Deleuze and the Problem of Affect

D. J. S. Cross is Assistant Professor in the Department of Languages, Cultures and Translation at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. His first book, Deleuze and the Problem of Affect, was published by Edinburgh University Press in 2021. He has translated works by Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Catherine Malabou and Pablo Oyarzun.

• AcknowledgementsAbbreviations Introduction AdermatoglyphiaThe ‘Problem’ of ‘Affect’Ambivalence ItineraryNotesPart I. Ambivalence 1. The Royal Faculty A Doctrine of Faculties Transcendence The Royal FacultyThe Original OriginThe Sensible HitchImplicationsNotes2. Furtive Contemplations Extra InteriorityDénouement Organic Extension Contemplating Chaos Notes3. Between Art and Opinion Avant-Garde Euthanasia Major Minor Warp Style Each Time NotesPart II. The Paradox of Spinoza 4. Spinoza, Socrates of Deleuze The ParadoxA Character StudyCause and AttributionIndifferenceCoronation, Transfiguration Spinoza and Spinoza Notes5. Affectus Becoming l’Affect Existential Choreographies The Antinomy of AffectBetrayalImmaterial MaterialNotes6. Deleuze and the First ‘Ethics’ One More HitchA Bizarre SignThe Phenomenologist and the PantheistSelect and OrganiseNotesConclusion: The Body without Affects Closing Negotiations Conjurer l’affect Pre-Primary Emotion Gilles BlanchedNotesBibliography

This excellent book is a welcome counterpoint to the ubiquity that affect has acquired in much recent theorising. Cross not only illuminates key sources of the concept but, more importantly, problematises them in ways that give back to Deleuze some of the joy and inventiveness of his own philosophical method.