B R I A NM A S S U M I

The Powerat the End

of theEconomy

B R I A N M A S S U M I

The Powerat the End ofthe Economy

duke university press durham and london 2015

© 2015 Duke University Press

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States

of America on acid- free paper ∞

Typeset in Quadraat Pro

by Westchester Book Group

the author acknowledges the

generous support of the social

sciences and research

council of canada (sshrc).

Cover art: Photograph by Brian Massumi, Flashpoint.

Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data

Massumi, Brian.

The power at the end of the economy / Brian Massumi.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

isbn 978-0-8223-5824-4 (hardcover : alk. paper)

isbn 978-0-8223-5838-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)

isbn 978-0-8223-7581-4 (e-book)

1. Economics—Sociological aspects. 2. Economics—Political aspects.

3. Economics—Moral and ethical aspects. I. Title.

hm548. m37 2015

306.3—dc23 2014023497

for

art beyond interest

joy beyond reason

1. The Inmost End 1

The Market in Wonderland 2System Distrust 6Collapse of the Aff ective Wave Packet 10

2. A Doing Done through Me 19

Deliberation 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 53

3. Beyond Self- Interest 57

Your Life for My Little Finger? 58Contiguity, Most Distant 65The Argument from Intensity 68The Other as Sign of Passion 73A Freedom of the Event 79The Flashpoint of Sympathy 84Toward an Anticapitalist Art of the Event 93

supplements

I. The Aff ective Tasks of Reason 97II. Keywords for Aff ect 103

Notes 113Works Cited 121Index 127

contents

The hypothesis of a calculable future leads to a wrong interpretation of the prin-ciples of behaviour which the need for action compels us to adopt, and to an under-estimation of the concealed factors of utter doubt, precariousness, hope and fear.—John Maynard Keynes, “The General Theory of Employment” (1973, 122)

We are enjoined to rational choice. We are taught that our freedom is one with the freedom of choice. We are told we become who we are by how we choose. We are assured that if we choose well, according to our own best interests, we will end up serving the interests of all. We are told that there is a mechanism in place to ensure this convergence between our interests and others’. Market is its name. Its “invisible hand” adjusts best choices to each other, its magic touch guided by the principle of competi-tion. Competition weeds out suboptimal choices, selecting for effi ciency. Effi ciencies multiply each other, minimizing eff ort and maximizing profi t for all. The market, we are further led to believe, is self- regulating. It has a natural inclination toward optimization. As po liti cal subjects, we are enjoined to vote, rationally, in its interests so that we may pursue our own, for the general good. Rationally, the po liti cal subject coincides with the economic subject of self- interest that we all are fundamentally, in private pursuit of happiness. And what, if not that, gives meaning and motivation to our lives? We are all paying guests at the tea party of choice, spreading our favorite jam on our very own slice of the bread of life, served on the silver platter of effi ciency by the invisible hand.

But on closer inspection, a rabbit hole appears at the heart of the mar-ket. It plummets from the apparently solid ground of rational choice to a wonderland where nothing appears the same. Aff ect is its name. The “concealed factors” of doubt, precariousness, hope, and fear— and (why not?) love, friendship, and joy— tend to bubble back up to the

1. The Inmost End

2 part 1

surface with rowdy abandon. In today’s version of free- market ideology, neoliberalism, the aff ective commotion has become so insistent that something else surfaces as well: the creeping suspicion that it is upon the groundless ground of these now not- so- concealed factors that the edifi ce of the economy is actually built. Effi ciencies, we are still assured, multiply each other. They lasso each other, bootstrapping the economy out of its periodic crises into a provisionally stable order that we are still entreated to consider rational. But when markets react more like mood rings than self- steering wheels, the aff ective factor becomes increas-ingly impossible to factor out. It becomes obvious that the “rationality” of the economy is a precarious art of snatching emergent order out of af-fect. The creeping suspicion is that the economy is best understood as a division of the aff ective arts.1

The implications of this groundless grounding in aff ective artistry are worth a look, not least for what it might say about “rational” self- interest as the guarantor of self- optimizing order, but also for the re-thinking it might necessitate of the very concept of the rational in its relation to aff ect. Michel Foucault provides a provocative starting point in his 1979 lessons on the genealogy of neoliberalism (Foucault 2008).

