liberal communists” suggest that the parameters of economic rationality

are wider than the scholarly literature would allow us to imagine. Neoliberalism is not a universe

of coolheaded calculations, dispassionate assessments, and hyperindividualistic action, but it

allows enough room for – and sometimes even demands – innovation, rebellion, and

compassion. The questions that arise from these observations are: Why has emotional literacy

become a requirement for economic proficiency? And how will this shift rearrange the

organization of neoliberal government?

Enter Emotions

It is not entirely clear why emotionality has come to generate so much attention in recent years

(whether it is because structuralist and behavioralist theories of the social have become

increasingly unsatisfactory or due to psychoanalysis’ arrival on the scene of critical inquiry), but

the scholarship on “structures of feeling” (Williams 1977), “structures of desire” (Brown 1999),

and “habits of feeling and judgment” (Connolly 2002) has been sprawling in a variety of

directions (see Grossberg 1992; Terada 2001; Connolly 2002; Massumi 2002; Sedgewick 2003;

Edkins 2003; Ahmed 2004; Ngai 2005; Ticineto Clough 2007; Ticineto Clough et al. 2007). Two of

the most prominent roads taken by this literature, roads which eventually crossed in a heated

debate, focused on the distinction between emotions, defined as body- and situation-specific

consequences of experience, and affect, understood as an autonomous non-corporeal potential

for change and variation. Emotions are “sociolinguistic fixings” (e.g. love, hate, envy, pity, etc.)

belonging to persons, groups, events, or memory and narrativized through stories and images

(Massumi 2002:28). Affect, on the other hand, are virtual impulses that do not express an

experiential or sensorial condition, but the transition from one state of being to another

(Massumi 1987:xvi).

While Massumi, following Spinoza and Deleuze, has been fairly adamant about keeping the two

categories apart, Sara Ahmed (2004) has remained indifferent to this conceptual order. For

Ahmed, emotions are circuits or pathways that travel between bodies, connecting, excluding, or

“sticking” to them, helping bodies extend into space and change their shape (ibid. 4). She rejects

the idea that emotions are private possessions that either should (like in psychoanalysis) or

should not be aired in public (see Arendt 1990). Emotions do not reside within subjects and

Wanda Vrasti 13

objects; they describe a relation between bodies. The “aboutness” and “towardness” of

emotions suggests a world-making quality: emotions help subjects “feel their way” through the

world by apprehending and taking a stand to it (Ahmed 2004:7). The difference between Ahmed

and Massumi’s contributions is not how little value the former places on the conceptual

distinction between emotions and affect compared to the latter, but how Ahmed makes

“affective economies” central to social and cultural practice. In Ahmed’s work, emotions are no

longer ornamental (like in rationalist approaches to social analysis) or unoperational (like in

Massumi’s virtual cartography), they become essential and practical tools for understanding

how we “become invested in particular structures” of power (ibid. 10, original emphasis).

Chip Lambert’s student, quoted in the opening section, is emotionally and libidinally invested in

the mechanisms of a global market economy because, unlike critique, capitalism promises to

create a more equitable and rewarding social structure. Flexible accumulation, with its sprawling

non-profit charitable organizations, mobile and playful types of employment, and self-

actualizing forms of action and consumption, functions according to the normative principles of

liberal democracy – freedom, representation, and accountability (Marcuse 2007[1964]:5; Zizek

2005; Dean 2006:101-2). The technological and semiotic advancements of capitalism are such

that it can afford to extend its commodities and comforts to all members of the polity. The

proletariat is morphed into a well-fed, well-dressed, well-supplied middle class that loses its

distinct form of consciousness and historical force (Brown 2003:4). Without any material

struggles left to fight, what people can wish for is more tolerance, cultural diversity, and

compassion for the less fortunate, all of which can be solved with the help of affective

competencies like benevolence, sympathy, and charity without having to change a thing about

our mode of economic organization (Michaels 2006). Flexible capitalism contains the solution to

the threats it poses (Zizek 2005). For every moment of exploitation, inequality, marginalization,

or alienation, capitalist production offers twice as many outlets for freedom, equality, care,

compassion, beauty, and happiness.

