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On being affected: Desire, passion, and the question of conatus after Spinoza and Deleuze.

Source :
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers; Sep2022, Vol. 47 Issue 3, p682-694, 13p
Publication Year :
2022

Abstract

This paper introduces Spinoza's notion of conatus as the principle of desire that animates how we strive to persist in the world. Spinoza argues that our conatus is affected by the encounters and relations that make up socio‐spatial life, meaning that the desires that animate our striving are more often than not shaped by external powers. Centralising the notion of conatus therefore highlights how what geographers have come to term "affects" can be understood to be thoroughly imbricated in complex conditions of desire. The paper then pulls out the ethico‐political consequences of thinking with conatus. First, this involves engaging the political problem of the "passions" as the affective trace of the processes in which our desires are shaped by powers greater than ourselves and which, Spinoza argues, often leave us striving in ways that are contrary to our flourishing. Second, the paper turns to what Spinoza calls the 'common notions' as a way of thinking ethics as a practice for composing more joyful modes of persisting in common. Ethics becomes a practice of thought aimed toward the expression of the numerous ways in which the "I" that desires is inseparable from the powers of others – be they people, ideas, events, institutions, or anything else – such that the very identity of that "I" is thrown into disarray. Throughout, the paper draws on Gilles Deleuze's interpretations of Spinoza for the way that Deleuze foregrounds passivity, the capacity to be affected, not as necessarily a weakness but as a rich field of ethico‐political potential. This paper introduces Spinoza's notion of conatus as the principle of desire that shapes how we strive to persist in the world. Spinoza argues that our conatus is affected by the encounters and relations that make up socio‐spatial life, meaning that the desires that animate our striving are more often than not shaped by external powers. Centralising the notion of conatus therefore highlights how what geographers have come to term "affects" can be understood to be thoroughly imbricated in complex conditions of desire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Details

Language :
English
ISSN :
00202754
Volume :
47
Issue :
3
Database :
Complementary Index
Journal :
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers
Publication Type :
Academic Journal
Accession number :
158392533
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12526