The Market in Wonderland

The “invisible hand” makes at least a cameo appearance in every dis-cussion of the free market. Foucault’s is no exception. As its inventor, Adam Smith, conceived it, Foucault argues, the concept of the invisible hand had nothing of the godlike quality that has come to be attributed to it. The whole point of the concept was that the economic system is too churningly complex for there to be any possibility of a lordly over-view upon it. In his genealogy of neoliberalism, Foucault makes the point in no uncertain terms: when it comes to things economic, there is no “total transparency” (Foucault 2008, 279). Not only is there no total transparency— there is no transparency or totality. The concept of the invisible hand, as Foucault interprets it, is a principle of blindness in an open fi eld of ceaseless activity whose contours, always shift ing, are by nature indefi nite. “Being in the dark and the blindness of all the eco-nomic agents is an absolute necessity” (297).

the inmost end 3

For neoliberals, this is actually a good thing: it makes economic lib-eralism unavoidable. It means that the economy can have no sovereign. The invisible hand actually means “hands off .” The liberal’s principle of laisser- faire, Foucault quips, becomes for the neoliberals “do- not- laisser- faire government”: tie the government’s hands (Foucault 2008, 247). Foucault is quick to add that in practice neoliberalism entails a large and even expanding range of forms of governmental intervention. But these are designed, paradoxically, to maintain the ability of market mechanisms to self- organize the economy free from undue government interference (175– 176). They do not operate from a position of sovereign command. They are in the midst.2 Any governmental attempt from on high to weave the strands together into a well- defi ned, predictably regu-lated whole will just fray the fabric to the ripping point. Government purports to act all- knowingly in the general interest, and in its hubris always fumbles. Individuals, too, are under the injunction, in the name of the general good, to act without regard for it. For it is only then that the “invisible hand” can work.

But it’s not a hand at all. It’s an accumulation of little- handed decisions which end up serving the general good in spite of being self- interested. Individual decisions, made in the darkness of self- interest, percolate through the fi eld. To the extent that the results of these decisions form positive feedback loops, they give rise to mutually benefi cial multiplier eff ects and there occurs a “spontaneous synthesis” of what’s best for all (Foucault 2008, 300). The synthesis is entirely involuntary with regard to each individual (275– 276). This “rationalization” of the economy to which the subject of interest’s decisions involuntarily contribute is an emergent property of a complex, self- organizing system: a novelty and a creation, forever self- renewing. The synthesis, Foucault continues, is a “positive eff ect” of an “infi nite number” of “accidents” occurring at ground level in the “apparent chaos” (277), or quasi- chaos, of the market environ-ment. These are bound together by a “directly multiplying mechanism”— competition—which, Foucault emphasizes, operates in the absence of any form of transcendence (275– 276). In other words, the positive synthe-sis of market conditions occurs immanently to the economic fi eld. The choice of the subject of self- interest rabbit- holed in that fi eld of imma-nence is “irreducible” and “nontransferable” (272). It is “unconditionally

4 part 1

referred to the subject himself ” (272). At its core, Foucault says, the liberal economic model is one of “existence itself ”: it concerns fi rst and fore-most a relation of the “individual to himself ” (242).

This is existence in its dissociative dimension.3 Here, in its relation to itself, the subject circles itself more and more tightly around its in-dividual power of choice, like a dog to sleep, wrapping itself centrip-etally around a center of promised satisfaction. It circles in on itself, away from the social, unmindful of noneconomic societal logics. But it all works out for the best for society in the end, they say, thanks to the positive synthesis of multiplier eff ects. Relation to oneself involuntarily amplifi es across the multiplier eff ects to become a systemwide social fact. The inmost dimensions of individual existence are operatively linked to the most encompassing level, that of the market environment that is the economic fi eld of life. What is most intensely individual is at the same time most wide- rangingly social. The smallest scale and the largest scale resonate as one, in a quasi- chaos of mutual sensitivity. To relate self- interestedly to oneself is in the very same act to relate, invol-untarily, to everyone else.

But there is a problem. It has to do with the future. Success, of course, is not guaranteed for any par tic u lar act, or any par tic u lar individual. The self- organizing of the system at the largest scale can synthesize its way past many a microfailure. As choices percolate through the economic fi eld, the negative impact of individual failures is compensated for over-all by the multiplier eff ects of the successes. Given the infi nity of acci-dents riddling the economic fi eld of life and the existential blindness of all economic actors, there is an ever- present threat of a misstep. Every economic calculation is a calculus of risk. “Behavioral fi nance (psychol-ogy) and rational actor models (the ‘rational economic man’, or rem) rarely emphasize how uncertainty diff ers from risk and probability” (Pixley 2004, 18). You can calculate risk in terms of probabilities, but probabilities by nature have nothing to say about any given case. The af-fect accompanying uncertainty is there in any case. Choices in the pres-ent become highly charged aff ectively with fear for the uncertain future. The present is shaken, tremulous with futurity. There is no calculus of risk in de pen dent of an individual’s aff ective self- relation to uncertainty.

the inmost end 5

Even in the best- case scenario, rationality and aff ectivity cannot be held safely apart. Unlike the juridical subject of the law and the civil subject of society, the economic subject of interest is never called upon to renounce its self- interest for the general good.4 Self- interestedness remains “unconditional.” It is mea sured in satisfaction. We have been successful in our self- interestedness if we have attained satisfaction for ourselves. What the eco nom ical ly productive subject of interest ulti-mately produces is its own satisfaction (Foucault 2008, 226). Paradoxi-cally, the mea sure of how “rationally” a subject of interest behaves can only be mea sured aff ectively, in the currency of satisfaction. Rationality and aff ectivity are joined at the self- interested hip, in one way or an-other, for better and for worse. “Emotions function in the core struc-tures of the fi nancial world” (Pixley 2004, 18).

