Commentary
Affective Communality
Florian Grosser
University of Chicago, IL, USA
Grosser, Florian. 2025. “Affective Communality.”
Journal of Philosophy of Emotion 6, no. 2: 6-14. https://doi.org/10.33497/2025.winter.2.
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Abstract: In E-Co-Affectivity, Marjolein Oele presents a comprehensive philosophical account of pathos. Analyzing distinct, yet interconnected spheres of affectivity, she persuasively argues that pathic phenomena or experiences underlie and enable the emergence, existence, and individuation of living beings as well as the (trans)formation of communal constellations between them. In my commentary, I first raise questions concerning interpretive and argumentative strategies employed by Oele. Subsequently, I comment on some of the political implications and limitations of Oele’s study: in particular, on the underlying assumption that pathos has an equalizing effect on affective communality; and on the resulting relative lack of discussion of unequal degrees and kinds of vulnerability among those who are affected due to differences in social-political status and positionality.
Keywords: affectivity, pathos, response, community formation, distribution of vulnerability
Marjolein Oele’s (2020) study E-Co-Affectivity: Exploring Pathos at Life’s Material Interfaces charts distinct, yet interconnected, spheres of shared affectivity and of resulting communal constellations in an original and illuminating manner. This commentary will first summarize what it considers to be some of the key achievements of Professor Oele’s philosophical analysis of pathos (while more literal translations include ‘suffering,’ ‘emotion,’ ‘passion,’ or ‘incident,’ I will follow Oele’s understanding of the term in the sense of ‘affectivity;’ refer to Oele 2020, 4). Subsequently, it will present several clarificatory questions regarding interpretive decisions made and argumentative strategies employed in her book. Finally, critical questions concerning some of its political implications will be raised from the perspective of my own research interests in the political and social philosophy of community formation under conditions of alterity; correspondingly, what follows primarily focuses on chapters 4 and 5.
AGAINST APATHY
E-Co-Affectivity demonstrates a remarkable synthetic power as it integrates a broad range of phenomena—from the worlds of plants, animals, and humans—and philosophical approaches—from
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Aristotle’s psychology, hylomorphism, and theory of perception to Heidegger’s analytic of Dasein, as well as to positions in contemporary New Materialism—into a cogent argument that marks affect as irreducible to a merely psychological understanding in terms of emotion and that establishes pathos-with as central to the emergence, existence, and individuation of living beings. The fine-grained descriptions of bird feathers or the human skin are not only based on attentiveness to the phenomena and on a careful engagement with philosophical texts, but also draw on the insights of current research in the natural sciences and, thus, productively cross disciplinary boundaries. Oele’s transdisciplinary considerations avoid a kind of phenomenological thinking that pits itself against science, lend additional support to her argumentation, and also prevent a misreading of E-Co-Affectivity as a merely speculative endeavor.
Another virtue of the study consists in her innovative re-readings of Plato, Aristotle, and Heidegger, which repeatedly challenge and correct anthropocentric, essentialist, and static tendencies in the conceptual frameworks within which questions of pathos and of koinōnia (association, community) are approached. For instance, Oele’s discussions of Heidegger bring out the significance of pathic moments—in particular, of Geworfenheit (thrownness) and Befindlichkeit (disposition), or in Hubert Dreyfus’s felicitous translation, “where-you’re-at-ness” (Dreyfus 1991, 168)—as constitutive for his understanding of Dasein. At the same time, she shifts emphasis from the individual to the communal, and argues for an enlarged understanding of “Being-with” that encompasses the entire living world; in doing so, she stresses the processual, material, communally intertwined emergence of beings rather than concentrating on constancy/permanence and independence/self-standingness (as is the case in Heidegger’s notions of Bodenständigkeit and Selbstständigkeit respectively) as requirements for successful self-appropriation and fulfilled identity. Also, she fleshes out Heidegger’s repeatedly schematic relational ontology in detailed descriptions of mediating elements such as, for instance, soil pores. Lastly, she re-describes transgenerational moments of being-, or rather becoming-in-the-world, not only in terms of a heritage to be repeated or retrieved, but in terms of traumas to be worked through. Oele’s rejection of the notion of earth–which is substituted by soil as an ungrounded ground; Judith Butler speaks of precarious or contingent foundations (refer to Butler 2015, esp. 119)—for community out of affect seems to be shorthand for her critical repositioning of Heidegger’s phenomenological thinking.
