The Risks of Affect

Abstract

This chapter dwells on axiological and existential tensions raised by the concept of ecological attunement. First, it distinguishes this concept from Heidegger’s well-known discussion of attunement and world. Then, it places Whiteheadean/Deleuzean concepts of affect and feeling in dialogue with the affect theory of Sylvan Tompkins and Daniel Stern, arguing that the “vitality affects” of the latter are ontologically prior to constituted worlds in a phenomenological sense. It considers how attention to affective tertiary qualities are shaped by inheritance of affective patterns and attentive choices of the past while also oriented towards a potentially open future. In this way, selection (from inherited qualities) and orientation (towards future projection) become the two sides of ecological attuning as an existential ideal. This double-sided structure is considered in relation to Whitehead’s discussion of “evil” and Deleuze’s emphasis on willing the event and counter-actualisation.