Massumi och affektreklam: marknadsföring, varumärkesekonomin och affekt fortsätter:

                If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long. We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans and confront the worst threats before they emerge. In the world we have entered, the only path to safety is the path to action. And this nation will act.

                    – George W. Bush1

(POTENTIAL POLITICS AND THE PRIMACY OF PREEMPTION: Theory & Event 10:2 | © 2007 Brian Massumi,  http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/theory_and_event/v010/10.2massumi.html)

När jag läste dagens GP upptäckte jag till skräckblandad förtjusning hur ännu ett spännande exempel på ”ad-affect” presenterades. Att det tangerar den affektmoduleringslogik som nämns i citatet ovan från den förste president Bush blev uppenbart. Därför ska jag också använda mig av filosofen Brian Massumis (2002) tankar om hur affektmodulering bidrar till dagens ekonomiska, kulturella och systemiska organisering. Mer om det nedan, först lite kuriosa kring ett dagsaktuellt exempel på just detta.

Denna gång var det företaget Tele 2 som använt sig av direktadresserad reklam till svenska konsumenter med små barn, populationen svenska småbarnsföräldrar. Genom att anspela på abstrakta, potentiella händelser som involverar föräldrars relation till sådant som risk, rädsla och ansvar (empati för sina och andras barn), kläddes reklamen för Tele 2:s nya Comviq-kontantkort i besvärjande ”affektrelaterade” former. Det är intressent hur den nya tjänsten som erbjuder småbarnsföräldrar att öka sina trygghetskänslor – genom att förmedlas med en avslutande kommentar: ”ICE en försäkring som vi hoppas att du aldrig behöver använda” – talar i framtidstermer, i former av det som skulle kunna hända. Det vill säga affektmodulering. Vi kan formulera det hela enligt denna formel: sjösättandet av ”reklamaffekt” systemet (injektioner i former av direktreklam till populationen småbarnsföräldrar) fungerar som ett alarmsystem; det aktiverar rädsla och oro hos subjektet som en direkt nervös/neurobetingad respons (kroppsaffekt eller ”affect schema” som Protevi kallar det), som i sin tur kan beskrivas som småbarnsföräldrars disposition att agera. En disposition som tränas genom att ”hela tiden vara spänn”; känna av hot i omgivningen mot sådant som potentiellt kan utgöra risker för barnet? Detta kan ju förstås vara en överdriven analys, men tanken är (o)roande…  

 

 

 

Hur som helst, jag vill tolka detta som ett exempel på vad Brian Massumi (se vidare 2002) kallat för ”the primacy of preemption” när han argumenterar för hur affektmodulering intagit en hegemonisk position inte bara inom politiken (tänk diskussionerna om hotbilder och alarmsystem efter 9/11), utan även det ekonomiska fältet (se även min post om ”affekt som nödvändigt kulturvetenskapligt fält”). Massumi argumenterar för att dagens kapitalistiska system spelar en central roll för cirkulationen av rädsla (affekt) bland befolkningspopulationer, men här ser vi också ett tydligt ”småbarnsförälderssegment” som direkt interpelleras via direktreklamens kanaler:

Föräldrars rädsla kan utnyttjas i mobilreklam

“En försäkring vi hoppas du aldrig behöver använda”, stod det i reklamen för ett Comviq-kontantkort. Nu ska Konsumentverket granska om kampanjen rider på föräldrars rädsla.

Strax innan skolorna började i höstas skickade Tele 2 ut direktadresserad reklam till svenska hushåll. Där marknadsfördes ett särskilt kontantkort för mobiltelefoner.
Det speciella med kampanjen var att den riktade sig till föräldrar och barn som nu efter sommarlovet skulle vara ifrån varandra.
Enligt Konsumentverket är budskapet att konsumenten ökar barnets och sin egen trygghetskänsla om man använder kontantkortet, i motsats till om man inte gör det.
I slutet av reklambladet förstärks intrycket. Där står det med versaler att “ICE en försäkring som vi hoppas att du aldrig behöver använda”.
ICE är en internationellt gångbar förkortning som uttyds In Case of Emergency – i händelse av nödsituation. Under ICE kan du till exempel lägga ett telefonnummer i din mobil till den person du vill ska kontaktas om du hittas skadad.
Om något skulle hända barnet hade det alltså hjälpt om de hade haft kontantkort. Dessutom uppmanades konsumenterna att skynda sig att fylla på kortet med pengar – före den 31 augusti fick kunden en bonus på 100 kronor.
Av detta drar Konsumentverket slutsatsen att reklamutskicket är otillbörligt och strider mot god marknadsföringssed. Reklam får nämligen inte utan vägande skäl anspela på rädsla eller fruktan eller utnyttja olycka eller lidande.
Senast den 17 september ska Tele 2 ha svarat på kritiken.

