Аффективная телесность и травма в теориях Брайана Массуми, Зигмунда Фрейда и группы «КоБрА»

Abstract

The article aims to interpret sensibility without necessarily referring to individual subjectivity. To this end, the definition of affect suggested by Brian Massumi as well as his division between affect and emotion are considered. They were proposed in the framework of an interdisciplinary approach – the theory of affect. Massumi argues that affect encompasses a contradictory dimension of corporality, which, unlike emotion and the bodily processes associated with it, is irreducible to the binary logic of language. Further development of Massumi's ideas involves the interpretation of animal behavior, in particular in situations associated with the experience of fear and horror. There Massumi finds not only the action of rigid adaptive mechanisms, but also a creative, spontaneous aspect that further emphasizes the contradictory nature of corporality. This reading of the body allows us to take a fresh look at Freudian psychoanalysis and place some of its aspects in the context of the collective, understood as a complex network of interactions between living and non-living bodies. Considering fright as an element of the genesis of neurosis, Freud shows the importance of this feeling not so much for conscious perception, but for the formation of memory that does not always realize itself in images accessible to consciousness. The application of the theory of affect to this model makes it possible to show that these processes can be interpreted not in terms of mechanical repetition, but in terms of living, developing production and reproduction that, thanks to psychoanalysis, can change its modality. Affect also turns out to be a suitable tool for interpreting the post-war art of the 20th century, particularly the works of the CoBrA group, that demonstrates a peculiar reading of horror against the backdrop of military trauma. The concept of affect as a source of creativity echoes the explorations of CoBrA artists and their belief that every being needs a productive expression of vitality.