The subject of interest is never called upon to renounce self- interest. But it is frequently called upon to defer the very satisfaction by which its self- interest is mea sured. Feeling insecure? Be reasonable. Defer your satisfaction to a more secure time of life. Work toward retirement. But this is a rational choice only if you trust the system’s self- organizing. This is an increasingly diffi cult sell as crises follow each other in rapid suc-cession. Each crisis is a shock to the system, at all scales. Uncertainty starts to feed on uncertainty. Fear builds into panic. Negative multiplier eff ects take over. House hold savings vaporize and national economies crumble. Suspicions grow that the invisible hand suff ers from a degen-erative motor disease.

All signs are that the condition is congenital. Crisis no longer seems a punctual interval between periods of stability. Crisis is the new nor-mal. That this should be the case only stands to reason. The premise of any rational calculation is that similarly strategized actions will yield similar results. But the whole point of an economy that selects for cre-ative multiplier eff ects is that multiplier eff ects are nonlinear. By defi ni-tion, they are eff ects that are not commensurate with their causes, even if the causes be known. The whole point of capitalist enterprise is to “leverage”: to extract a surplus yield of eff ect over and above what would normally be expected to follow from an investment. The capitalist pro-cess is driven by the potential for, and yearning aft er, an excess of eff ect

6 part 1

over any given quantity of causative input: surplus value. The more com-plex the system is, the more uncertain the future becomes. And com-plexifi cation has been a constitutive tendency of the capitalist system from its beginnings. Capitalism, always a far- from- equilibrium system, is becoming ever more so. The same multiplier mechanism that promises future satisfaction makes it exponentially less certain.

Why defer satisfaction if the capitalist future is constitutively uncer-tain? But on the other hand, how can you not play it safe by deferring your satisfaction, precisely because the capitalist future is so uncertain? This conundrum of deferral is an expression of the paradox that neoliberal-ism’s promise of satisfaction unnerves the rationality it extols, giving it the aff ective shakes that cannot be cured. The rational risk calculations of the subject of interest become more and more aff ectively overdetermined by the tension between fear of the future and hope for success, and be-tween satisfaction and its uncertain deferral. The embrace of rational self- interest and aff ective agitation becomes all the closer. They fall all the more intensely into each other’s orbit, to the point that they contract into each other, entering into a zone of indistinction, at the heart of every act.

It’s a vicious circle. Positive multiplier eff ects can be counted on only when individuals’ rational choices mutually reinforce each other, catch-ing like a contagion. This is the point at which rational choice is indis-tinguishable from “irrational exuberance” (in the legendary phrase of US Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan). This is also precisely the mechanism that forms speculative bubbles leading to crisis.5 More radical than the fact that the same mechanism that promises satisfac-tion makes it exponentially less certain is the fact that the attainment of the very satisfaction promised can itself bring on a crisis. The tired hound of self- interest, circling in for satisfaction, traces its own private vicious circle in its self- relating movements. Its sleep will be agitated. It will twitch with dreams of disappearing rabbits.

System Distrust

In times of crisis, the fi rst words out of the mouth of any economic leader are: “we must restore trust in the system.” But as systems theo-rist Niklas Luhmann blithely observed, under these endemic conditions

the inmost end 7

“trust rests on an illusion” (Luhmann 1979, 32). In a chaotic economic fi eld personal relations of trust are impossible to guarantee. “In actual-ity, there is less information available than would be required to give assurance of success” (32). “Linear causal explanations come to grief ” (83). However well intentioned other parties may be, they cannot be trusted. The nonlinear dynamics of the economy could well frustrate their best intentions. What’s an enterprise system to do?

If relying on personal bonds of trust is out of the question, there’s only one option: “depersonalize” trust. Make it “impersonal” (Luhmann 1979, 93). Entrust the system. “System trust” is the only answer. But how does an individual trust a system that doesn’t trust itself to follow its own line? “There must be other ways of building up trust which do not depend on the personal element. But what are they?” (46). Luhmann has an inge-nious answer to his own question. You actually “shift forward the thresh-old of eff ective distrust” (75). In other words, you foster distrust as a starting condition (88). You foster distrust, but not as the opposite of trust: as its “functional equivalent” (71).

