upon whether (and which) passions are viewed favourably or with suspicion.^5
Similarly, though at a much later date, scientists have recognized the importance
of affect. At least since the publication of Charles Darwin’s (1998) The Expression
of the Emotions in Man and Animalsin 18 7 2, and no doubt before that, there has
been a continuous history of the systematic scientific study of affect and although
it would be foolish to say that we now know all there is to know about the physi-
ology of emotions, equally it would be foolish to say that we know nothing. In
turn, literatures like these have been replete with all kinds of more or less explicit
political judgements – about which passions are wholesome and which are suspect
or even dangerous, about the degree to which passions can or should be allowed
untrammelled license, and about how passions can be amplified or repressed.
So why the neglect of affect in the current urban literature, even in the case of
issues like identity and belonging which quiver with affective energy? A series
of explanations comes to mind. One is a residual cultural Cartesianism (replete
with all kinds of gendered connotations): affect is a kind of frivolous or distracting
background to the real work of deciding our way through the city. It cannot be
a part of our intelligence of that world. Another is concerned with the cultural
division of labour. The creative arts already do that stuff and there is no need to
follow. A third explanation is that affect mainly figures in perceptual registers like
proprioception which are not easily captured in print. No doubt other explanations
could be mustered.
Perhaps, at one time, these might have been seen as valid reasons. But they are
not any more. I would point to three reasons why neglecting affect is, as much
now as in the past, criminal neglect. First, systematic knowledges of the creation
and mobilization of affect have become an integral part of the everyday urban
landscape: affect has become part of a reflexive loop which allows more and more
sophisticated interventions in various registers of urban life. Second, these know-
ledges are not just being deployed knowingly, they are also being deployed
politically (mainly but not only by the rich and powerful) to political ends: what
might have been painted as aesthetic is increasingly instrumental. Third, affect
has become a part of how cities are understood. As cities are increasingly expected
to have ‘buzz’, to be ‘creative’, and to generally bring forth powers of invention
and intuition, all of which can be forged into economic weapons, so the active
engineering of the affective register of cities has been highlighted as the harnessing
of the talent of transformation. Cities must exhibit intense expressivity. Each of
these three reasons shows that, whereas affect has always, of course, been a constant
of urban experience, now affect is more and more likely to be actively engineered
with the result that it is becoming something more akin to the networks of pipes
and cables that are of such importance in providing the basic mechanics and root
textures of urban life (Armstrong 1998), a set of constantly performing relays
and junctions that are laying down all manner of new emotional histories and
geographies.
In this chapter I want to think about affect in cities and about affective cities,
and, above all, about what the political consequences of thinking more explicitly
about these topics might be – once it is accepted that the ‘political decision is itself
172 Part III