Table of Contents

1. The Inmost End 1
The Market in Wonderland 2
System Distrust 6
Collapse of the Affective Wave Packet 10
2. A Doing Done through Me 19
Deliberation without Attention 21
Jamming Rational Choice 24
The Primes of Life 26
Toward a Politics of Dividualism 32
Double Involuntary / Autonomy of Decision 36
Fielding the Event 43
Tribunals of Reason 48
Finessing the Event 53
3. Beyond Self-Interest 57
Your Life or My Little Finger? 58
Contiguity, Most Distant 65
The Argument from Intensity 68
The Other Sign of Passion 73
A Freedom of the Event 79
The Flashpoint of Sympathy 84
Toward an Anticapitalist Art of the Event 93
Supplements
I. The Affective Tasks of Reason 97
II. Keywords for Affect 103
Notes 113
Works Cited 121
Index 127

About the Author

Brian Massumi is Professor of Communication at the University of Montreal. He is the author of several books, including What Animals Teach Us about Politics and Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation, both also published by Duke University Press.

Reviews

“Behavioral economists who study the psychology of decision making should engage this study of potential, virtual, and kinetic emotions, given that emotions are what move people to action.  Going beyond Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's Commonwealth and Timothy Wilson’s Strangers to Ourselves, this is a book for those interested in cultural theory. … Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals.”
*Choice*

“... powerful and convincing in its theoretically innovative, productive intertwining of political philosophy, cognitive psychology and Luhmann’s systems theory.”
*Constructivist Foundations*

"Massumi’s interventions regarding affect, neoliberalism, and politics are undoubtedly original, and provocative. The book pierces to the heart of the neoliberalism’s most basic premises about rationality, self-interest, and economic behavior." 
*Theory & Event*