Unfortunately, “we lack a serious history of co-optation” (Frank cited in Holmes 2002:5) to

explain why the “refusal ‘to go along’ [has come to] appear neurotic and impotent” (Marcuse

2007[1964]:12). The closest we come to explaining how the democratic excess of the 60s has

become the revitalization of capitalism in the 90s is the work of Boltanski and Chiapello. In The

New Spirit of Capitalism (2005) they distinguish between two types of anti-capitalist critique: a

social critique, that attacked the injustices attached to material inequality and exploitation, and

an artistic critique, which took issue with the inhumane and alienating effects of a capitalist

society. The latter used to be “a minor, literary affair”, which only gained ground with the

democratization of higher education and the rise of a professional class (Holmes 2002:6). Its

nemesis was the “new anthropological type”, the obedient, square, and frigid corporate subject

produced by the military-industrial complex. The man in the grey flannel suit was at the center

of militant texts like Adorno et al. Authoritarian Personality (1950), Marcuse’s One-Dimensional

Man (1964), William Whyte’s Organization Man (1956), Sartre’s portrait of the “serialized man”,

and Cornelius Castoriadis’ critique of bureaucratic productivism (ibid. 4). (Pop culture

Wanda Vrasti 14

manifestos like Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho (1991), Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club (1999),

Frédéric Beigbeder’s 99 Francs (2000), Michel Houellebecq’s Platform (2001), Victor Pelevin’s

Babylon (2000), and Gary Shteyngart’s The Russian Debutante’s Handbook (2002) are belated

examples of 50 years of artistic critique adapted for the economy of images and signs.) So-called

“caring capitalism” is an answer to the anti-establishment critique of the 50s and 60s. It is

capitalism trying to recuperate the “democratic distemper” of the previous era (at least some of

it) to make the drive for accumulation tolerable again (Holmes 2002) without having to address

its impolite and outrageous sister, the social critique.

The greatest merit of Boltanski and Chiapello is to have shown that critique is immanent to

capitalist production. Critique is not a force that resides outside of capitalism, but a necessary

and intrinsic part of capitalism. Far from destabilizing capitalism, critique helps it incorporate

“some of the values in whose name it was criticized” (ibid. 28). The same can be said about

emotions. Emotions are a type of reason and vice versa. Both are discursive articulations of

experience aimed at helping us navigate the various challenges posed by our social landscape

(see Hirschman 1997). There is less of a difference between emotion and reason than there is

between emotions that are conducive to entrepreneurial action and those that are not. The

affective competencies solicited and mobilized by neoliberal government (e.g. autonomy,

adaptability, spontaneity, compassion, care, pity, generosity, philanthropy, self-fulfillment,

enjoyment) are not external or inimical to economic rationality, they are not “bad for business”;

on the contrary, they draw upon repertoires that used to be ornamental or external to

economic calculation, such as affect, aesthetic, and intellect, to solidify our investment in

capitalist social structures. Just because neoliberal government treats emotional literacy as a

prerequisite for economic proficiency, does not mean that we have entered a phase of “caring

capitalism”. Rather, the advent of emotionality underscores the truly normative dimension of

biopolitics, namely, the ambition to use the entrepreneurial form as a way to realign the life and

conduct of a population with democratic principles of social order, justice, and autonomy.

Examples

In this final section I survey three fields of action (work, community, and consumption) to

consider the kinds of subjects and social relations made possible through the circulation of

neoliberal affective economies.

A. Work

It is perhaps less neo-conservative economic reforms than innovations in telecommunications

and transportation technology that are responsible for giving us the post-industrial,

communicative, and networked capitalism we are moving through today. Nowhere is this

transformation more visible than in our work, where the increasingly intolerable boredom and

alienation of bureaucratic structures were replaced with more humane and gratifying work.

Whether this trade-off is forceful, like in the case of low-skilled workers whose jobs have been

outsourced to less regulated zones, or self-inflicted, like with cultural producers who prefer self-

Wanda Vrasti 15

affirming to secure work, it has resulted in a vertiginous rise in precarious work – work that is

atypical, irregular, part-time, short-term, deterritorialized, and product-oriented (Papadopoulos

et al. 2008:226-7). Employment conditions that were once associated with the lower echelons of

skilled and expert work – factory workers, domestic workers, migrants, and temps – are

spreading out to all types of labour (Ross 2009). But rather than glamorizing mental or creative

labour, we need to keep in mind that the velocity, casualization, and exploitation characteristic

for the digital economy continuities the modern sweatshop formula for work (Terranova

2000:33). The result is a tension between mourning the disappearance of “real jobs” and “the

revolt against work”. While some individuals continue to long after the “work for life” formula,

others are prepared to sacrifice the benefits of this social contract for jobs that are creative, fun,

and fully unleash their potential (Holmes 2002). It is the latter individuals, those who do not

insist on separating work time from free time (“playbor”) and do not have trouble combining

production with consumption (“prosumers”) who stand out as eminent neoliberal subjects

(Couldry 2004).

Different from the modern narrative of labour, where work represented a painful affair

to be managed through leftist struggles or eliminated through technological progress, in flexible

capitalism, work has no “outside”. Although automatization, outsourcing, and immaterial

production seem to be indicating that work is running out, we spend more and more time at

work. There is not a single relationship or activity that cannot be subsumed to its logic. Strangely

enough, there is remarkably little resistance to this trend. If the person in the grey flannel suit

(like the prototypical factory worker before that) had to set aside a chunk of free time to relax or

pursue extracurricular activities, the so-called “knowledge worker” – “the mobile, skilled,

affluent, independent, hard-working, ambitious, environmentally conscious, people who can

trade on their skill, expertise, and social capital” (Leadbeater cited in Brown et al. 2004:19) – can

no longer distinguish between servitude and artistic self-expression (Terranova 2000:35).