(GP 2009-09-04)

Smitt(onto)logi och affektbomber: virtuella trygghetskulturer

Kopplar vi på ett smittontologiskt perspektiv (Kullenberg & Palmås 2008) på det här skeendet ser vi en potentiell ny ”rädsla-oro-baserad” föräldraekonomi växa fram som baseras på ett slags trygghetskulturella värderingar där framhävandet av förmågan att snabbt hantera riskmoment framavlade på delvis konstruerad manér av smarta marknadsförare utgör en central del. Spridningsmomentet för just det här segmentet av befolkningen – småbarnsföräldrar i kombination med modern kommunikationsteknologi (snabb överföring av data) – borde ju tillsammans med de väl utbyggda teknologiska grundförutsättningarna för mobiltelefoni, samt billigare versioner av de mest populära mobiltelefonerna, utgöra en fantastisk ”smittohärd” för sådana injektioner (affektbomber) som Tele 2 injicerat i ett redan fullfjädrat flöde och de investeringar som gjorts bland landets småbarnsföräldrar. Det fina i kråksången är förstås också att det inte finns några direkta socioekonomiska, könsrelaterade eller etniska hinder för en spridning av smittan; mobiltelefoner blir allt billigare, användning av kontantkort är ganska enkelt att kontrollera, småbarn finns bland delar av hela den svenska populationen av konsumenter, produkten utger sig inte för att direktkommunicera specifika statusgrupper eller andra socioekonomiska livsstilskategorier. Snarare utgör väl segmentet småbarnsföräldrar ett relativt universellt medium för just en sådan idé som marknadsförs genom att påtala risken av att inte ta ordentlig hand om dina egna och andra småbarn?

The Topology-approach to Culture and Manuel DeLanda

Since I’ve already began writing on a topological approach to cultures and culture-generating processes, I might as well prolong the pain by trying to include other writers, outside the ANT-school of thought, that might contribute with concepts for thinking “topological cultural theory”. Philosopher Manuel DeLanda (1997; 2002; 2006) explains topological thinking so that it includes all potentialities of a system, and he claims group theory can explain how those potentials might be affected to generate actual forms (stable state). Thus, breaking with (something that I now little or nothing about) geometric essences or properties (but I have translated these concepts into topographic and typological culture concepts in previous posts) – defined by DeLanda as ideal forms – (say a cube, crystal, globe, sphere, zebra, language, democracy, hierarchical organization, culture etc.) in favor of topological forms allows DeLanda to theorize forms as something that happens when “stuff” (elements with capacities to be affected and to affect) rotates, stretches, folds and so on, and not by comparing them to ideal forms. What DeLanda provides, through recourse to Deleuze’s body of work, is process ontology of mechanisms of immanence. He explains how to make use of the resources that generate form. Instead of a hierarchical ontology of spheres, organisms, and essences (that are supposed to work back at the elements that formed them without any causal links, i.e. they are actually without cause, an “outside source”, a god-send telos working as guide, already there, fully formed in a Platonic heaven), he treats all structures as spatial individuals created through causal (“triggers”; cascades) mechanisms/processes. DeLanda extends this ontology of scale (interacting cells as parts of organs/organisms, inhabitants plus flow of goods or energy as parts of cities, individuals and groups as parts of social movements) in his books to cover social, biological, physical, cultural, linguistic, economic and political complexity, and the main contribution, as far as I am concerned, is his focus on processes (contact; interaction; meshing; symbioses; transmission; diffusion; segmentation; selection etc.) that “work” on various materials. According to DeLanda spatial structures (for instance cultures) are not classified by its properties or “measurable” extensities (actualized, different than other cultures and defined by already actualized properties), but their relative invariance under transformation. What is important, then, is the capacity to enter into relations and to remain unchanged when affected by interacting parts (cells, individuals, inhabitants, traits; their interactions do not – at least not necessarily – transmit into change).  One example drawn from DeLanda’s assemblage theory (2006) is his idea of Weber’s ideal types as topological spaces: interacting parts form an emergent whole (the hierarchical organization) that gives rise to roughly three different states of “relative invariance” that define it as a spatial structure – in this case an authority structure (rational-legal, charismatic, traditional).

