Beginnings

Having established the context, chapter 1 outlines some key concepts of the text through a series of short, loosely connected vignettes. Each vignette offers an insight into the concept of the political, yet each vignette is also a tale in its own right. Through tales of material objects (white goods) and conceptual forms (the political), the chapter looks into the “stickiness” and the “intensity” of affective energy forms. Traced across cities and continents, and going from West to East, what emerges is a nonlogocentric and heterogeneous way of looking at political “worlding.” All the while, story upon story builds into a picture of technologies of affect and traces the channeling, intensification, and dissipation of affective energy in relation to the question of the political.