What is at stake in such re-readings is more than exegetical matters since Oele strives to disclose new conceptual resources adequate to the task of designating the ever-shifting, ever-fragile unfolding of affective communality. Comprising of terms such as middle-voice, pregnant city, or fault bars that are of both descriptive and metaphorical power, the vocabulary thus developed undermines sharp dichotomies between subject and object, activity and passivity, and interiority and exteriority. It allows for an improved, phenomenally fitting articulation of (inter-)corporeally or, more broadly, materially anchored pathic-responsive forms of agency that are largely beyond the purview of modern and contemporary debates on subjectivity or individual and collective intentionality in theory of action, social ontology, and other areas of philosophical inquiry. Moreover, this vocabulary, in connecting and thereby reconfiguring the semantics of oikos (household), koinōnia, and pathos, questions predominant conceptions of what constitutes a community: against the common assumption that genuine, i.e. cohesive and durable communities are predicated on substantial similarities or commonalities between their members, Oele demonstrates how communal existence, habitation, and interaction are not only initiated but continually shaped by multiform occurrences of being-affected—i.e., of materially experiencing-, undergoing-, and suffering-with—which “do not stop at the boundaries of an individual psyche” (Waldenfels 2015, 190 [my translation]).
In these considerations on what could be called uncommon communality the political dimension of E-Co-Affectivity is most obvious. In showing how being-co-affected or suffering-with-others can institute and sustain communal relations, and not only across lines of interpersonal and intercultural difference but between species, Oele displace
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traditional models of community: instead of short-circuiting community with contraction (Plato and Aristotle’s understanding of full political membership qua citizenship or Heidegger’s considerations on modes of primordial belonging as hin- and zugehören, i.e. as belonging to and belonging together, are cases in point), she insists on the importance of contact for the (trans)formation of communities. With an eye to today’s debates in political philosophy, it seems that her criticism of conceptions of communities as largely self -enclosed, impermeable, and exclusive associations applies as much to communitarian thought as it does to strands of “weak cosmopolitan” contractarian—and considering Oele’s reflections, this term can now be heard in a different register—theorizing in liberalism. Putting discussions on speciesism and on politico-moral obligations regarding the preservation of biodiversity and the protection of animal rights on a new, phenomenologically informed footing, she thus confronts us with the a-pathic constitution of our own personal and societal forms of life.
TOWARD A “NEW US”
A set of clarifying questions concerns interpretive strategies that inform the treatment of Aristotle and Heidegger’s works in E-Co-Affectivity. While Oele’s general point about the necessity of “decenter[ing] Anthropos” (Oele 2020, 150) is crucial and elaborated with great care, her remarks on the realization of new e-communities—which appears to remain a primarily human task—are less clear. Returning to the “double-event of pathos and response” (Waldenfels 2015, 20 [my translation]) at the heart of community formation with a focus on potential human contributions to such a realization, I suggest that significant resources to better understand pathic moments can be found in Heidegger while Aristotle provides important insights for a more precise grasp of responsive moments.
