ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the notion of affect, and Whitehead’s notion of lures for feeling, through empirical examples from Ho Chi Minh City traffic. The chapter describes atmospheres, constituted from rhythms, forms, intensities, and resonances, as fluid infrastructures that profoundly influence the emergence and maintenance of patterns of practices and the ‘decisions’ of traffic users. Viewed from this perspective, the ontological dichotomy separating subject and object is subsumed into the event, constituted by subjective forms and modes of relations that belong as much to the nonhuman as the human. Such a perspective is especially relevant for the analysis of this unique traffic system, which is governed by overlapping sets of both formal and informal rules, navigated through, often subtle, gestures, and tendencies.
