Logic of Affinity

The Logic of Affinity is a concept in political strategy, counterposed to the "logic of hegemony"

Citation

Day establishes an opposition between the "logic of hegemony" and the "logic of affinity." Hegemony, he tells us, is totalizing and state-centered. It operates, equally in either what he likes to term its "(neo)liberal" or its "(post)marxist" variants, by means of demand, representation, recognition, and integration. From the very moment that politics is predicated on the demand, it implies and invokes the existence of a state before which the individual or group constituted in the demand seeks to be represented, and by which it hopes to be first recognized and then integrated. Affinity, on the other hand, begins with Exodus and establishes self-generated (and self-valorizing) communities predicated on a "groundless solidarity" and "infinite responsibility" that are always open to the new and the other." (http://multitude.blogspot.com/2005/11/affinity.html)

More Information

It is mentioned in this commentary, at http://multitude.blogspot.com/2005/11/affinity.html, on a book by Richard Day, "Gramsci is Dead", featured here at http://www.btlbooks.com/New_Titles/gramsci_dead.htm

Blog entry at http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=12

Key Book to Read

Richard Day. Gramsci is Dead. [1]

Citation on the book Gramsci is Dead:

"GRAMSCI'S CONCEPT OF hegemony casts a long shadow over radical political theory. Yet how far has this theory got us? Is it still central to feminism, anti-capitalism, anti-racism, anarchism, and other radical social movements today?

Richard Day shows how most contemporary movements attempt to develop new forms of self-organization that can run parallel-or as alternatives-to existing forms. They follow a logic of affinity rather than hegemony.

From Hegel's concept of recognition, through theories of hegemony and affinity, to Hardt and Negri's reflections on Empire, Day translates academia's theoretical and philosophical concerns to the politics of the street." (http://www.btlbooks.com/New_Titles/gramsci_dead.htm)