affect

is that which pulls off the impressive act of saying 'nothing' : It has no meaning, no referent, no addressor, no addressee. One says a lot to try to say 'nothing'.

The affect says 'nothing': no meaning, no referent, no addressor, no addressee. One owes words, and lots of them, to the mute nothing of the affect. One says a lot to try to say 'nothing.' And one will never manage to say nothing. The testimony is doomed to fail. Writers like Beckett or Blanchot know this debt that cannot be acquitted once and for all, but which can only be endlessly acknowledged, and acknowledged in writing' (Nouvet 2003:245)

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