What on earth does that mean? It means that you “interlock them so that they intensify each other” (Luhmann 1979, 92). You bring trust and distrust together into a zone of indistinction where they are in such im-mediate proximity to each other that one can easily tip into the other at the slightest agitation. They resonate together, intensely. As actions are taken, the resulting aff ective state of the individual oscillates between them. Foucault notes that the “horizon” of the neoliberal fi eld of life is one of increasing diff erentiation that is constitutively open to “oscilla-tory pro cesses” (Foucault 2008, 259).6 By diff erentiation, he is referring to capitalist society’s overspilling of disciplinary modes of power based on normative models imposed on the individual, and the accompanying proliferation of “minority practices” (259). When he mentions oscilla-tory pro cesses he is talking about the fl uctuation of economic indica-tors such as salaries, job creation fi gures, industrial orders, and most fundamentally prices, which mark the ups and downs of the system’s self- regulatory mechanisms. But the same description applies equally well to the smallest unit of the economy, the enterprising individual, as it does to the system as a whole. On the individual level, trust and distrust interlock and intensify each other, resonating together in

8 part 1

immediate proximity, forming their own oscillatory system. As do fear and hope, satisfaction and self- denial, all in it together.7

The individual subject of interest forming the fundamental unit of capitalist society is internally diff erentiated, containing its own popula-tion of “minority practices” of contrasting aff ective tone and tenor, in a zone of indistinction between rational calculation and aff ectivity. In other words, there is an infra- individual complexity quasi- chaotically agi-tating within the smallest unit. The individual remains the smallest unit despite this infra- level complexity, because what resonates on that level are not separable elements in interaction. They are intensive elements, in intra- action (Barad 2007, 33).8 They are immediately linked variations, held in tension, resonating together in immediate proximity. Their os-cillatory co- motion expresses itself at the level of the individual, where it is marked by fl uctuating indicators, just as the actions of individual economic actors express themselves on the systemic level in fl uctuating indicators such as prices. We call the indicators of the intra- action occur-ring on the infra- individual level moods. “Moods,” Gilbert Ryle writes, are like “the weather, temporary conditions which in a certain way collect oc-currences, but they are not themselves extra occurrences” (Ryle 1949, 83). Moods collect infra- occurrences and sum them up in a general orienta-tion giving direction to the next level up, just as price fl uctuations collect the microeconomic decisions of individual actors and sum them up in the general orientation of the economy as a whole.

This means that we need to add a whole new dimension to economic thinking. Beneath the microeconomic level of the individual there is the infra- economic level. At that level, an aff ective commotion intra- churns. Its variations are so immediately linked that we cannot parse them out into separate occurrences. The individual, speaking infra- ly, is not one. It may collect itself as one. It may fi gure as one, for higher levels. But in itself, it is many. Many tendencies: potential expressions and orientations held together in tension. The individual is buff eted by these tendencies’ coming turbulently together, divided among them in its relation to itself. Divided among them, awaiting their complex playing- out in a shift in general orientation, the “individual” is the dividual (Deleuze 1995, 180). The dividual is the individual as aff ective infra- climate, in relation to itself,

the inmost end 9

commotionally poised for what may come, storm or shine, doldrums or halcyon days.9

Nothing divides and multiplies the individual so much as its own re-lation to the future. The uncertainty is not just external, relating to ac-cidents and the unpredictable actions of others. It agitates within. Even if you play it as safe as possible by deferring a decision until sunnier days to come, all you have done is fi nd another way to increase uncertainty: now it is not just others’ decisions that are unknown to you but your own as well. “These unknown nondecisions recur endlessly” (Pixley 2004, 33). Who knows what will possess you to decide when to decide, or what you will decide when you do? You don’t know your future self yet. You are infra- buff eted by your own unworked- out tendencies await-ing a complex playing out that is as likely to surprise you yourself as any stranger. Weather forecasting is as unpredictable in the infra- climate of the (in)dividual as at other scales.

The aff ective infra- climate of the dividual poised for what may come is the rabbit hole of the economy. The unknown nondecisions and not- quite- occurrences recurring endlessly in a turbulence of tendency are complex in the same way as the economy as a whole. Both are like the weather, quasi- chaotic self- organizing systems. This puts a whole new perspective on “rational” choice. The individual, Foucault said, is unconditionally referred to itself, and this referral is irreducible and nontransferable. This means that rational decision is unconditionally, irreducibly, nontransferably referred to an infra- individual zone of in-distinction with aff ect. Rationality and aff ect become “functional equivalents”by Luhmann’s defi nition: interlocked and mutually intensifying, in a zone of indistinction, at the “forward threshold” of economic existence.

Luhmann’s analysis of trust posits that this infra- level of individual complexity is directly connected to the collective, macrolevel of the economic, without necessarily passing through the mediation of the intervening microeconomic level at which the individual is but one. It is a defi ning characteristic of complex environment that the extremes of scale are sensitive to each other, attuned to each other’s modulations. This is what makes them oscillatory. They can perturb each other. Sys-temwide changes in the weather are sure to resonate at the infra- level,

10 part 1

for example, in a localized patch of fog. Perturbations channeling back up from the infra- level are apt to amplify into multiplier eff ects. Think of the way a local fog can amplify into a mega traffi c jam. The individual blindness of the subject of interest is the fog of the economy. When mul-tiplier eff ects channel upward, the individual is not mediating between the levels in any conventional sense. Self- organizing eff ects channel through the individual level on their infra- way to larger things. The indi-vidual is an amplifi er mechanism for multiplier eff ects’ self- forming. It channels the threshold noise of the system— the functional indistinction between rational calculation and aff ective response— into an emergent economic ordering that is as ever- changing and continually self- renewing as the winds. In a very real sense, the infra- individual is the crucible of the system.

