01_IN_AAbad_m&a:Maquetación 1
26/6/08
16:30
Página 70
economically unproductive attitudes and positions are discarded. Consequently, there is an industry of affect that is completely integrated in the contemporary modes of production, an industry that prioritises a series of emotional states and attitudes (well-being, possession, control, satisfaction) and rejects others (altruistic attitudes, feelings of failure or states of misery or feeling uprooted). However, that industry of affect, despite being completely integrated in modes of production, can be challenged by “anti-capitalist” practices, as Hardt points out. The assertion that capital has incorporated and glorified affective labour, and that affective labour is one of the most effective ways of producing value in terms of capital, does not mean that, thus tainted, affect is of no use whatsoever to anti-capitalist projects (90). In fact, affect is crucial for the activation of spheres of sociability whose goal is not necessarily the production of capital, hence the current importance of strategies that elude the standardised creation of affect: they produce affective life and social life that is not programmed by the dominant modes of production. canal*MOTOBOY: digital media and the critique of affect Since May 2007, 12 motoboys who travel the streets of São Paulo during their workdays have been provided with mobile phones that permit them to take photographs and record videos and send them directly to a web page. When they send their files, they can classify them using keywords that they choose themselves, such as “accident,” “forbidden” or “work,” which provides the possibility of building up a flexible, open and negotiable taxonomy of the information they gather that is made available to website visitors. While the public arena, the social meeting place, has evolved since its inception in the 18th century