In her book and elsewhere (refer to Oele 2012), Oele concentrates on Heidegger’s considerations on pathos in his lecture courses on Aristotle’s Physics and Rhetoric and on Befindlichkeit in Being and Time. With that, embodied forms of being-affected or being-moved and a situatedness within a relational context, an embeddedness in a world that precedes sovereign willing and choosing are marked as integral to Dasein’s individuation. However, inscribed in Heidegger’s early writings are tendencies that run counter to the project of developing a post-metaphysical conception of subjectivity. To give a rough indication, such tendencies become evident in notions like resoluteness which, in the context of Heidegger’s subsequent problematic politicization or ideologization, culminate in an embrace of a will to self through and with which a collective subject, the people, immunizes itself to come into its own. I would therefore submit that writings from later phases of Heidegger’s work offer additional and possibly more productive insights for a re-conception of both subjectivity and intersubjectivity (for instance, in his interpretation of Friedrich Hölderlin’s poem Remembrance or in the essay The Thing). For instance, the phenomenal and conceptual analyses of Betroffenheit (in the sense of being hit and being struck), of Geschick (not in the sense of a fate but of a sending that addresses and elicits answers), or of Ding (as that by which mortals are be-dingt, be-thinged, or conditioned) in opening up and displacing individual Dasein, as well as Being-with, stress their pathic background, emergence, and constitution; and, therefore, transport a more unequivocal recognition of what might be designated as extra-subjectivity. Following Roberto Esposito’s investigations, one may also wonder whether the way in which Heidegger relates thing and no-thing could help to further substantiate that the (un-)grounding condition of communality is one of “a common non-belonging” (Esposito 2010, 139)—and perhaps also lend additional support to the reflections on the mediating, generative capacities of intervals and interstices.
While Oele masterfully draws on Aristotle’s De Anima and De Partibus Animalium to reject dualistic understandings of subject and world—her discussion of the in-between phenomenon of aesthetic experience is especially insightful in this regard—and to mark affectivity as an essential enabling condition for all forms of living community, an equally sustained engagement with some of his practical-philosophical writings would also be valuable. Aristotle’s account of gradual virtue
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acquisition in Nicomachean Ethics strikes me as particularly fruitful with regard to the question how certain modes of responsive human involvement (becoming manifest in new sensitivities, practices, and ways of living) can take root; modes that express, shape, and make durable an encompassing, non-anthropocentric koinogenesis (community creation or formation) that, albeit neglected, dismissed, and suppressed, springs from sym-pascho (being-affected together) and is always already on the way. Even though Aristotle’s account is firmly situated in the intersubjective realm—or, more critically put, in the narrow political realm of civic coexistence—it sheds light on the temporality of what Oele, with Jacques Rancière (see Oele 2020, 159), calls a revolution of the senses: rather than resulting from a sudden turnaround, modified beliefs, attitudes, and comportments (such as required for the new, enlarged consensus Oele appeals to) can only be brought about through a steady progression from mimetic to internalized praxeis (actions) and, subsequently, to a reliable hexis (stable disposition or habitus) or ethos (character, moral character) that is transmitted in widening communal circles.
What is more, this process is not only affectively triggered (by the emotive pathos of shame) and affectively accompanied (by the interpersonal pathos of letting oneself be guided by role models who have broken free from habitual regimes); it also seems to culminate in the achievement of a kind of responsive mastery that is enabled by that which affects one. This is illustrated by the mesotes-doctrine or doctrine of “the mean” which, rather than demanding rigid rule-following asks for appropriate responses to particular situations one is confronted with—to what or who specifically affects one, and how (the discussions of, e.g., philia [friendliness] and praotes [gentleness or humility] are especially rich in that respect). If we read Aristotle in this way, virtue acquisition appears as a “middle-voiced” phenomenon in which patient and author are no longer opposites but ultimately coincide. What makes the phronimos, i.e. the practically wise person, the paragon of practical virtue is their ability to “skillfully cope” with that which affects them and to “straightway” (i.e., without having recourse to principles) respond (refer to Dreyfus 2017, 27-44). There can be no doubt that Aristotle’s anthropocentrism is to be rejected and that his list of virtues must be revised (for instance, we might add to it mindfulness of, attunement to, or respect for all that is living) to allow for a redescription of the phronimos as an e-communal rather than a politico-social virtuoso. Yet, due to the emphasis on the gradual character of profound change, on the centrality of interpersonal contact for the growth of modified habits, and on a responsive (in contrast to a sovereign) freedom to plastically reconstitute ourselves, we might find in Aristotle a promising, subtly revolutionary model that can contribute to addressing some of Oele’s questions about the path toward “a new community to be” (Oele 2020, 158).
