The Waning of Affect, the End of the Liberal Project, and the Rehearsal of Social Change: A Page from the Millennial Playbook

Abstract

Twenty-five years ago, Fredric Jameson famously announced that we had entered a phase of political paralysis created by a “new depthlessness” (1991, 6) caused by a “waning of affect” (1991, 16). Jameson saw the proliferations of sign without meaning, the emptying out of feeling from cultural production, and the overwhelming of the subject with information without context. If we are unable to grasp state power long enough to challenge it, how can we think about social change? This essay argues that to see that the modernist liberal project of universal humanism is always already dismantled is cause for celebration. Additionally, it examines the underlying assumptions about social change in terms of a static binary of “transgressive” versus “normative.” By examining the Millennial generation's emphasis on experience over outcomes as a possible key to a new idea of social change, particularly through the performative aspects of Black Lives Matter, this essay analyzes affect and its relationship to and to political action.