Mood work and political spaces: A consideration of the relationship between affect and political collectivity in grassroots urban activism

Abstract

This essay, based on a ‘militant ethnography’ of the small radical grassroots activist group Our London,¹ outlines the importance of mood in developing political collectivity in oppositional politics. Applying Gilbert’s notion of affect as key to sociality, Highmore’s discussion of mood and mood work and Dean’s concept of affective infrastructure, I develop an account of Our London’s activities, and in particular its organisation of public events, that argues for the production of mood in political spaces as key to mobilising political collectivity. The significance of this work is in showing how oppositional political practices, as opposed to mere rhetoric or discourse, can develop forms of political collectivity and action; this is also a study of how forms of class politics can be performed and practised despite the difficulty of articulating such politics discursively – or even conceptualising society in class terms – in the context of a fragmented, neoliberal, post-Fordist city like London.