To make these queries about interpretive decisions amount to more than just remarks about omissions, I want to address the issue of modes of agency that are correlated with human affectivity in a more general and direct way. Although Oele’s point that the focus of her study is on sym-pathesis, not sym-poesis—that is: on the passive rather than the active dimension of a communal “we”—is well-taken, some further specifications do seem necessary—not only because the importance of forming plural, inclusive alliances or of making kin (Donna Haraway) is explicitly invoked, but also because of certain tensions in the terminology used. Such tensions are manifest in the semantic fields of cadere (to fall) on the one hand, and of capere (to take or to seize) on the other: while notions of the (co-)incidental and accidental—as that which falls on or that which befalls—strongly connote (sym-) pathic modes of agency, notions such as receptivity and participation point toward (sym-)poeitic modes. This is not to deny that Oele’s reflections productively break open the binary opposition passive/active. However, her study could gain an additional measure of cogency if demarcations were outlined between these modes—or between phenomena and concepts of reaction and of response—that, although related, have differing implications and orientations. Might it, for instance, be possible to critically distinguish such modes of (non-)agency according to the extent to which they are middle-voiced? Might they be mapped onto certain spontaneously emergent, discursively ex-
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pressed, or institutionally secured prosthetics and structures—or onto the moral vocabulary of trust, recognition, solidarity, and responsibility? Or might their specific constitution be brought out more fully with respect to varying degrees of freedom they allow for?[1]
A last clarificatory question has to do with the status of and strategy behind the argument for an encompassing pathos-with. It appears as if Oele’s considerations on new forms of communality out of affectivity play out on a descriptive and, albeit to a lesser extent, also on a prescriptive level. Against the background of broader issues regarding the normative status of phenomenology, the question arises how normatively charged and binding affective communality is meant to be in E-Co-Affectivity. The sustained emphasis on ontogenesis and plasticity mitigates tendencies to normatively ground such communality in physis (nature); yet, it might have been helpful to qualify appeals to natural beings and natural place in greater detail and to explicitly problematize Aristotelian implications of, e.g., an allegedly natural hierarchical order of the oikos (household) as subordinate to the polis (city-state). On a related note, it is not evident if, how, and what kind of normativity can be deduced from phenomena like soil pores or behavior patterns like allopreening that occur in the natural world. For instance, the claim that soil can “point the way […] toward solidarity with other beings, toward unexpected assemblages and gatherings” (Oele 2020, 162) and, ultimately, to a “new us” (Oele 2020, 154) is not invulnerable to objections regarding the is-ought fallacy.
INFLICTIONS OF PATHOS: POLITICO-HISTORICAL LIMITS OF AFFECTIVE COMMUNALITY
A set of interrelated critical questions concerns issues of the scope or radius of a performatively realized us “beyond the Anthropocene” (Oele 2020, 139), the differential distribution of pathic experiences within it, and of its constitution—i.e., its mechanisms of inclusion/exclusion. Attempts to link political community to affectivity have been faced with considerable problems. Political theorists like Nancy Fraser have argued that such a linking by means of the so-called “all-affected principle” is neither desirable nor workable since, ultimately, everyone is affected by everything in one way or another: as a consequence of what is sometimes referred to as the butterfly effect, they hold, it is impossible to determine who is to be considered a community member with corresponding claims to rights, participation, or voice (refer to Fraser 2008). I am, however, less interested in such structural considerations than in specific problems of applying Oele’s model of affective community (trans)formation to our contemporary moment.
