ABSTRACT
This chapter reflects upon the problematique of critical engagement and indignation by considering it against the backdrop of post-politics and post-truth. Specifically, it focuses on the role of affect in maintaining the status quo, arguing that our contemporary predicament is paradigmatic of conflict replacing reason as the correlate of the dominant power. It concomitantly contends that today’s critical paradox is predicated upon both the manufacture of outrage, confusion and despair as well as their employment as a hyper-governmental dispositif. Embracing the radical imperative to social change, the chapter advocates a transvaluative move beyond reactive impulses and self-preservative instincts. In this, it emphasises the necessity of overcoming our contemporary fixation on ‘effects’, championing the notions of ‘becoming’ and ‘use’ over those of ‘being’ and ‘action’. It concludes by insisting on the indispensability of radical embodied critique for a new affirmative mode of life.
