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Theory, Culture & Society
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`Starting Over'

Politics, Hope, Movement

Lisa Blackman

Department of Media and Communications, Goldsmiths, University of London

This review article explores the politics of hope and optimism made possible by a re-thinking of touch as a movement towards the not-yet-known, embodied through an engagement with the improvisational character of Argentine tango. Tango discloses the relational and enactive qualities of corporeality, moving us to ask not what bodies are, but rather what can bodies do; what can bodies become? The article engages with the moves to a Spinozist conception of affect developed by Massumi and Deleuze and Guattari, to consider the extent to which touch as affective symbiosis can form the basis of a democracy-yet-to-come. The article asks whether such concepts could and indeed should form the basis of a politics of re-invention, and what might be some of the problems and limitations with aligning affect principally with movement and change. The article situates the discussion within arguments that currently traverse the psychological and biological sciences, and concludes that more cautious reflection on the kinds of ontological turn that are forming the foundation of such processual models is needed.

Key Words: affect • becoming • Deleuze • process • subjectivity

Theory, Culture & Society, Vol. 26, No. 1, 134-143 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0263276408099019
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