Affect worlds and Immanence: A Spinozan Archaeology
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2021-02-02

Affect is gaining traction in archaeological discourse, but few pay attention to its philosophical roots. In this paper I wish to return to Spinoza, a seventeenth century Dutch philosopher who inspired Deleuze’s own ruminations on the concept. In Spinozan terms, affect denotes the capacity to act and to be acted upon, the alteration of a body’s puissanceas it moves through the world. In this sense, affect is present in all relations. Rather than rendering the term defunct, I argue that this ubiquity allows us to articulate why experiences of the shared material realm are empirically different. Spinozan affect encourages us to focus on the immanent nature of things; transcendent types and static forms have no place in a Spinozan archaeology. I propose that this fits well with recent feminist post-humanist works and can open up our understandings of difference in the archaeological record. To this end, I will explore affect worlds in the plantation period in the colonial Caribbean. I argue that affect allows us to communicate how different bodies are constructed through the maintenance of certain relationships of affect, and I will explore why the capacities of a machete can transform as it changes hands.


Yvonne O'Dell, University of Leicester