When Foucault says that the individual’s choice is irreducible, he can only mean that the individual’s tendential dividedness in relation to it-self is irreducible. The dividual is irreducible. The infra- of the individual is irreducible, in the sense that when systemwide perturbations blow down its hole, they can go no further. They have nowhere else to go but to turn around and blow back out. The economy ends in the recesses of the infra- individual, which as Foucault said is not only irreducible but nontransferable. What is nontransferable is inexchangeable. At the infra- individual level, the possibility of exchange comes to an end. If the econ-omy is defi ned by exchange, then the economy ends in the recesses of the infra- individual. It reaches a limit, as a function of which it is organized— but which lies outside its logic. Foucault speaks of this aff ective infra- level as the “regressive endpoint” of the economy (Foucault 2008, 272).

The infra- individual is the regressive— recessive or immanent— endpoint of the economy. The dividual is the noneconomic wonderland of intense and stormy life on the brink of action that lies at the heart of the economy: its absolute immanent limit. Endpoint— and turnaround. It is only ever possible to approach an absolute limit. The movement to-ward the endpoint of the economy either disappears into its own infi nite regress, or spins itself around into a movement of return.

the inmost end 11

Collapse of the Aff ective Wave Packet

Returning to Luhmann’s analytic of trust, to say that trust and distrust resonate together in a zone of indistinction of immediate oscillatory proximity to each other means that what is felt in the lead- up to an eco-nomic act, as it is brinking, is neither one nor the other, neither trust nor distrust. Luhmann says that what is felt is a “readiness” to feel ei-ther come next (Luhmann 1979, 79). The individual is in an infra- state of readiness potential. Trust and distrust are together as co- present poten-tials for what might come next. They are in superposition, in the sense in which the word is used in quantum physics. Though inseparable, their distinction is not erased. It is held in ready reserve.

The aff ective feeling of the readiness potential, Luhmann continues, presupposes a “corresponding reserve of energy which is elsewhere not determined” (Luhmann 1979, 80). In other words, the system itself, be-cause it is similarly complex and nonlinear, is in an energized state of readiness potential that is structured in a fashion homologous to the subject’s aff ective state. The economy is ready and “responsive,” poised, like its individual units, for what may come, in a state of brinking agita-tion. On the infra- level, the brinking is a superposition of trust and dis-trust in readiness potential. On the macroeconomic level, what is held in readiness potential are the system states of success and failure. At the moment a given choice is made, the success or failure of that action is “undetermined elsewhere.” Which way it goes will depend on actions still in tendency, as yet undecided. The economic outcome depends on how these tendencies’ expressions will infl ect and amplify each other as they turbulently play out across the economic fi eld in a cascade of caroming choices. When this self- organizing pro cess works itself out, the cumulative eff ects will be “collected” and “summed up” in a system indicator. Until the “mood” of the economy comes to expression in this way, success and failure will remain in a state of superposition— as will trust and distrust at the individual level. The aff ective states of trust and distrust and the system states of success and failure lie at the two oscil-latory poles of the economic pro cess. They are sensitive to each other. They reciprocally determine each other, eff ectively connecting across

12 part 1

their diff erences of nature and the distance between levels through a complex, nonlinear pro cess of feedback and feedforward.

Under these conditions the subject of interest is not in a position to know how any given act it takes will turn out. But it cannot not act. You can only defer so long, or so much, and only in certain areas of your activity. Any act you perform triggers the pro cess leading to a resolution of the commotion of aff ective states held complexly together in tension on the infra- individual readiness potential into a determinable outcome registrable in terms of success or failure. In short, making a choice leads to the collapse of the superposition of aff ective states. To borrow the vocabulary of quantum physics, it collapses the aff ective wave packet. A particle of trust or distrust spins off into the world, where it will per-turb the infra- individual complexity of other (in)dividuals poising for action. Again like quantum physics, the causality is recursive. The de-termination of what the act will eff ectively have been, which state it will be found to have been in, is in suspense until a mea sure ment is made. The mea sure ment makes what comes what it will have been. Until then, what has occurred is less an act or a choice than an as yet unresolved per-turbation. The perturbation must percolate up to the level at which it is collected and bundled into overall economic indicators before it can be determined. Figures are released monthly and, in the case of the most aff ectively weighted and eagerly awaited, quarterly. In the meantime, par tic u lar indicators, such as the stock market or the price of oil, fl uctu-ate continuously like the batting of tiny butterfl y wings. Now with the Internet the fl uctuations can be followed minute by minute or even sec-ond by second. Without the quarterly indicators to contextualize them, extrapolating a trend from this passing economic wing batting is highly conjectural, to say the least. Extraeconomic events, such as a po liti cal crisis in an oil- producing region of the world, can spook investors and consumers. These extraeconomic perturbations are all the more aff ect-ing in anticipation. The uncertainty of these so- called negative exter-nalities occurring, and what their exact fallout will be if they do occur, sends shivers through the system. The shivers almost instantaneously amplify into a low- grade fever that may prove at any moment to have been the onset of a chronic illness. The system is in a continual state of pathological excitability, if not because of the publication of new indica-