Against the assumption of pathos as an equalizing phenomenon that seems to underlie her account, it is important to recognize that social-political status and positionality essentially determine by what and to what degree individuals, groups, or, on a global level, societies are affected. This differential distribution of being affected and vulnerable and, conversely, of capacities for self-protection, although often veiled behind ideological slogans like “We’re in this together!” has become abundantly clear during the ongoing pandemic. It is also playing out under conditions of climate change where it manifests itself in vastly differing degrees of exposure to, e.g., rising sea water levels or temperatures and their effects on, broadly speaking, life prospects. It is therefore critical to differentiate along the lines of race, gender, class, and age between strong(er) and weak(er) affectivity; between resulting, unevenly scaled strong(er) or weak(er) communal bonds; and between the non-uniform responses given in concrete instances of we-building.[2] As Audre Lorde reminds us, it is not only the expectation that affectivity, qua universal phenomenon, will lead to an equally universal communality that is unwarranted; she also insists on the limits and pitfalls of intersectional conceptions of with-ness and we-ness that remain insensitive to the unique, incomparable character of experiences of vulnerability (refer to Lorde 2007, esp. 114-123).[3]
In addition to examining its varying degrees, it is also necessary to further investigate kinds of (co-)affectivity, in particular with regard to matters of social justice. If we pay attention to the sources of that which “affects” (from afficere, literally “to
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do-to”) individuals and groups, we do not only find horizontal constellations—that is, a- or supra-subjective phenomena, such as natural and technological disasters or somewhat anonymous “sendings,” like what Oele calls the “capitalocene” (Oele 2020, 149). Instead, we also find vectorial, that is, inter-subjective and social constellations of pathos. In this latter case, pathos, and often pathos as suffering, is inflicted by some on others in direct interactions, as well as through discursive and institutional structures—the manifold expressions of individual, collective, and systemic anti-Black racism in the United States and Europe are cases in point.
That affectivity is not always adequately grasped as a background condition of individual and communal life that simply occurs and persists, is demonstrated in Christina Sharpe’s In the Wake. In a historical and political concretization of the well-established phenomenological topos of embodied situatedness in environments or worlds, Sharpe spells out what this means for Black life “in the wake of slavery, in spaces where we were never meant to survive, or have been punished for surviving and for daring to claim or make spaces of something like freedom” (Sharpe 2016, 130)—in a “weather” or “total climate” that is anti-Black (Sharpe 2016, 21). On this basis, she rejects notions of encompassing community that threaten to relativize, neglect, ignore, or invalidate transgenerational experiences of being affected by that weather. For her, “we formations” that respond to this unique pathos through “wake work” as well as an “ethics of care” and an “ethics of seeing” essentially unfold in the mode of the one-by-one and in alliances among those who are most evidently co-affected (refer to Sharpe 2016, esp. 130-134). This implies that in-group orientation and auto-solidarity take precedence over out-group relations and hetero-solidarity; it also implies that mutuality (of trust and recognition) cannot be expected, let alone required, since it is overdemanding, psychologically and otherwise, for all those who have lived and are still living under the material conditions of “the ship” and “the hold” (refer to Sharpe 2016). Considering this “materially sedimented past which continues to weigh on all [. . .] ways of being” (Slaby 2020, 173), skepticism and active resistance to being absorbed into a new (e-)communal we are not only likely to occur, but also justified.
What complements an ethics of care in-between those who are tangibly co-affected might well be attitudes, comportments, and practices of antagonism toward those who are not similarly affected, let alone those who are implicated in or directly responsible for the inflicted pathos of violent discrimination, oppression, and exploitation. If we follow Frantz Fanon (1963), such antagonism is legitimate and, more importantly, of existential significance. As Fanon poignantly shows in his openly revolutionary anti-colonial writings, the experience of exercising power over and using force against their oppressors contributes to finding ways out of “zones of non-being” and constitutes an almost cathartic (inter)subjectivity repair mechanism for the previously colonized (refer to Fanon 1963, 39-95).
