Show Me The Affect

I'm not here for the money. Whatever this is, right here; whatever it is that I'm doing, I'm not doing it because I'm expecting to get rich. I – I think – am here, at least in part, because the last time I did this, and was done, it felt good. Like maybe I'd contributed something to someone, somewhere. So as vacuous as this might be, it meant something. And I'm expecting, I guess, when I'm done doing whatever I'm doing, to have that mean something as well, all over again.

Now, I'm quite certain that any one of the people who has taught me [formal, Western] economics over my lifetime would toe the party line on this, and reiterate that individuals 'sell' their labor for its 'true value', at a market-determined 'price' that comes in the form of a wage. And that this is why anyone goes to work. Ever.

I've never liked the idea of being an economic automaton, so perhaps I'm just circling my wagons here. But the possibility that we maybe don't sell our lives to the highest bidder and are instead also looking for a vocation, a calling, something that resonates with our own sense of who we are and want to be… that's almost overwhelmingly attractive. And it also happens to be empirically valid, if I look only so far as within myself to see how many times I've assessed my own skills and talents purely in terms of their market value [that would be none] or how many decisions I've made that have proven unmitigatedly deleterious to my ongoing material wealth [that would be many].

So what is it then? Ariel Ducey, a sociologist at the University of Calgary, focusing specifically on the service economy, has argued that people are after meaning as much as money when they make these decisions. Is there any better way to start asking why some people might - willingly - not make as much as they could? The service economy works, Ducey suggests, because its embedded labor transactions simultaneously foster a desire in the workers to find meaning in their labor, and at the same time defer that desire's fulfillment almost indefinitely. This is a bit oversimplified, of course: material constraints, both in terms of individual capabilities and disparate pay rates are still influential in determining what people do. The door, nonetheless, is open – there's more to it than just determinist materialism. Maybe I'm not irrational after all.

Ducey has used the term affect economy to get at this seemingly latent role of meaning in the neo-capitalist substrate. And this is where one must ask a question of how, exactly, do these economic decisions get made? It's one thing to say that individuals aren't purely materialistically rational and that they also have ideas in their heads; it is another, separate thing to provide an account of how the person gets the idea, how they decide which one to heed, how they heed it, etc. And what is 'affect', anyway?

City University of New York Sociologist Patricia Clough defines 'affect', roughly, as "bodily capacities to affect and be affected or the augmentation or diminution of a body's capacity to act, to engage, and to connect, such that autoaffectation is linked to the self-feeling of being alive – that is, aliveness or vitality." It gets better. Quoting Communication scholar Brian Massumi, Clough continues "Affect constitutes a nonlinear complexity out of which the narration of conscious states such as emotion are subtracted, but always with 'a never-to-be-conscious autonomic remainder.'"

In more user-friendly prose, at least for my purposes, affect is more or less an embodied, semi-conscious sensing. Not cognition, feeling, mood, or emotion, but perhaps a star in their constellation. Social activist and Womens' Studies scholar Melissa Ditmore has written in a similar vein to that of Ariel Ducey. Ditmore uses the term affective labor in discussing Indian sex workers. Just as Ducey's individuals are taken in by a complex economic system that surpasses mere rationality, Ditmore's individuals, if acknowledged as 'laborers' and not 'criminals', are seen weaving their own complex economic lives. With Ditmore, too, we see a service sector whose vibrancy is contingent on the 'successful' conclusion of ostensibly non-economic social transactions.

And this, in a big way, is the heart of the matter. It is almost intuitive that most, if not all, persons would base career decisions on more than just cold, austere numerical tradeoffs. In thinking about affect, though, and basically saying that my job not only has to pay me but also has to 'seem' 'right' to me, the logic takes us to where Ditmore leaves us – with a performance. The sex trade is perhaps an extreme example, where the provision and sustenance of a certain fantasy is so transparently a prerequisite for a 'successful transaction'. This is the value of illustration, though – having seen it once, we can see it again. What job, truly, does not have a performative aspect? And this isn't just on the basic, superficial level; every job will have requirements, and workers not 'performing' up to that standard will violate their 'agreement'. The real question of performances in job settings is much deeper – and commensurately more important.

Here is the logic: if we are motivated not only by material gain but also by ideological fulfillment in our quest for the 'right' job, then does this not create a new hybrid role, between our own idealized identity and pre-constructed, relatively static job role? If I sense that I am in the right job, or if my material circumstances are depriving me of making a free decision, then there is no guarantee that I will actually be able to find the most fulfilling, meaningful job for me. But I will want to act according to my sense that I'm in the right place. And, conversely, the other part of Clough's aforementioned definition suggests that my sensing will in turn be shaped by my experiences in my right/wrong job. So if I wasn't able to make the 'right' decision in the first instance, I'll be that much less likely in the second. When I've become that much more confused.

So there is a disconnect, a hole - a possibility for some real problems. 'Identity crises', one might say. Not, of course, that any of this tells us how specific mechanisms are 'working' throughout this system. It seems nonetheless, at the very least, better than myopic to think how complicated these decisions are – these decisions that come to govern 2/3 of the waking hours of most of society.

It stinks when new toys make you so sad.