Frédéric Lordon joins the New School for Social Research to discuss times of crisis and the fundamental role of affect in shaping politics.

The idea that emotions matter in politics is a common place. Nonetheless, one could immediately object that despite the prevalence of emotions, we should not discard the fact that politics is above all (if not "essentially") a matter of ideas, values, principles or rational argumentation. 

The concept of "affect" in Spinoza's philosophy overcomes this tedious antinomy, insofar as it gives the most general characterization of the effect produced by one thing on another. 

If affects are the real engine of politics, they can nowhere be better seen than in crisis times. Institutions are supported by affects, and they prevail and impose their norms only as long as they succeed in properly affecting people. Conversely, they are in danger whenever the formation of a common opposite affect causes people to break with the institution rules. Political crises, uprisings and what we will generally call, following Spinoza, "seditions", appear then as a bifurcation in the dynamics of the collective affects.

Frédéric Lordon is Director of research at CNRS. His work focuses on blending Spinoza's philosophy and approach to social science to create a new theoretical framework called the "structuralism of passions." Lordon recently published Willing Slaves of Capital: Marx and Spinoza, La Malfaçon: monnaie européenne et souveraineté démocratique, Les liens qui libèrent, and Imperium, structures et affects des corps politiques (La Fabrique, 2015). He has been involved in the Nuit Debout French movement.

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