Aside from innovations in digital communications and human resource management,

changes in the material configuration of the workplace also helped incite an ecstatic new work

ethic (Hymnowith 2001). The Google headquarters (“Googleplex”) in Mountain View, California

are a perfect example for a workplace clothed in the comforts of home and the pleasures of

leisure ideal for combining “playful exuberance […] with a zealous work ethic” (ibid.). The facility

boasts 20 buildings hosting several thousand employees and their pets; an organic garden;

hundreds of community bikes and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles; beach volleyball courts, two

heated endless pools, and four gyms; state-of-the art architectural designs; solar energy panels,

sustainably harvested wood, efficient yurt-inspired rooms, LEED certified furniture, and

recyclable materials (Google 2009). Although there is no sign of actual work at the Googleplex

(as most YouTube posts on the video note), working for Google implies a notion of risk, speed,

and performance that is anything but leisurely. But it also promises some of the craft,

camaraderie, and "soulfulness" originally associated with the tactile pleasures of manual work in

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Pirsig 1974) and later mourned in Shop Class as

Soulcraft (Crawford 2009).

The neoliberal narrative of work celebrates those who view their livelihood as well as

their personhood to be dependent upon their work performance and productivity. Although

Wanda Vrasti 16

flexible capitalism is not exclusively an economy of images and signs (Holmes 2008), the men

and women burning the midnight oil in creative industries are exemplary figures of neoliberal

government in their willingness to combine self-sacrifice with self-worth. This debilitating ethos

is what allows even the most precarious of workers to keep afloat amidst waves of global

economic volatility without making excessive demands upon either state or corporate

structures. It is also what makes traditional worker struggles, like protests and strikes, seem

impossibly juvenile and boring (Ross 2008).

B. Community

There are over 1 million charitable organizations in the United States today, double the number

five years ago; the sector employs 6.9% of the total American workforce and pays 8.11% of

wages and salaries in the US; in 2007 charitable donations reached an all-time high of $314

billion, which dropped only by 2% during the 2008 economic “downturn” (National Center for

Charitable Statistics 2008; National Philanthropic Trust 2009). After the end of the Cold War,

giving was democratized from the hands of a few wealthy donors (e.g. Rockefeller, Carnegie,

Ford, MacArthur, Kellogg, and Mellon) to include a variety of civil society outlets. Between 1993

and 2003 the number of foundations in the US increased by 77% (Hudson Institute 2006:20).

Corporate charity rose at an unexpected rate teaming up either with business moguls like Gates,

Soros, or Bloomberg or celebrities like Bono and Geldof. And private and voluntary organizations

(PVOs) recruited $4 billion worth in volunteering hours (ibid. 26).

The literature on “government through community” attributes the rise in civil society

associations to the vacuum left by the demise of “big government” (Rose 1999; Dean 1999; Isin

2000; Ilcan and Basok 2004). But we are dealing here less with a “departure” than with a

“crowding out” of state agencies from social and development work. In the United States, at

least, government social services and foreign aid are considered remnants of an outdated and

inefficient “measure of […] generosity” (Hudson Institute 2006:6), still visible on the “old

continent” or in UN corridors, which ignores that private philanthropy, corporate investment,

and celebrity endorsement are better suited at “helping the poor generate prosperity” (ibid. 12).

One agency which understands that poverty-reduction depends on exporting entrepreneurial

values across borders is USAID, whose new program, the Global Development Alliance, requires

government funds to pass a “market test” before they can be used in programs designed by

private foundations and corporations (ibid. 44). Public-private partnerships such as these allow

government agencies to still have a say in affairs from which they have been banished because

of a reputation of corruption, inefficient spending, and red tape. The advantage of non-

governmental organizations is precisely their distance from politics because, while “politics” has

increasingly become a dirty word, voluntary organizations have impressed through their

grassroots approach, foundations have been celebrated for their fellow-mindedness, and

corporations have come to embody new standards of public accountability.

But maintaining a distance from politics is only a blessing in disguise. It creates a false dichotomy

between politics, as a realm torn apart by power struggles and conspiracy theories, on the one

Wanda Vrasti 17

hand, and community, as a vulnerable pre- or non-political site threatened by poverty, crime,

infectious disease, immigration, and even terrorism, on the other (Ilcan and Basok 2004).

