Emotions can be deliberately engineered and late capitalist industries run a captured emotional engineering

Evidence

Emotions don’t just happen, they emerge out of fields of cause and effect which can be analysed. This means that feelings can be engineered, in a hyperstitional spiral, which has more to do with what Justin Barton calls “lucidity” than with what academic philosophers call Reason. I’m using the term “emotion” rather than “affect” here, very deliberately. Affect as it is now routinely used by academics is pretty much completely opposed to what Spinoza meant by it. The problem begins with Deleuze, and the fatal splicing of Spinoza’s project of emotional engineering with Bergson’s vitalist cult of creativity and unpredictability. It’s hard to think of thinkers more opposed in their fundamental presuppositions and orientations than Spinoza and Bergson — and more or less everything that is wrong with Deleuze, in my view, is tied up with his infatuation with Bergson. It is Bergsonism, rather than Spinozism, which is the true ideology of late capitalism. It’s true that many of the key sciences of late capitalism — libidinaland realityengineering, advertising, branding, media, the happiness industry — are in some sense Spinozistic, but this is a captured Spinozism, an emotional engineering tethered to Capital’s needs, not geared to the production of joy. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1990

Categorization

• QUESTION: Fisher’s split between the term ‘emotion’ and academic ‘affect’ — and his reading of Deleuze as a corrupting splice of Spinoza and Bergson — is provocative and worth chasing against the actual secondary literature on affect theory.
• XREF: Relates to the ‘hyperstitional’ concept from the CCRU/K-punk milieu and Fisher’s later essay ‘The Metaphysics of Crackle’ about affect manipulation; also bridges to his posthumous book Postcapitalist Desire. — connects to: Emotional capitalism exploits emotions’ fleeting performativity, which feelings lack — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New…, 98; Profitable capitalism must forever discover new uncommodified emotions to exploit — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 129; Neoliberalism deploys emotion as a productivity resource once rationality hits its limits — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New…, 104 (+12 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The compressed claim that ‘Bergsonism, rather than Spinozism, is the true ideology of late capitalism’ — with creativity, unpredictability, and vitalist novelty as the commodity form’s own ideology — is a genuinely paradigm-shifting idea that resists summary.

Broader Connections

• MrBeast repurposes the warehouse into controlled emotion-production #exemplifies (0.90) — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 328
• Emotional performance at work becomes commodified labor when feelings are bought and sold. #exemplifies (0.88) — Theresa M. Senft, Camgirls, 105
• Late capitalism replaces the Freudian unconscious with corporate-authored dream spaces #expands (0.87) — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life, 532
• Neoliberalism deploys emotion as a productivity resource once rationality hits its limits #exemplifies (0.85) — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics, 104
• Profitable capitalism must forever discover new uncommodified emotions to exploit #expands (0.82) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 129
• Capitalism structurally requires collective mood swings to function #corroborates (0.80) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 75
• Just-in-time capitalism rewires workers’ nervous systems for perpetual instability #exemplifies (0.80) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 73
• Machines can capture emotional reactions the subject cannot consciously report #exemplifies (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 882
• External inducements can generate genuine emotional bonds where none existed #exemplifies (0.80) — Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 9158
• Communicative capitalism’s micro-enjoyments fragment attention into de-activating anxiety #exemplifies (0.79) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1824
• Emotional capitalism exploits emotions’ fleeting performativity, which feelings lack #expands (0.78) — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics, 98
• Capitalism’s resilience comes from its plasticity in adopting new social forms #corroborates (0.77) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1647
• Emotions can be consumed endlessly whereas things cannot, enabling unbounded consumption #corroborates (0.76)
• Emotions are short-lived and exploitable; feelings endure and resist exploitation #qualifies (0.75) — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics, 98
• Emotions are performative and goal-oriented while feelings need no intentional object #expands (0.75) — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics, 97