Affect and political economy

This is an interesting review by the excellent Doug Henwood of the Left Business Observer of Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine. Notice the role affect plays in Henwood's story:

The Morning in America election of 1984 was about an exhilarating boom. Though the boom was uneven and crazy, and came after a deep recession, it was real enough to be believed by enough people to keep the story going.
....
Sure enough, the application of the Friedman agenda raised profit rates and ended the great inflation—though it put the working class into a semipermanent state of anxiety, which was part of the point. That does suggest a permanent shock strategy is part of the system’s normal operating procedure, not an extraordinary event.

It's enough to make you think Keynes was onto something with his talk of "animal spirits"!