Governing through non-governmental organizations seems to be quicker and more honest only

because community is portrayed as a quasi-natural socio-geographic scale that has a natural

propensity for peace and harmony, with the exception of a few bad “causes” that can be solved

with good intentions. What is being ignored here is that affective competencies, such as care,

pity, generosity, and capaciousness have become a prerequisite for disseminating

entrepreneurial forms of being and action. In the scramble to become a philanthrepreneur Bono

got foreign aid, Bob Geldof got famine relief, Brad Pitt got Katrina, Angelina Jolie got refugees,

George Clooney got Darfur, Oprah got Africa (Traub 2008) and American Express, Apple,

Converse, Emporio Armani, Motorola, Hallmark, Dell, and Microsoft got Product Red™ (Richey

and Ponte 2008). The merit of the global passion for compassion mobilized in the non-profit

sector is to postpone the crisis of a system of capitalist production which would otherwise

become intolerable (Hutnyk 2004). It empties human suffering of its political and historic

content and prevents us from seeing the double strategy of capitalist expansion – to extract

wealth and control, on the one hand, while giving out aid and advice, on the other (what Zizek

calls “chocolate laxative”).

C. Consumption

Consumption is perhaps the most evident realm of everyday life where affect is deployed to

produce subjects and social relations that feel good about their participation in capitalism. This

is both because the history of consumer boycotts and anti-logo activism is a rich one and

because there are more and more forms of consumption matching democratic ideals of

community, difference, and autonomy. From established anti-consumerist campaigns like Buy

Nothing Day or TV Turnoff Week to culture jamming forums like Adbusters, Billboard Liberation

Front, Reclaim the Streets, and various other flash-mob-like groups, expressing one’s identity

through consumerist goods has become increasingly suspect, almost in bad taste. If there is

anyone courageous enough to sport a Tommy Hilfiger outfit or drive a Hummer, it is most likely

inner-city blacks and immigrants of various origins, who have not yet got wind of what white

people like. As the eponymous blog shows, white people like farmers’ markets and food co-ops,

vintage, Toyota Prius, public radio, and the great outdoors (http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/).

The liberal, urban, and professional classes like to know where their products come from, how

they are discarded, and where the money goes to. But the critique of consumption is hardly only

about race and class identity. Using lifestyle and aesthetic choices to demonstrate a

commitment to transparency, diversity, frugality, and an overall progressive political orientation

does not necessarily indicate economic or racial privilege. I would speculate that for a majority

of people shopping at Whole Foods is still a luxurious exception. Privatized sensoriums and

consumerist sensibilities are less a testimony of economic success rather than a promise of

future accomplishment. The entrepreneurial form is stretched to include consumer skepticism

because an increased awareness of emerging social, cultural, environmental allows consumers

the necessary freedom to come up with solutions that will channel these sensibilities into

monetary flows.

Wanda Vrasti 18

Increasingly, citizens want to participate in producing the goods and services they attach

themselves to, be it through DIY practices like making, improving, or repairing things without

expert help or through “prosumer” contributions, such as blogging, posting, uploading, and file

sharing. Especially in the case of digital economy, fans and audiences are cast as “drivers of

wealth production” making it hard to understand whether their participation is a matter of

entertaining play or exploitative labour. This is most likely a two-edged sword: on the one hand,

user-created content fosters a sense of a personal agency and community that fulfills the

prophecy of democratic means of communication and, on the other hand, it prevents the

professional creatives to break out from their precarious working conditions. While a few

winners can be identified, notably, Google, Yahoo!, and Sony, most “prosumers”, whether

voluntary or professional, remain flexible and replaceable drones, who can only stand out by

honoring the demands of communicative capital with unprecedented zeal and spontaneity

(Banks and Deuze 2009:421).

Conclusion

The affective competencies demanded by flexible capital in terms of labour, community, and

consumption do not undermine the principles of accumulation and competition. Affect is not a

final bastion of authenticity (recently) incorporated by the ever-expanding spirit of capitalism.

Rather, affect has always and already been constitutive of the entrepreneurial mode of action.

Different from rationality, which has been rendered increasingly suspect through Marxist

critiques, pop culture hacks, and economic shocks, affect has the advantage of being a more

subtle and pleasurable process of producing subjects and social relations conducive to the

accumulation of capital (Terranova 2000; Boltanski and Chiapello 2005). The advantage of a

governmental regime that relies upon affect, autonomy, and innovation, as opposed to one that

draws exclusively upon calculation, rationality, and discipline, is that, in the case of the former,

political subjects submit to its directives spontaneously. A governmental logic that relies upon

emotionality no longer needs to stifle or integrate resistance in its ranks because critique is

already immanent to its operation. As such, the leftist quest for a right path to radical action

persists. Rendering the present visible is a necessary but not sufficient step for finding a way out

of this current predicament. In fact, as government is becoming increasingly humane, versatile,

and autonomous, taking seriously the necessity for resistance or refusal becomes increasingly

exasperating.

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