Navigating Movements: An Interview with Brian Massumi
I’ve been reading Massumi and struggling with how capitalism connects with a theory of bodily movement. For some reason, I just wasn’t connecting things. But, now that I am making progress on that front, I have the desire to talk about lots of things.

One of the ideas that jumped out at me tonight is on page 10 where he states, “[Capitalism] starts working directly on bodies’ movements and momentum, producing momentums, the more varied and even erratic the better. Normalcy starts to lose its hold” (6th para under The constraints of freedom). This makes sense to me because tonight on 20/20 (I had it on in the background), there was a story about weight loss and flavours. I don’t know the whole story, but when one of the women said she didn’t have time to cook good food because her lifestyle is so busy, things just clicked for me. Capitalism works on us in a sped-up fashion and we think we have to keep going and going and going in order to be productive. Later in the article, Massumi links this with participation and with branding and marketability. We think we have to keep going in order to improve our CV or resume so that we’re positioned to make the next move.

When we’re positioning ourselves (or trying to anyway) we are operating on the field of potential. We have the potential to do so many things. And, there is thought in preparing to move and act on this field. Massumi even says in talking about anger, “The overload of the situation is such that, even if you refrain from a gesture, that itself is a gesture” (page 5). This made sense to me to think about it in the terms of an indrawn breath, or a barely perceptible tightening of the shoulder blades. While these are gestures in the strictest sense, thinking about these minute movements enabled me to think of that second before gesture.

We’re on this train of movement all the time that it’s really difficult to change directions or move a different way. That is, “Power doesn’t just force us down certain paths, it puts the paths in us, so by the time we learn to follow its constraints we’re following ourselves” (10). Capitalism works by keeping us moving. Massumi continues, “The argument is that capitalist powers have pretty much abandoned control in the sense of ‘power over’” (10). In this flow, it doesn’t matter which way we move as long as we keep moving so the system can profit. “Capitalism starts intensifying or diversifying affect, but only in order to extract surplus-value. It hijacks affect in order to intensify profit potential” (11). And, we all want to be effective, right?

In some breathwork classes I’ve taken the instructor suggested breathing in the dissatisfaction and then blowing it out and releasing it. I always resisted this idea because I thought, why would I want to breathe in “issues” when what I really feel like doing is push them away. But, now I get that in the out breath there is potential. …just a side benefit of the reading that I thought I’d share.

I am a happy camper tonight. It’s not that I don’t realize that there is a lot to be done, especially in regards to capitalism, the ‘affective media loop, and pedagogy, or even any looseness in this post, but that I feel more aware and able to talk about things. hee. Well, at least for the moment! as I’m going to go back and try to read another chapter of Parables and try and do some scaffolding.

I enjoyed reading the part at the end of page 16 where he gives this long list of concepts: “affect, sensation, perception, movement, intensity, tendency, habit, law, chaos, recursion…” etc. I like the list because I see affect in them–they are ‘pregnant with possibility’ as my friend S says. And then he writes, “Not all the concepts in this crowd figure in each essay, of course. And when they do come up, it is often to different emphasis, indifferent constellations. Other concepts slip in like uninvited guests…the concepts appear and reappear like a revolving cast of characters, joining forces or interfering with each other in a tumble of abstract intrigues–at times (I admit) barely controlled (Or is it: with miraculous lucidity?” (16-17).
Using “crowd” instead of “list” of concepts instills affect. I can imagine the crowd, jubilant, with beers in hand, spilling a little when they bump into someone or something else. Then, in this frame of mind, when he uses the word “emphasis,” I remember the old joke of putting the wrong em-phasis on the wrong syll-able. I crack up reading and then, am relieved when he says, “I might as well also admit that my rpose has been compared to a black hole” (17). Good, thanks for that. Thanks also for:

This paragraph is so refreshing for me to read. It could just be where I am now, but it give me hope.
Do read all of page 19 and 20 and you’ll get such bits as “The concept will start to deviate under the force. Let it. Then reconnect it to other concepts, drawn from other systems, until a whole new system of connection starts to form. Then, take another exmaple. See what heppens. Follow the new growth. You end up with many buds. Incipient sytems. Leave them that way…” (19) All of this writing is alive and urges me not to take the tougher bits and run them over with my car in an attempt to get them to hold still long enough for me to say something brillliant or worthwhile or surprising about them.
I’m off to read more…more will be written…later.
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