Howard Slater

Anomie / Bonhomie & Other Writings Howard Slater

In this, his first book, Howard Slater extemporizes around what Walter Benjamin could have meant by the phrase 'affective classes'. Rather than be restricted by an academic approach Slater is inspired by the possible implications of Benjamin's 'messianic shard' and is led towards a therapeutic micro-politics by way of a mourning for the Workers' Movement and a grappling with the 'becomings of capital'. The essay, Anomie/Bonhomie, is the set piece of this book which also features tributary texts and poems drawn from the past ten years. These supplementary texts approach such themes as exodus, species-being, surrealist precedents, poetic language and the possibilities for collective 'affective' practices to combat capitalism's colonization of the psyche.