Rosi Braidotti: Powers of affirmation
December 1, 2015

Materials available from Constant library: https://library.memoryoftheworld.org/#librarian=Constant 
Library opens irregularly -- if on Solitude network, you can also try http://192.168.1.165:8080

Affirmation
The assertion that something exists or is true.  A positive assertion of one thing regarding another, opposed to negation, which is a negative assertion of the like. In affirmation we either identify (relate?) one term (subject?) with another, or include one in another.

Affect, affectivity
Concerned  with or arousing  feelings  or emotions; emotional. "To affect something" = to cause it to change in some way. As a noun, "affect" relates to the display of emotion.
In philosophy: a concept used in the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza and elaborated by Henri Bergson, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari that places emphasis on bodily experience. Spinoza: "By affect I understand affections of the body by which the body's power  of acting is increased or diminished, aided or restrained, and at the same time, the ideas of these affections" (desire, pleasure, pain/sorrow)

Nomadic ethics: "A sustainable ethics for a non-unitary subject proposes an enlarged sense of interconnection between self and others, including the non-human or “earth” others, by removing the obstacle of self
-centred individualism. This (...) implies a new way of combining self-interests with the well-being of an enlarged sense of community, which includes one’s territorial or environmental interconnections. 
Rosi Braidotti (1954): Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory, 1994 https://library.memoryoftheworld.org/b/8euvyjL7i1Q2u72j-Q44RZfsvq6TpKeDBsbEmKIDKaqXTydY
*
Subject is 'becoming': "At the core of this ethical project is a positive vision of the subject as a radically immanent, intensive body, that is, an assemblage of forces or flows, intensities, and passions that solidify in space and consolidate in time, within the singular configuration commonly known as an “individual” self. This intensive and dynamic entity is rather a portion of forces that is stable enough to sustain and undergo constant though non-destructive fluxes of transformation. It is the body’s degrees and levels of affectivity that determine the modes of differentiation. Joyful or positive passions and the transcendence of reactive affects are the desirable mode. The emphasis on “existence” implies a commitment to duration and conversely a rejection of self-destruction. Positivity is built into this program through the idea of thresholds of sustainability." 
Rosi Braidotti: "Affirmation versus Vulnerability: On Contemporary Ethical Debates" (2006) https://library.memoryoftheworld.org/b/zpN-a1EqFMVKqXNdhxc9SjMY-Qm6l8xMnHS162EYHrDngy0V

Relational affectivity: "Because the starting point for Spinoza is not the isolated individual, but complex and mutually depended co-realities, the self-other interaction also follows a different model. To be an individual means to be open to being affected by and through others, thus undergoing transformations in such a way as to be able to sustain them and make them work towards growth. The distinction activity/passivity is far more important than that between self and other, good and bad." and: Spinoza sees bodily limits as the limits of our awareness as well, which means that his theory of affectivity is connected to the physics of motion. Another word for Spinoza’s conatus is therefore self-preservation, not in the liberal individualistic sense of the term, but rather as the actuali-zation of one’s essence, that is to say, of one’s ontological drive to be-come. This is neither an automatic nor an intrinsically harmonious process, insofar as it involves interconnection with other forces and consequently also conflicts and clashes. 
Rosi Braidotti: "Affirmation versus Vulnerability: On Contemporary Ethical Debates" (2006) https://library.memoryoftheworld.org/b/zpN-a1EqFMVKqXNdhxc9SjMY-Qm6l8xMnHS162EYHrDngy0V

From the discussion
Timeline:
*Donna Haraway (1944): "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century", 1985 https://library.memoryoftheworld.org/b/8bmXVgLp7oBAxvdGP1q8tErJ1uLC_Xu9t5NDoEJntL3R7TQP
*Rosi Braidotti (1954): Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory, 1994 https://library.memoryoftheworld.org/b/8euvyjL7i1Q2u72j-Q44RZfsvq6TpKeDBsbEmKIDKaqXTydY
*Katherine N. Hayles (1943): How We Became Posthuman:Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics, 1999 https://library.memoryoftheworld.org/b/oK05PMbs_0hUeoiert_0sSGC-9wsVqoZLXhrUz9TKOjH0nt0

