The feeling of the incommensurable: Lawrence Grossberg on affect and incommensurability

Abstract

This essay analyzes Lawrence Grossberg's work on the concept of commensuration, and especially his suggestion that we face a generalized crisis in our mechanisms for commensurating values. In making explicit the ways in which Grossberg's reflections on commensuration connect with his recent assessment of the contemporary social landscape in the United States particularly the affective landscape that he describes in his work on the election of Donald Trump-I suggest that Grossberg's approach is, in part, distinguished by its attentiveness to the affective dimensions of commensuration (and of incommensurability). It can thus be contrasted with many previous approaches to commensuration, which view it exclusively as a problem at the level of practical reason, focusing on how we adjudicate between different bearers of value and how we justify, or give reasons for, our choices among them. Although such questions are also present in Grossberg's work, I argue that his writings contain a subtle treatment of the moods, attitudes, and tacit dispositions that characterize what if feels like to live through significant breakdowns in established logics of measure and comparison. Following Grossberg, I claim that having an adequate account of this affective dimension is crucial if we are to construct political alternatives that can address the felt sense of crisis in American political life.

‘“Demo” and “cracy”’: music, trust, and authentication in Mexico’s 2018 elections

“…Scholars of culture have aired critiques of the limitations of the familiar 'transnational language of politics' (Tadiar 2009, p. 21); critiqued the substitution of political debate with charisma (e.g. Grossberg 1992, Lipsitz 1994; and aired anxieties about the implications of 'incommensurability' for political deliberation (Spielman 2019). The concepts of personal and systemic authentication explored in this article fall on different sides of this faultline; each implies a different vision of democratic cultures, and music's role within them; and neither has straightforward, predictable effects or affordances.…”

“…This has effects on musical livelihoods: democracy in Mexico has long been costly (Lomnitz-Adler 2001, p. 78) and elections constitute a periodic source of income for many musicians. The prevalence of campaign song raised questions about the 'commensurability' (Spielman 2019) of the democratic process in Mexico. Campaign song could be understood as a culturally specific feature of Mexican democracyalthough cultures of campaign song are, in fact, witnessed in new or fragile democracies throughout the world (e.g.…”