WikiLeaks Affects: Ideology, Conflict and the Revolutionary Virtual

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the public feelings over WikiLeaks, 1 and demonstrates how affect and emotion, in conjunction with digital culture and social media, enabled shifts in the political. I am using the WikiLeaks controversy, and the storm of public feelings it generated, in order to demonstrate how affective flows can snowball into a revolutionary shift in reality. The order of theoretical sampling and analysis begins with a philosophical discussion of the role of affective structures in mediating the actual and the digital virtual. It then moves on to the interface between ideology and organization in WikiLeaks, as an example of ideological tensions producing affect in relation to that organization. Further, I discuss the interface between hierarchy and networks, such as activist networks against states and global institutions, in order to examine the interfaces between emotion and affect, as the expressive 2 (Shaviro, 2010: 2) catalysts for revolts and uprisings. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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