the inmost end 13

tors, then in the intervals between them, in the urgency of the feeling of the need to respond to trends before they emerge onto a macro- enough level and are tidily summed up in the indicators.

To act on threats before they emerge was the Bush administration’s defi nition of preemption (Massumi 2007). The economy is continually agitated by the aff ectively fraught, felt need to preempt it. As the neo-liberal economy takes hold, deferral becomes less and less of an option and preemptive action more and more of an imperative.10 This makes the economy more aff ectively activating than it is eff ectively rationalizing. It runs more on perturbations and cascading amplifi cations than deter-minate acts of choice.

As this state of aff ective agitation heightens, what economic actors oft en end up reacting to most directly are the agitated aff ective states of other actors. This has given rise to a whole new ser vice industry, that of “Internet mood analysis.” The Internet is trawled by algorithms that search out aff ectively laden words and terminology to provide a real- time pulse taking of the mood of the economy. One such ser vice goes by the name AlmagaMood, whose catchy slogan is “Leveraging Big Data to Enhance Investment Foresight.”11

It is not just economic sites that are mood- mined. It is the entire Internet, including blogs, news sites, and the expanding Twitterverse. The economy as a whole vibrates with the fi ckleness of what the pun-dits call “social mood.” This Internet- based mood registering occurs informally through the social media and all manner of networking. In our networked society, with the global media reach and cross- platform convergence of the Internet, any act anywhere resonates, potentially, everywhere, in the economic analogue of Einstein’s “spooky” action at a distance. Readiness- potential wave packets collapse, aff ectively system-ically, in real time (or its functional Internet equivalent). Individual ac-tions are aff ectively entangled at a distance. It is only the complex play-ing out of the entanglements that decides in the end what will have been a success and what a failure. Complexly correlated to each quantum of success or failure, there will come to expression determinate aff ective states of trust or distrust, satisfaction or frustration.

Individual economic actors are infra- connected. They are connected at a distance, in the recesses of their aff ective rabbit holes. They communicate

14 part 1

at a distance, in immanent aff ective proximity, churning in and turning around the regressive endpoints of their respective (in)dividualities. The infra- level resonates transindividually. Individuals spook each other or goad each other on, turning around what is nontransferable in them as in-dividuals: their infra- individual aff ective commotion. They resonate, at the limit of the economy, in their dividuality. As they reciprocally perturb each other, their readiness- potential wave packet collapses, correlated transindividually at a distance. Quanta of trust and distrust fl y off in all directions. These aff ective emissions feed up into macrolevel expres-sions of economic success or failure, which no sooner feed back down from the system’s macro level into the aff ective infra- fray.

Given the cross- sensitivity between scales, at the limit the economic system and the subject of interest are themselves in a functional state of indistinc-tion. The whole system is always going down the rabbit hole. It is just as continually reemerging, through multiplier eff ects, channeled through aff ectively infl ected individual actions, back onto its own level. It does not make the trip to its own regressive endpoint and back unchanged. It becomes en route. In addition to the economic system— the precarious emergent orderings of the economy as more or less regulated by mac-roeconomic market mechanisms, and as more or less analyzable using quantitative indicators— there is the chaotic pro cess of this back- and- forth between levels from which economic determinations periodically emerge.12 The pro cess as a whole is neither governable nor quantifi -able. It is aff ective- relational. Given the paradoxical bond between the aff ectivity of the relational pro cess and the troubled rationality of its emergent orderings, the system that is the sum of the orderings is at best metastable: precariously stable, tottering between bouts of system equi-librium loss and pro cessual vertigo.

Each dizzy individual’s rabbit hole of aff ect is at the immanent limit of the economy. The multitude of these regressive endpoints “com-municate,” entangled at distance. Their transindividual entanglement composes what Deleuze and Guattari would call the “plane of imma-nence” of the economy. The plane of immanence of the economy is the irreducibly aff ective limit of a complexly relational fi eld. It is the econ-omy at its absolute co- motional limit of tendential stirrings in uncertain readiness potential.

the inmost end 15

On the plane of immanence, the economic system and the subject of interest are jointly in potential, in a functional state of indistinction at the level at which action is just beginning to stir, in the incipience of what is to come. The symmetry between the infra- individual and the economic fi eld as a whole, across their diff erence in scale, is only apparent. The infra- level is in a very real sense the larger of the two, in that it germinally includes the relation between levels, at the immanent limit. Entangled in the zone of indistinction of readiness potential, the subject and the system come together, to become together. Every little act turning out from the regressive endpoint collapses the wave packet, destroying the infra- state of functional indistinction. The commotion on the infra- individual level acts out. It is then registered as an indexable occurrence, summing up the individual’s irreducible and nontransferable relation to itself in an eco nom ical ly signifi cant act. Through the registering of the action, discernible levels bounce back into place. Scales accordion back out. The system re- self- organizes out of its pro cessual rabbit- holing.

