The Power at the End of the Economy

"Brian Massumi infuses affect, incipient intuitions, dividuation, the detonation of trust, the event, and variations of intensity into shaky neoliberal categories of the individual, choice, interest, and system rationality, exploding the assemblage from the inside. Such a strategy also enables him to probe contagious sites of counterpower often neglected by critics of neoliberalism. A bracing book that exceeds the practices it subverts." - William Connolly, author of The Fragility of Things: Self-Organizing Processes, Neoliberal Fantasies, and Democratic Activism

"For the first time, Brian Massumi develops the concepts of affect and virtuality in relation to the moral-philosophical and political-philosophical traditions that focus on the relation between reason and the passions, as well as in the specific context of what has come to be known as neoliberal capitalism. Here Massumi not only consolidates and condenses the arguments of his previous books, he also thrusts them into new territory in a way that relates to contemporary sociopolitical conditions. The Power At the End of the Economy is an important, and even essential, work." - Steven Shaviro, author of Without Criteria: Kant, Whitehead, Deleuze, and Aesthetics

“Behavioral economists who study the psychology of decision making should engage this study of potential, virtual, and kinetic emotions, given that emotions are what move people to action.  Going beyond Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's Commonwealth and Timothy Wilson’s Strangers to Ourselves, this is a book for those interested in cultural theory. … Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals.” - K. Tölölyan, Choice

“... powerful and convincing in its theoretically innovative, productive intertwining of political philosophy, cognitive psychology and Luhmann’s systems theory.” - Hannah Richter, Constructivist Foundations

"Massumi’s interventions regarding affect, neoliberalism, and politics are undoubtedly original, and provocative. The book pierces to the heart of the neoliberalism’s most basic premises about rationality, self-interest, and economic behavior."  - Anita Chari, Theory & Event