INTRODUCTIONthought, the life of the mind, and ultimately ascientia intuitiva, a third kind of knowledge
that is anamor Dei intellectualis, as well? But, then, are affect-effects new merely to the
extent thatnoexpression of Nature or God is simply identical with any other, that is to
say, with what immediately precedes or eternally coexists with it?
Furthermore, does Spinoza’s model manage to regulate the meaning and dynamics
of the theologico-political in its ‘‘differential genesis of affects’’? Or does the theologico-
political elude and resist—that is to say, absolve itself from—this quasi-automaticity and
quasi-mechanicity? Does the theologico-political allow and create, reveal and evoke some
multidimensional space and time before, around, and beyond the imitation of affects and
its logic by which all composite bodies are determined? Is there a minimal room for
resistance to the order of things, whose ‘‘effects’’—again, without intrinsic, sufficient
causes—may nonetheless have maximal consequences of an altogether different nature,
testifying to an altogether other God: a god, perhaps, no longer ‘‘contaminated’’ by but
‘‘otherwise than Being and Essence’’ (as Levinas would say)?
This being said, Spinoza’s account of the imitation of affects may help explain why
attempts by the state and, nowadays, increasingly by nonstate actors to generate ideologi-
cal (and often theologico-political) counterforces—through press conferences, media re-
leases, deliberate leaks, and horrific Internet video (of beheadings, etc.), all special effects,
of sorts—are all too easily interiorized as affect-effects without intrinsic, sufficient causes
that would enable them to harmonize with us and be of objective, reasonable interest. In
other words, these effects infuse—indeed, poison—us with a subjective mindset that once
(Spinoza claims) informed superstition, namely, the belief in miracles.
Even (or especially) the most cynical, down-to-earth engineers of ‘‘make-believe’’
seek to transform ideas into articles of faith, or at least belief in the making, and hence
aspire to produce what traditionally was perceived to be a wondrous event. Miracle work-
ers and believers, on the one hand, and newsmakers or spinmasters, together with their
audiences, on the other, thus seem to operate in nearly identical ways.^76 Such is the fate
of the post-secular world, where political conflict has become a perpetual, self-generated
‘‘battle of perceptions,’’ enabled—indeed, produced—by omnipresent media that echo in
the streets of capitals worldwide.^77
A graffito, found in an unremarkable Parisian street in July 2006, seems to say it all.
Perhaps because of the origin of the wordassassin,^78 the anonymous writer may call to
mind the newly unleashed violence in the world, in the midst of the fighting between
Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon—if this is indeed the reference. No one can know, not
least because the words may be ascribed to the joker or clown beneath whose face they
have been written. At least one other anonymous author, presuming to see what the
graffito speaks of, has glossed: ‘‘So you love Bush?’’
Why is the praised assassin paired or identified with some triad of events or persons,
being the latest in a series of ‘‘III’’? If the repeated vertical lines are not to be taken as
incomplete exclamation marks, is the allusion to, say, Lebanon, coming after Afghanistan
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