ABSTRACT
Moving beyond the current research on “immersion” in cultural and media studies, we take an affect theoretical approach to consider different phenomena of immersion as new techniques of power that modulate individuals through the selective intensification of their affective potentials. Focusing on two main examples, contemporary performance installations and Human Resource Management, we address social micro-situations of immersion that completely involve the subject – temporally, bodily, affectively, and cognitively – on the basis of their affective dispositions. Furthermore, we argue that immersion, as a mode of dense situational involvement within everyday workspaces as well as within artistically framed social interactions, is to be regarded as a modality of subjectivation and power that operates in the register of affective relations.