DeLanda’s work in Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy takes it departure from mathematics and the theory of groups (I interpret this as multiplicities, following Deleuze). As I tried to define this topic that has been floating around in my thoughts, nagging away ever more aggressive lately, I looked into one of the writings of another favorite writer of mine, namely distinguished autodidact “street” philosopher Manuel DeLanda. Born Mexican, now living in New York, DeLanda has developed his very own branch of “assemblage theory”, drawing heavily on the concepts of the Deleuzian vocabulary and from the fields of complexity theory. Even though DeLanda has paved his way into the social sciences with his book on Social Complexity (ref 2006), it was in his major work on “the intensive sciences” (dynamic physics; post-Newtonian science) where he first elaborated the clear concept vocabulary needed to distinguish Deleuzian “realism” and the idea of an “abstract real” realm called “the virtual”. For many readers the concept of the virtual could of course connote something like a “non-realist” stance to the world, thus connoting a world of image, a Baudrillardian world of signifiers endlessly playing, changing positions. Not so for Deleuze or DeLanda, for whom the virtual is just as real as the actual (state of affairs, set of elements, actualized being, stable state being of a dynamic system). But, to fully understand the virtual’s relationship to the actual, the concept of the intensive – a third ontological dimension of the Deleuzian approach – could be of great help. For where the actual connotes “the current state of affairs”, the virtual is that dimension of the real that wasn’t taken, the road never trodden, the potentialities inherent in all matter, energy and information not to be found in actualized states as stable states. The intensive, quite much “in contact” with the virtual, is that process whereby flee-floating matter, energy, and information – the intensive genetic flux – “actualizes”, or better, “contracts” layers of intensive flow into from; i.e. form-giving, “chaotic-contracting” processes according to which matter-energy is given form. Why should we talk of such bizarre contexts such as the intensive and the virtual? According to Deleuze and DeLanda the world is not exhausted by its actual forms, entities already given their shape, but the intensive whereby matter is given form, and the virtual which guides without a firm hand (immanent connections made without recourse to any transcendental agents or inert/passive matter) – i.e. the “quasi-cause” inherent in all matter – are potentials, affects and “edges” of change whereby “things” either change or thresholds where a system breaks out of its comfort zone and becomes something else. Think of the way a small encounter with your car when it breaks down could both throw you into a state of rage and uncontrolled anger, and sometimes it doesn’t seem to bother you at all.  These two “states of mind” could be examples of a system that changes, enters a certain “basin of attraction” where the system has reached a stable state/intensive state continuum. The stable state that we can refer to the steady state is the actualized state of affairs; it is reached by “contraction” or by cancelling underlying “intensive states” out. But, Deleuze and DeLanda suggest that these states “co-exist” with each other, only they form a three-dimensional ontological plane; the actual, the virtual and the intensive (DeLanda 2002). This way of thinking is made clear in DeLanda’s writing on intensive systems in his Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy (2002).

Virtual multiplicities and social movements

Two other works that plunge into the virtual philosophy of Deleuze is of course Empire and the Multitude (Hardt & Negri 2000; 2004), wherein they pose the concept of a multitude that potentially would push through the political realm and become a self-organizing system (somewhat of an anti-thesis of Weber’s ideal types of the hierarchical decision-making machines he pictured at the inception of modern society). Hardt and Negri propose the multitude in a similar way that would DeLanda was he to be interested in making those gestures in political discourse. The multitude is the virtual potential inherent in the current world state of affairs, and resonates quite well with some of the matters that are hold dear by DeLanda and Deleuze (immanence; dynamic processes; affects; assemblages). One can read Empire as the concept of a virtual power of action and the Multitude the intensive labor, the untapped reservoir of action and affect, the labor “outside capitals capture”; i.e. pure intensity and energy. But, as I read DeLanda, he puts a lot more of effort into thinking the intensive realm; the passage of the virtual into actual and the actual “back into” the virtual than do Hardt and Negri. Therefore, again possibly, DeLanda could be a richer source if one is looking for the concrete formation of novel political assemblages than is Empire or the Multitude, but still wants to remain within the contours of Deleuzian ontology.

Instead of looking to deep into the virtual philosophy of Hardt and Negri, and their concept of the multitude (with its Marxist over determinations), the real effort, as far as research on political assemblages and intensive processes giving birth to social change and novel states is concerned, we could look into the works of social movement theorists such as Chuck Tilly, Sidney Tarror and Doug McAdam (2001). These writers are working out concepts for the plane of intensive processes whereby actors important to understand social change and political assemblages are explicated. No needs to care for conceptual babble; what DeLanda terms – with correlation to Deleuze’s ontology – intensive form-giving processes are approximately the same as the processes that McAdam et al name “mechanisms”. Robust processes present in many different historical contexts giving form to larger social entities such as social movements.

