Event Value: The Aesthetic Ethics of Brian Massumi’s Affect Theory
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: "Event value" serves as an implicit thread in Brian Massumi’s response to the dilemma of "heterogeneous coexistence" that has emerged since the "ethical turn". In his affective analysis of fear, Massumi successively put forward the cultural power logics of "Fear-Consumption" and "Ontopower" within late capitalism, which ultimately lead to the value priority of "potentiality" and its actualizing effects. Subsequently, Massumi integrates the value of "potentiality" into empiricism, replacing static spatial and visual experiences with "transitional experience." He emphasizes the value of intensity within the absolute nature of quality and establishes a semblance aesthetics rooted in the creative "virtual-real" experience. The "surplus value of life" represents the manifestation of event value in the ethics of sympathy and the economics of affect, upon which Massumi proposes "dividualist politics" as a new paradigm of biopolitics. The aesthetic community of affect is constructed through the logics of "collective individuation" and "body-event," offering a novel interpretation of "heterogeneous coexistence" and pointing toward an ecological ethics.
Source: Research Square
Author: Yan Meng
Institution: Nanjing Normal University
Language: English
Subfield: Cultural Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7225240276