None of this is to deny that Oele’s reflections on co-affectivity present a crucial challenge to the sovereignty-paradigm that determines much of the modern and contemporary philosophical discourse on political community—in fact, her work is central for developing a cogent critique of, as well as conceptual alternatives to, the models of contractual consent, freedom of association, and self-determination that are all too often deployed in the service of a democratic right to exclude. Neither is it to suggest that Oele is unaware of the material conditions and political, social, aesthetic, and other regimes in place that perpetuate and thrive on division, exclusion, and injustice—this is apparent in her remarks on the urgent necessity of “a new skin politics” (Oele 2020, 133). Yet, it must be acknowledged that encompassing, even global affective communality cannot immediately spring from perceptions and experiences of exposure and vulnerability, of loss and threat. Instead, what does spring from affectivity is a multiverse of heterogeneous, locally and temporally circumscribed communities of varying scope with hardly commensurable pathic experiences and, consequently, with vastly differing responsive techniques, orientations, and priorities.
Whether common experiential ground and revolutionary purpose can be found under
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conditions of such plural communality remains an open question. If it is the case, it is only conceivable as a temporally extended emergence mediated by practices of translation or, as Merleau-Ponty suggests in his reflections on the formation of a collective revolutionary subject, as some molecular process that, independent of the choices of free subjects and irreducible to fate, slowly lets existential projects merge (refer to Merleau-Ponty 2005, esp. 515-518).
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Notes
[1] To be sure, this is a responsive rather than sovereign freedom, that is, a freedom that does not rest on having control over whereby one is affected but on the creative repertoire of how to cope with being-affected.
[2] On Waldenfels’s account, what is required are nuanced distinctions between degrees of we-building that go along with the transition from interpassion, to interattention, and, finally, to interaction (refer to Waldenfels 2015, 94).
[3] Accordingly, Lorde emphasizes the importance of deliberately and strategically building alliances to “relate across difference” and “within equality” (refer to Lorde 2007, 122-123).
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References
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Dreyfus, Hubert L. 1991. Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, Division 1. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Dreyfus, Hubert L. 2017. “Could Anything Be More Intelligible Than Everyday Intelligibility? Reinterpreting Division I of Being and Time in the Light of Division II.” In Hubert Dreyfus—Background Practices: Essays on the Understanding of Being, edited by M. Wrathall, 27-44. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198796220.001.0001.
Esposito, Roberto. (1998) 2010. Communitas: The Origin and Destiny of Community. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Fanon, Frantz. (1961) 1963. The Wretched of the Earth. Translated by C. Farrington. New York, NY: Grove Press.
Fraser, Nancy. 2008. Scales of Justice: Reimaging Political Space in a Globalizing World. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Lorde, Audre. (1984) 2007. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Trumansburg, NY: Crossing Press.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. (1962) 2005. Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by C. Smith. London, UK and New York, NY: Routledge.
Oele, Marjolein. 2012. “Heidegger’s Reading of Aristotle’s Concept of Pathos.” Epoché 16 (2): 389-406.
_____. 2020. E-Co-Affectivity: Exploring Pathos at Life’s Material Interfaces. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Sharpe, Christina. 2016. In the Wake: On Blackness and Being. Durham, NC and London, UK: Duke University Press.
Slaby, Jan. 2020. “The Weight of History: from Heidegger to Afro-Pessimism.” In Phenomenology as Performative Exercise, edited by L. Guidi and T. Rentsch, 173-195. Leiden, NL and Boston, MA: Brill.
Waldenfels, Bernhard. 2015. Sozialität und Alterität: Modi sozialer Erfahrung. Berlin, DE: Suhrkamp.
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Florian Grosser © 2025
Author email: fjgrosser[at]uchicago[dot]edu
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