Power at the End of the Economy

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.

“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.” - K. Tölölyan (Choice) “... powerful and convincing in its theoretically innovative, productive intertwining of political philosophy, cognitive psychology and Luhmann’s systems theory.” - Hannah Richter (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."  - Anita Chari (Theory & Event)

• 1. The Inmost End 1The Market in Wonderland 2System Distrust 6Collapse of the Affective Wave Packet 102. A Doing Done through Me 19Deliberation without Attention 21Jamming Rational Choice 24The Primes of Life 26Toward a Politics of Dividualism 32Double Involuntary / Autonomy of Decision 36Fielding the Event 43Tribunals of Reason 48Finessing the Event 533. Beyond Self-Interest 57Your Life or My Little Finger? 58Contiguity, Most Distant 65The Argument from Intensity 68The Other Sign of Passion 73A Freedom of the Event 79The Flashpoint of Sympathy 84Toward an Anticapitalist Art of the Event 93Supplements I. The Affective Tasks of Reason 97II. Keywords for Affect 103Notes 113Works Cited 121Index 127