Die Kraft der Empörung

Affekte als anti-moderne Ausbruchsphantasien

Abstract

English abstract: The article problematizes the contemporary and mostly affirmative understanding of affective processes of outrage and excess in affect theories by outlining a genealogy from the “Conservative Revolution” (Oswald Spengler, Ernst Jünger) to recent works of Peter Sloterdijk as well as Michael Hardt and Toni Negri. All the different approaches have argumentative intersections in their understanding of the relation between affectivity and corporeality: Bodies and affective outrages are emancipatory forces of opposition and change. Affective forces are considered to challenge the oppressive hegemonic culture and its rationality. Creative forces, the force of life and its potential, affective outrage and excess as such gain esteem. It is Friedrich Nietzsches theory of power which is the link between these theories. The genealogy highlights the simultaneity and dissimultaneity of affect control and affective outrages in modern and contemporary, conservative or rather new right and leftist affect theories and demonstrates the anti-modern tendencies in discursive figures of and political fascinations with outrage and excess.