The individual’s self- relation, in the “dissociative” dividual dimen-sion, is the crucible of the system’s integral self- organizing. Each little act helps infl ect the system’s global direction, as the economy boot-straps its future on the fl y. The system’s future is also each individual’s future, as it navigates a life journey through economic successes and failures. The system and its denizens become in tandem. Every little act exerts a quantum of creative power, globally and locally, in accordion- playing correlation. Every little choice exerts, to some degree, a power of local- global becoming: an ontopower. What has been lost to the system and to individuals in terms of knowability, calculability, and predict-ability is regained in resonant ontopower. An ontopower, as a power of becoming, is a creative power. The economic model, Foucault said, is now one of existence itself. Existence itself: where being is becoming.

When what is created is a state of system trust, Luhmann emphasizes that the trust is entirely “unjustifi ed” (Luhmann 1979, 78). It may be ra-tionalizable aft er the fact, but in its genesis it is rationally unfounded. It did not occur as the separate result of a rational decision judiciously pre-ceding the actions that brought it into being. It came fl ush with an aff ec-tive regress, and its turnabout playing- out. At the limit, all economic acts are rationally ungrounded in the endpoint of the economy. This does not

16 part 1

mean that they are aff ectively grounded there. Any state of system trust that emerges is just as aff ectively unjustifi ed as it is rationally unjusti-fi ed. It was not grounded in anything preparatory to action that could be qualifi ed as in any way trustworthy. The transactions that worked out well and led to success proved themselves trustworthy. They became trust-worthy, as a function of how they played out. The state of system trust is eff ectively self- justifying. It “justifi es itself,” Luhmann writes, in the way that it has “become creative” (78): in the emergently creative way it is generated as a trust- eff ect of the economy’s complex self- organizing. The self- organizing emergence of the trust- eff ect is retroactively validat-ing. It is aff ectively validating in the currency of satisfactions gained.

If enough trust- eff ects emerge at a suffi cient rate of generation, then however unjustifi ed they are, the system has a chance of continuing, in a positive orientation, trending up. Trust in the system has been restored. The aff ective conditions for continued surplus- value production are in force. Follow- on actions reinforce the trend. Positive feedback between the systemic and infra- individual levels locks in. Positive multiplier ef-fects bubble through the economy.

When the indicators come out, the eff ects are there to see, rationally summed up in a trend. The summing up can then be projected forward into future trends. Based on these statistical projections, a calculus of risks and probabilities can be made. The aff ective- eff ect is now as ratio-nalized as it can get. The rationalizing indicators stoke economic activ-ity, reinforcing the aff ective conditions for growth. These feed back to the regressive endpoints of the economy composing its plane of imma-nence. Turning around them, they resonate transindividually across the economic fi eld. Feedback loop. Eco nom ical ly, aff ectivity and rational-ity circle creatively through each other. The regress to the endpoint of the economic and the upward progress of the economic indicators are a single two- way movement of reciprocal feedback. They are systemically superposed pulses of the capitalist pro cess, together ontopowerful.

Mirroring the quantum vocabulary of the reduction of the wave packet, Luhmann refers to the production of a state of system trust as a “reduc-tion of complexity.” The economy cannot be micromanaged: do not laisser- faire the government. Although the economy cannot be micro-managed, through the feedback pro cess it can be infra- stoked toward the

the inmost end 17

emergence of trust- eff ects. The instability of the economy can, at least for certain hiatus periods, be aff ectively primed into metastability: a pro-visional stability snatched emergently from far- from- equilibrium con-ditions. Halcyon days. Vacation days from the full destabilizing force of complexity. Provisional stability: no one really knows how long the trends will hold. System trust is a fragile artifact hypersensitive to perturbation.

Luhmann drives the point home: “in the reduction of complexity,” resolving into a metastable state, at the immanent limit, at the heart of the pro cess, “there always lies an unstable, incalculable moment” (Luh-mann 1979, 74). It is around this unstable, incalculable, hypersensitive moment that everything begins to revolve. The principle of decision at work “cannot lie in cognitive capacity” actually involving a calculation that guides action before the fact (79). Ultimately, there is no prospectively knowing economic act. The whole pro cess actually works best, Luh-mann maintains, if the consciousness of trust and distrust are lost, so that the reduction of the readiness- potential wave packet “becomes autonomous” (71)— so that decision becomes autonomous. The aff ective churning of the system, through which the “rationality” of the system cycles, is best left unbeknownst even to itself.13

Nonconsciousness becomes the key economic actor.