Posthuman: A speculative being that represents or seeks to re-conceive the human. (We are all somehow post-natural?) "Human enhancement is at the core of these debates. In academic culture, on the other hand, the posthuman is alternatively celebrated as the next frontier in critical and cultural theory or shunned as the latest in a series of annoying ‘post’ fads. The posthuman provokes elation but also anxiety (Habermas, 2003) about the possibility of a serious de-centring of ‘Man’, the former measure of all things. There is widespread concern about the loss of relevance and mastery suffered by the dominant vision of the human subject and by the field of scholarship centred on it, namely the Humanities." Braidotti, The Posthuman (2013)
Posthumanism: Critically questions (Renaissance) humanism, which claims that human nature is a universal state from which the human being emerges; human nature is autonomous, rational, capable of free will, and unified in itself as the center of existence.
Inhuman: Not human (a stone)
Inhumane: Not humane. Lacking qualities of sympathy, pity, warmth, compassion, or the like; cruel. "Not suited for human beings."
Inhumanism: http://www.e-flux.com/journal/the-labor-of-the-inhuman-part-i-human/
Transhuman: An intermediary form between human and posthuman. A transhuman is a being that resembles a human but who has powers and abilities beyond those of "standard" (?) humans. (ref: cyborgs or genetically-enhanced humans.)
Transhumanism: Ideology/movement which aims to transform the human condition by developing and creating widely available technologies to enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities. (ref: Ray Kurzweil: Singularity)

Affirmative negativity? Affirmative nihilism? Unhappy affirmation? Aggression as an emotion, as something that moves you?
"Virtue has no energy"

Seda: Chantal Mouffe, antagonism, contention. Carl DiSalvo: Adversarial Design https://library.memoryoftheworld.org/b/YwBNd8NL-DoW78VddqzLqbVykFqUks2uSnx__bQXTj7hwk2p

Gal: Ethics @ Badiou: (positive) event -- Being and event
Gal: Lacan -- Kant with Sade http://www.lacan.com/kantsade.htm

Petros: De Sade, feminists and surrealism (Breton) -- Annie Le Brun https://library.memoryoftheworld.org/b/vd47twK9yErmbkL78Of5thiZKEZnyHLVJ327wJRe3OyjgNBA

"Sexuality, far from being repressed in European culture, has been  discursively and socially produced in a very creative manner. Even Lacan  noted ironically the complementarity as well as the play of echoes  between the 'divine' Marquis de Sade and the awesome Immanuel Kant. I  think that Deleuze's view of desire carries a broader appeal which  re-inscribes it as the fundamental and the fundamentally positive  passion, using Spinoza as the leverage point. Thus, a nomadic or  Deleuzian Spinozist approach stresses that the affectivity (conatus) is  indeed at the heart of the subject, but that it is equally the case that  this desire is not internalized, but external. It happens in the  encounter between different embodied and embedded subjects who are  joined in the sameness of the forces that drive them. Intensive,  affective, external resonances make desire into a force that propels  forward, but also always remains in front of us, as a dynamic, shifting  horizon of multiple other encounters, of territorial and border  crossings of all kinds. Hegel criticized Spinoza for his positive theory  of desire, arguing that negativity is important for self-realization.  In a Hegelian scheme of things in fact the actualization of desire  implies the death of the object in order to realize the self-fulfilment  of the subject. In their appeal to a more positive theory of desire,  Deleuze and Guattari argue that the idea of desire as lack reflects the  specific historicity and the socio-economic conditions of a moment of  capitalist domination. It is historically ~ocated and consequently  dated. The nineteenth-century phase of capitali~t appropriation through  binary opposition having been replaced with the Informatics of  domination (Haraway 1990b) and boundary-free flows of capital, a  different notion of desire is being enacted today." Rosi Braidotti: Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming (2002)

Simone: Gramsci -- "I’m a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will". (Letter from Prison, 1929; also attributed to Romain Rolland.)
Simone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Star_Movement

