TheMaterialismofBiologicalEncounters 65
whole universe is harnessed to men's attempts to force one another into
good citizenship. Thus we find that certain moral values are upheld and
certain social rules defined by beliefs in dangerous infection, as when
the glance or touch of an adulterer is held to bring illness to his
neighborsorhischildren.(Douglas4)As the easy cross-over in this text from biological to moral danger
illustrates, accounts of biological encounters can never be read as "only
biological" but must be understood as frequently marking a site also of
intense emotional investments. As Sara Ahmed and others have shown,
affects "play a crucial role in the 'surfacing' of individual and collective
bodiesthroughthewayinwhichemotionscirculatebetweenbodiesand
signs" ("Affective Economies" 117).^18 This is certainly even more so in
moments of crisis when biological encounters are (perceived as)
jeopardizing individual or collective well-being. Because of this, such
encounters have across different times and socio-cultural formations
performed important social and cultural work, in addition to and
sometimes in excess of their biological relevance: they have proven to
be effective and productive generators of discursive formations. I will
calltheseformationsdiscoursesofbiologicalaffect.^19
Beforeturningtothisdiscursiveformationinmorehistoricaldetail,I
would like to spend a moment discussing Lauren Berlant's work on the
symbolic resources which constitute and sustain public worlds (or the
absence thereof) in the United States. These resources matter much in
moments of biological affect, especially when the well-being of
Americans,theissueofhowtheyare,passesonintothequestionofwho
they are. In this context, Berlant's paradoxical coinage, "intimate public
(^18) In a related way, Eckstein and Wiemann insist on communal dimension of
affects. Speaking of and "to the fundamentally public and political status of
feeling," and in dialogue with current theoretical reflections (including
Jameson's well-known assertion of a "waning of affect") they go on to present
evidence for their assertion that the "site of passion is now no longer the
individual's interiority but the contact zones of intersubjective encounters" (iv,
ix).
(^19) For the complicated and uneasy relationship between affect and biology cf.
Jameson,Ancients37-42.