Social movement theorists have also developed a repertoire of mechanisms at small social scales, amongst others different sets of brokerage-mechanisms: mechanisms present in processes whereby “stuff” (for instance people or brains) are brought together not previously so; relational brokerage (bringing, for instance, two separate groups together through mediators such as horses, messengers and their objects, or Internet-based e-mailing lists), cognitive brokerage (a process whereby two “frames” (individual or collective) for interpreting events in the external world are put into resonance and form “master-frames”; for instance an anti-capitalist frame or an “anti-globalization” frame collecting several overlapping cognitive frames resonating together into a larger “entity”) and “multiple targeting”, where several different ideoscapes (Appadurai) are brought into contact while activists trying out different abstract categories that afford smaller sets of political and cultural issues to find linkages and connect (for instance “fair trade”; “youth issues”; “immigrant labor rights” etc.), and thus form network-links across movement-borders. There are several other mechanisms that in combination would amount to a complex set of intensive form-giving processes related to the political world and social movement formation (usually very large spatial entities): enforcement mechanisms, dissonances between radical and reformist parts; “hierarchization” and “meshworking” tendencies; dynamic conflict-imbued processes of political opportunity structures; mobilization processes; identity formation (individual and collective) etc.

Topologies, processes and culture

A “subset” to these processes or the “original mechanics” of culture-formation would be Tarde’s theory of association and imitation (1921), examples of micro-events leading up to large-scale cultural entities such as mass phenomena, social norms, linguistic patterns, and cultures (for instance education, institutions, democracy, scientific communities with their theories and truths).  DeLanda tries out something quite similar to Tarde’s theory of imitation and association in A Thousand Years of Non-linear History (1997) but makes use of “sociolinguistic theory” for explaining such large scale entities as French culture (ibid. 199). Following many aspects similar to that of meme theory, DeLanda explains culture as an effect of two flows of matter: the flow of memes and the flow of norms (incl. references to the role played by replicators such as genes and routines and thus not “falling into the memetic fallacy” on missing out on the “subjective” aspects) – both of which are examples (just as in neo-Darwinism) of replicators, only they are active in the cultural registers. Norms are replicated vertically (through institutions such as family, church etc.) and memes replicate horizontally (through social networks, friends, etc.) both of which are examples of enforcement mechanisms (DeLanda 1997: 192). So, there are variations among the elements (vowels, “sonic sounds”, phonemes, traits, dialects, individual differences: enacted through contacts) that are “contracted” (differences are cancelled out; homogenization) through selection mechanisms (for example in-group pressure, social hierarchies, elites, government, informal social network loyalties) that equals intensive social morphogenetic processes that amounts to the same logic that do “surface tension” in the physical register actualizing the process where water-molecules go from dynamic interactions into more stable ice-cubes. Interestingly, DeLanda is not as straight forward in this book on these concepts as in his later accomplishments, and does not explicate the whole ontology of the intensive and the virtual in the same clear language. But, nevertheless, the ontology is there.   

Affekt, Deleuze och konsumtionskultur

På senare tid har jag ägnat en del tid åt att få mina tankar att klarna när det gäller begreppet affekt. Affekt är, enligt min erfarenhet, ett begrepp som kanske bäst teoretiserats av Gilles Deleuze. Både i hans monografier (Spinoza böckerna) och tillsammans med kumpanen Feliz Guattari (1000 platåer & anti-oedipus). För min del har det hela handlat om att skaffa lite input till ett artikelprojekt (ska skriva en artikel för publicering i Kulturella Perspektiv, en kulturvetenskaplig tidskrift med lite populärvetenskaplig vinkel), där affekt ska vara numrets ledstjärna. Som etnolog inom konsumtionsforskningsfältet gäller det att översätta affekt-begreppet att fungera i exempelvis kvalitativa analyser baserade på etnografi, intervjuer, observationer osv. Det är en del utredande som måste till för att det inte ska alltför snårigt. En del arbete är förstås redan gjort på den här fronten, där författare som Massumi (2002), Colebrook (2002), Probyn (2000) och, kanske främt, Nigel Thrift (2007) vidareutvecklat diskussionen om affekt-begreppets betydelse. Thrift har dessutom definierat vad han kallat för “Non-representational theory”, en inriktning där studiet av stadspraktiker är i fokus, och där städer presenteras som veritabla virvelströmmar av affekt. Se också hans fantastiska essä: “Intensities of Feeling: Towards a Spatial Politics
of Affect,” Geografiska Annaler 86 B (2004), tillgänglig via  http://www.geog.ox.ac.uk/~kstraus/thrift/downloads/Thrift.pdf.

Med den här posten tänkte jag påbörja en längre utredning av hur jag låter mig inspireras av affekt-begreppet och teori kring detta för att sedermera låta detta informera min egen forskning kring etisk konsumtionskultur. Colebrooks diskussion utifrån Deleuzes begrepp affekt och intensitet, samt Bonta & Protevis (2004) vidareutveckling av affektbegreppet får agera startpunkt för dagen. Jag återkommer till posten senare under dagen, måste vidare till kontoret… [...]