affect

unconscious

is not a 'psychic' state but a transcendental concept. It is absolute subjectivity beyond representation, beyond reduplication. It is quite simply a moment of feeling oneself ('se-sentir) in feeling, a process of 'auto-affection' in which the self experiences (rather than reflects on) the self.

is the originary essence of the psyche itself. It is the deeper foundation upon which representation (or, repression) originates.

The vexed question of the relationship between repression and affectthat so troubled Freud is, in Henry's assessment, the 'limit-question ofpsychoanalys'' ( 304). Working at the interstices of Freud's incompletelytheorized opposition between affect and repression, Henry arguesfor affect (or what he sometimes refers to as 'auto-affection'') as theoriginary essence of the psyche itself: affect is the deeper foundationupon which representation (or, phrased more ps)rchically, repression)originates.

is unaffected by representation and is in fact representation's foundation. It is thus the 'unthought' of the history of the philosophy of consciousness. It is that in which psychoanalysis finally gives up its secret.

Because affect (as a kind of 'presencing'' of the body itself)is literally unaffected by representation, it becomes, for Henry, 'the 'unthought'of the history of the philosophy of consciousness. It is affectwhere, as he writes provocatively, ''psychoanalysis finally gives up itssecret .. . . For affect is not merely a drive representative. It is actuallyrepresentation's foundation' ( 30 3) .

is 'nothing unconscious' at all, rather, it is affect, which the language of mere repression is unable to capture.

For Henry, then, affect is less a 'psychic' state than a transcendental concept: it is because of affect that the unconscious is 'nothing unconscious'' at all, but the elusive escape for the language of mere repression. As a transcendental concept, affect manifests itself as a mode of self-appearance or self-immanence, a moment of feelign onself ('se-sentir) in feeling, a process of 'auto-affection' in which the self experiences the self. Henry's affect is pure immanence, absolute subjectivity beyond representation, beyond reduplication.

is pace lacan, not linguistic in nature, but affective. That is, it is bodily rather than linguistic and is in fact the foundation of representation).

Henry's project makes it clear that he opposes Lacan's emphasis on the unconscious as 'linguistic' in favor of an emphasison the unconscious as distinctly affective . . . Henry proclaims thatFreud's virtually forgotten concept of affect between serve as no less than thebasis for an ambitious rapprochement between the discourses of philosophyand psychoanalysis, as a new way of going beyond the 'metaphysics''of the subject that is, beyond the Cartesian cogito as a momentof pure consciousness.'°

Michel HenriThinkers

Michel Henri