1. The Inmost End

1. Art: the then US Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, underscored the centrality of the creative factor in an October 2001 speech where he credited the economy’s ability to bounce back from the “shock” of 9/11 to a “diff erent kind of effi ciency” that is none other than the superfl exible “creativity of our system” (Greenspan 2001b). Greenspan liberally employed the aff ective vocabulary of “shock” to the system in the immediate post- 9/11 period (see, for example, Greenspan 2001a). Of course, 9/11 was not the fi rst or last shock to aff ect the market.

2. William Connolly makes this same point: “The state does not manage markets much directly, except through monetary policy, but it takes a very active role in creating, maintaining, and protecting the preconditions of market self- regulation. . . .  So neoliberalism solicits an active state to promote, protect, and expand market pro cesses” (Connolly 2013, 21). According to Foucault, the original neoliberal project was for “a government from which nothing escapes . . .  but which nevertheless respects the specifi city of the economy” (Foucault 2008, 296). The dream was that this balancing act would be ensured by a well- functioning civil society. The breakdown of that dream (Hardt 1995) led to a transition to a new form of governmentality, which Foucault glimpses in an isolated passage and to which he gives the name “environmentality” (Foucault 2008, 259– 260). Environmental mechanisms are precisely aimed at the “preconditions” of economic activity that Connolly refers. In Foucault’s words, they modulate the “rules of the game” from within rather than directly target the actions of the players from above. They oper-ate on a supposedly leveled playing fi eld, neither from on high in a sovereign man-ner, nor structurally coupled with a separate sphere operating according to its own noneconomic juridical principles. In the present essay, environmentality is taken as a starting point. On environmentality, see Massumi (2009a). Deleuze and Guattari emphasize that this fundamentally changes the nature of the State, henceforth more essentially a “model of realization” for how capitalism will implant itself in order to traverse the national territory than a sovereign ordering of the national terri-tory’s interiority (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 454– 459).

3. On the dissociation of the social and the economic, see Foucault (2008, 200– 201). It is the concept of “human capital” (touched on later) that existentializes

notes

114 notes to part 1

this dissociation and simultaneously overcomes it by collapsing the social into the economic. On human capital, see Foucault (2008, 224– 265).

4. Foucault (2008, 272– 276) insists on the incommensurability of the subject of law (or right) and liberalism’s homo oeconomicus, the subject of economics (subject of interest).

5. On contagion and “market psychology,” see Marazzi (2008).6. “Oscillatoire” is rendered as “fl uctuating” in the En glish translation.7. For a more detailed development of the concept of pro cessual polarities

entering into proximity in a “zone of indistinction” and the corresponding “logic of mutual inclusion,” see Massumi (2014).

8. In what follows, the prefi x “infra’” will be used in preference to “intra.” “Intra” connotes interiority, and thus boundedness. “Infra,” on the other hand, connotes a threshold on an unbounded continuum, below which there is a qualita-tive phase- shift in the nature of the phenomena on the continuum.

9. Simon Critchley, in Infi nitely Demanding, uses the term “dividual” in a diff erent sense (2007, 89). For Critchley, it denotes a splitting of the subject, in dialogue with the psychoanalytic concept as interpreted by Lacan.

10. On new approaches to modeling the economy that must be categorized as preemptive (although they do not claim that title), see “A Doing Done through Me,” n. 3, this volume.

11. AmalgaMood .com; accessed March 6, 2013.12. On the distinction between system and pro cess, see Massumi (2009a).13. On becoming autonomous of system- level aff ective self- organizing in its po-

liti cal dimensions, see Massumi (2005).

2. A Doing Done through Me

1. For US presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s infamous pronouncement, see Rucker (2011). The Supreme Court’s Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission decision of 2010 extended the individual right of free speech to corporations and used the assertion of a homology between individual personhood and corporate personhood to strike down campaign contributions limits as a violation of the personal right to free speech guaranteed in the US Constitution.

2. Of course, not all commentators in the literature of nonconscious decision making give up entirely on rational choice, but there is a consensus that it is in crisis. Some commentators emphasize the need to manage the biases of gut choice (such as the diffi culty mentioned below of responding aff ectively to probabilities) by training of our rational- choice skills. Others emphasize the need to create propi-tious conditions for intuition to work on its own to best advantage. Here is a list of some of the best-known titles in the pop u lar literature on the prowess and prob-lems of nonconscious decision making: Sources of Power (Klein); Strangers to Ourselves (Wilson); Blink (Gladwell); Nudge (Thaler and Sunstein); Predictably Irrational (Ariely); How We Decide (Lehrer); The Power of Pull (Hagel, Brown, and Davison); and Thinking