Karolina: Cartographies ?! -- "A cartography is a theoretically based and politically informed reading of the present. Cartographies aim at epistemic and ethical accountability by unveiling the power locations which structure our
subject-position. As such, they account for one’s locations in terms of both space (geo-political or ecological dimension) and time (historical and genealogical dimension). This stresses the situated structure of critical theory and it implies the partial or limited nature of all claims to knowledge. These qualifications are crucial to support the critique of both universalism and of liberal individualism."  Braidotti, The Posthuman (2013) https://library.memoryoftheworld.org/b/uXPQn2csvqPNFO-5A2wLbcrJvN7UcudS-9Qc1-VVLod_6oKO
Karolina: Affect Deleuze Thomas Hobbes re: Spinoza: "Generally affect is a term already used by scholastics to define the impact of the external body on human body and mind. Sun for example affects a human being with its warmth. Thus, affect does not have the sense of affection or emotion that we nowadays attach to it. In Hobbes, and for example in Spinoza’s philosophy, affects are motions that derive from external bodies, whereas passions have their source in internal motions of the mind." (Mikko Jakkonen, Fear and Multitude)

Fotini: I find it hard to think through religion as a category, and  it's easy to roll one's eyes when 'love' comes into the discussion, yet Simon Critchley somehow comes to this after working over the years  through politics and humour and ethics and death, so i'm keeping my ears  open. Somewhere in the book he defines faith as "the enactment of the self in  relation to a demand that exceeds my power, both in relation to my factical throwness in the world and the projective movement of freedom  achieved as responsibility" (throwness and projection are things he works on via Heidegger.) 
p. 245: Simon Critchley, The Faith of the Faithless https://library.memoryoftheworld.org/b/KxevlIwgcgmj8qvy3RPLVMSzKYsMep9p8RCUKImh7aP5e9g0
"As we saw above, the infinite demand is a double, m(d?)eontological demand:  to see what is in terms of what is not yet, and to see what is not yet  in what is. Such is the implication of taking up the Messianic  standpoint, seeing all things hos me, as not, for “the form of this  world is passing away.” This means embracing a double nihilism, an  affirmative nihilism: both what we called above, with Benjamin, “the  nihilism of world politics,” and trying to focus attention on that which  has no existence in such a world politics. Politically, the demand  exerted on us by the finite context exceeds the content of any finite  demand that might be accommodated at the level of government or state.  Literally speaking, the infinite demand is nothing— but a massively  creative nothing."
This idea of infinite demand is elaborated in a previous book  "Infinitely Demanding: Ethics of Commitment, Politics of Resistance"  where he defines the ethical subject as formed by this infinite demand  which is the demand of the other but at the same time internalized, and  which creates this experience of an infinite responsibility that defines  the subject as a split subject (some psychoanalysis inserted here) ...  question of "conscience" and then how is conscience linked to political  action.. the book concludes with a discussion of anarchism and the idea  of ethics as "anarchic meta-politics", and politics that create an  "interstitial distance" within the state. 'Interstitial distance' and the idea of 'affirmative nihilism' resonates with Braidotti's text?

Doug: "Rosi Braidotti: Posthuman, All Too Human? A Cultural Political Cartography" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNJPR78DptA

SPINOZA'S ETHOLOGY OF AFFECTS / DEFINITIONS OF THE EMOTIONS
Edited from: Baruch de Spinoza, Ethics (Part III) http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/948/pg948.html

