Affectivity, and Body/Population

Keeling writes of affectivity as the moment when the awareness of surfaces plunges into the awareness of a sub-surface. The moment when an image makes the viewer react is the moment they are aware of themselves as an individual. So, when images of the BPP roused stirring senses of being “one of them” for black Americans or being called back to join in (as Angela Davis remembers having experienced), is actually also the most individualizing moment. How does the role of affect being essentially one of identifying yourself in turn affect what agentive role can subsequently occur?

I’ve also been noting the frequent and varied use of statistics in our readings. Stats are used to reveal surprising truths about populations that aren’t necessarily visible in lived experience (example: Stokes’ opponent learns of his certain defeat when he sees the statistical breakdown of the precincts yet to be counted, despite being surrounded by apparent success). I’m struck by the similarity between population statistics and DNA definitions of race—both use “objective” and “scientific” means to reveal the hidden truths about the makeup of populations and bodies. How are both these technological processes indicative of a similar tendency to make both bodies and populations both exist simultaneously as body and population? Another way to put this, (keeping in mind Foucault’s concept of biopower and Heidegger as well)—how does technology as a mode of revealing force bodies to exist as populations and populations to exist as bodies?