ABSTRACT
The Grenfell Tower disaster is a perfect example of an affectively rich event that triggered sympathy for the victims of the fire, yet affective solidarity was short-lived, and emotional reorientation where feelings lead to rethinking their politics was rare. The media produced us/them narratives that fostered sympathy for the victims of the fire and residents of social housing, though they were largely ineffective. In this context Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s thesis that a new collective subject would emerge from the persistent narrative of the “underdogs versus those in power” is explored. However, the Grenfell fire illustrates how difficult it is to unsettle these feelings and destabilize political loyalties. More than 30 years of neoliberal governing practices and over 10 years of austerity seriously eroded social housing and dangerously compromised health and safety standards, creating ideal conditions for a coalitional protest group, but stable political identities and existing political institutions and contingency thwarted democratic transformation.
This chapter identifies the shortcomings of the vital materialists (specifically Jane Bennett and William Connolly) who see human and nonhuman assemblages as social actants. To assign responsibility and attribute liability their dispersed theory of agency comes up short. They fail to distinguish the weak agency of things from the strong agency of humans and the effects of sedimented power relations that impeded the formation of new subjectivities that would have lent themselves to cross-class coalitions. My in-depth analysis of this situation reveals how difficult it was to count on emotions and affects to create new political subjectivities. I argue emotional reorientation was incomplete: thwarted by more entrenched political loyalties and years of neoliberal governing strategies.
