Description
This contribution draws on Spinoza’s philosophy to theorise how affects circulate nationally and internationally. More specifically, Spinoza provides us with theoretical foundations to conceptualise collective affects as well as the psychological mechanisms responsible for their diffusion.
Firstly, the difficulty to define collective affects is due to two ontological assumptions: dualism (there is a distinction between ideas and matter and, thus, between rationality and emotions) and individualism (since emotions are bodily and the body is individual, emotions cannot be collective). On the contrary, the Spinozian perspective, which has already informed affect studies via Deleuze, develops a monist there is no rationality/emotions dichotomy) and transindividual (bodies are not individual) ontology.
Secondly, setting ontological foundations is necessary to define affects but not sufficient to understand how they become collective. The existent perspectives in the subfield looking at emotions in IR, either tie collective emotions to pre-existing communities, neglecting consequently part of the phenomena, or underline the flexibility and creativity of affects, at the risk of letting the psychological mechanisms at work undefined. Spinoza’s theory of affects opens the possibility of a via media by identifying affective mechanisms that rely, not on identity, but on identification, that is, an act of imagination.
