http://www.21cmagazine.com/issue2/massumi.html
This article was brought to my attention in another course, a tat bit long but i felt it was really very insightful.
I extracted bits and pieces from it…:
“the way that a concept like hope can be made useful is when it is not connected to an expected success — when it starts to be something different from optimism — because when you start trying to think ahead into the future from the present point, rationally there really isn’t much room for hope. Globally it’s a very pessimistic affair, with economic inequalities increasing year by year, with health and sanitation levels steadily decreasing in many regions, with the global effects of environmental deterioration already being felt, with conflicts among nations and peoples apparently only getting more intractable, leading to mass displacements of workers and refugees … It seems such a mess that I think it can be paralysing. If hope is the opposite of pessimism, then there’s precious little to be had. On the other hand, if hope is separated from concepts of optimism and pessimism, from a wishful projection of success or even some kind of a rational calculation of outcomes, then I think it starts to be interesting — because it places it in the present.”
Like in pans labyrinth, the magic of the film to me, was not about questioning whether the world Ofelia was experiencing was real or make believe but HOPE,
the various quests or mini adventures that she goes on, every little victory she has just makes her stronger and give her strength. (not to mention pissing the hell out of CAPTAIN Vidal):)
While watching Pan’s Labyrinth i found myself thinking of Roberto Benigni: Life is Beautiful 1997.
Personally, being incline to family relation/ties film esp those during the war, those damn tear jerking, heart string pulling films, you walk out with not just a fuzzy feeling but HOPE that things can be better and that we should always be grateful for our family.
Also, not to try to take on the world, but begin with oneself, and work our way outwards to perhaps one day being able to make the world a better place.
Other extracts from the Brian Massumi Interview
“When you affect something, you are at the same time opening yourself up to being affected in turn, and in a slightly different way than you might have been the moment before. You have made a transition, however slight. You have stepped over a threshold. Affect is this passing of a threshold, seen from the point of view of the change in capacity. It’s crucial to remember that Spinoza uses this to talk about the body. What a body is, he says, is what it can do as it goes along. This is a totally pragmatic definition. A body is defined by what capacities it carries from step to step. What these are exactly is changing constantly. A body’s ability to affect or be affected — its charge of affect — isn’t something fixed.”
