The Affect of Joe Biden

The Democratic presidential candidate would bring empathy back into the center of American public life.

I think a lot about affect. I muse frequently about the ways in which various aspects of modern life engender feelings in us that are more than just emotions but instead some complicated interplay of emotion, embodiment, and environment. In particular, I reflect on the ways in which contemporary politics is, more than ever before, a matter of affect, of exchanges of sensation between our political figures and ourselves.

For example, by now everyone knows that the 2016 was all about affect. It wasn’t just that people didn’t like Hillary Clinton, for example. They loathed her. They imagined committing horrendous acts of violence against her. They wanted to subject her to all of the torments they could possibly imagine. Trump’s rallies became about much more than just gathering together to support his candidacy; they were opportunities to indulge in a pernicious and deeply visceral collective fantasy predicated on sexual violence.

From the beginning of his candidacy, affect was a key part of Trump’s political identity, arousing profound feelings among both his supporters and his opponents, and it remains so today. I know that I’m not the only one who feels a visceral recoil when I hear his braying, scratchy voice and see the ways in which his lips purse with indignation, the way that he clutches the podium and gestures wildly. It’s not just anger, mind you. It’s a deep revulsion in the core of my soul, one that goes beyond anything I have ever felt for a political figure. Even George W. Bush, the most recent Republican president, didn’t inspire this sort of response in me.

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