I. Desire is the actual essence of man, in so far as it is conceived, as determined to a particular activity by some given modification of itself.
II. Pleasure is the transition of a man from a less to a greater perfection.
III. Pain is the transition of a man from a greater to a less perfection.
IV. Wonder is the conception (imaginatio) of anything, wherein the mind comes to a stand, because the particular concept in question has no connection with other concepts.
V. Contempt is the conception of anything which touches the mind so little, that its presence leads the mind to imagine those qualities which are not in it rather than such as are in it.
VI. Love is pleasure, accompanied by the idea of an external cause.
VII. Hatred is pain, accompanied by the idea of an external cause.
VIII. Inclination is pleasure, accompanied by the idea of something which is accidentally a cause of pleasure.
IX. Aversion is pain, accompanied by the idea of something which is accidentally the cause of pain.
X. Devotion is love towards one whom we admire.
XI. Derision is pleasure arising from our conceiving the presence of a quality, which we despise, in an object which we hate.
XII. Hope is an inconstant pleasure, arising from the idea of something past or future, whereof we to a certain extent doubt the issue.
XIII. Fear is an inconstant pain arising from the idea of something past or future, whereof we to a certain extent doubt the issue.
XIV. Confidence is pleasure arising from the idea of something past or future, wherefrom all cause of doubt has been removed.
XV. Despair is pain arising from the idea of something past or future, wherefrom all cause of doubt has been removed.
XVI. Joy is pleasure accompanied by the idea of something past, which has had an issue beyond our hope.
XVII. Disappointment is pain accompanied by the idea of something past, which has had an issue contrary to our hope.
XVIII. Pity is pain accompanied by the idea of evil, which has befallen someone else whom we conceive to be like ourselves.
XIX. Approval is love towards one who has done good to another.
XX. Indignation is hatred towards one who has done evil to another.
XXI. Partiality is thinking too highly of anyone because of the love we bear him.
XXII. Disparagement is thinking too meanly of anyone because we hate him.
XXIII. Envy is hatred, in so far as it induces a man to be pained by another's good fortune, and to rejoice in another's evil fortune.
XXIV. Sympathy (misericordia) is love, in so far as it induces a man to feel pleasure at another's good fortune, and pain at another's evil fortune.
XXV. Self—approval is pleasure arising from a man's contemplation of himself and his own power of action.
XXVI. Humility is pain arising from a man's contemplation of his own weakness of body or mind.
XXVII. Repentance is pain accompanied by the idea of some action, which we believe we have performed by the free decision of our mind.
XXVIII. Pride is thinking too highly of one's self from self—love.
XXIX. Self—abasement is thinking too meanly of one's self by reason of pain.
XXX. Honour is pleasure accompanied by the idea of some action of our own, which we believe to be praised by others.
XXXI. Shame is pain accompanied by the idea of some action of our own, which we believe to be blamed by others.
XXXII. Regret is the desire or appetite to possess something, kept alive by the remembrance of the said thing, and at the same time constrained by the remembrance of other things which exclude the existence of it.
XXXIII. Emulation is the desire of something, engendered in us by our conception that others have the same desire.
XXXIV. Thankfulness or Gratitude is the desire or zeal springing from love, whereby we endeavour to benefit him, who with similar feelings of love has conferred a benefit on us.
XXXV. Benevolence is the desire of benefiting one whom we pity.
XXXVI. Anger is the desire, whereby through hatred we are induced to injure one whom we hate.
XXXVII. Revenge is the desire whereby we are induced, through mutual hatred, to injure one who, with similar feelings, has injured us.
XXXVIII. Cruelty or savageness is the desire, whereby a man is impelled to injure one whom we love or pity.
XXXIX. Timidity is the desire to avoid a greater evil, which we dread, by undergoing a lesser evil.
XL. Daring is the desire, whereby a man is set on to do something dangerous which his equals fear to attempt.
XLI. Cowardice is attributed to one, whose desire is checked by the fear of some danger which his equals dare to encounter.
XLII. Consternation is attributed to one, whose desire of avoiding evil is checked by amazement at the evil which he fears.
XLIII. Courtesy, or deference (Humanitas seu modestia), is the desire of acting in a way that should please men, and refraining from that which should displease them.
XLIV. Ambition is the immoderate desire of power.
XLV. Luxury is excessive desire, or even love of living sumptuously.
XLVI. Intemperance is the excessive desire and love of drinking.
XLVII. Avarice is the excessive desire and love of riches.
XLVIII. Lust is desire and love in the matter of sexual intercourse.

The definitions of jealousy and other waverings of the mind I pass over in silence, first, because they arise from the compounding of the emotions already described; secondly, because many of them have no distinctive names, which shows that it is sufficient for practical purposes to have merely a general knowledge of them. However, it is established from the definitions of the emotions, which we have set forth, that they all spring from desire, pleasure, or pain, or, rather, that there is nothing besides these three; wherefore each is wont to be called by a variety of names in accordance with its various relations and extrinsic tokens. If we now direct our attention to these primitive emotions, and to what has been said concerning the nature of the mind, we shall be able thus to define the emotions, in so far as they are referred to the mind only.