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Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation
Since its publication twenty years ago, Brian Massumi's pioneering Parables for the Virtual has become an essential text for interdisciplinary scholars across the humanities. Massumi views the body and media such as television, film, and the internet as cultural formations that operate on multiple registers of sensation. Renewing and assessing William James's radical empiricism and Henri Bergson's philosophy of perception through the filter of the postwar French philosophy of Deleuze, Guattari, and Foucault, Massumi links a cultural logic of variation to questions of movement, affect, and sensation. Replacing the traditional opposition of literal and figural with distinctions between stasis and motion and between actual and virtual, Massumi tackles related theoretical issues by applying them to cultural mediums as diverse as architecture, body art, the digital art of Stelarc, and Ronald Reagan's acting career. The result is an intriguing combination of cultural theory, science, and philosophy that asserts itself in a crystalline and multifaceted argument.
This twentieth anniversary edition includes a new preface in which Massumi situates the book in relation to developments since its publication and outlines the evolution of its main concepts. It also includes two short texts, “Keywords for Affect” and “Missed Conceptions about Affect,” in which Massumi explicates his approach to affect in ways that emphasize the book's political and philosophical stakes.
This twentieth anniversary edition includes a new preface in which Massumi situates the book in relation to developments since its publication and outlines the evolution of its main concepts. It also includes two short texts, “Keywords for Affect” and “Missed Conceptions about Affect,” in which Massumi explicates his approach to affect in ways that emphasize the book's political and philosophical stakes.
408 pages, Paperback
First published March 19, 2002
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About the author
Brian Massumi
46 books117 followersBrian Massumi is Professor of Communication at the University of Montreal. He is the author of several books, including What Animals Teach Us about Politics and Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation.
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
May 4, 2013
countergravitational, hyperconnectability, copresence, indeterminate givenness, overpresence, periodicity, multiplex, hypermutable, factoidal, event-space, mesoperception, trans-situational, quasi-causality, quasi-corporeality, event-transivity, transversality, ur-idea, infolding, asymmetrical symbiosis, possibilization, transindividual, emergent redivergence, combinatoric, humanity-particle, involutionary, precession, autotransformative, fabulation, extensile mutuality, worlding, peripheralization, integrative subsumption, indistinction, insensate, deactualization, incipiency, monosensual, endoreduction, superempirical, intermodal, superposition, infraempirical, protostandard, exoreferential, overcoding anexact, transpositionality, hyperspace, biogram, peri-personal, hypersurface, supermodulatory, onto-topological, translogical, endo-reduction, genitivity…
Only a small fraction of the convoluted jargon deployed in Massumi's arsenal, which, paired with his liberal use of italics, conveys an overall emphatic, quasi-inspirational visionary pathos that does not grip me as much as it probably should. Maybe I'm just growing jaded after reading too many texts stylistically similar to this one, but I envision Massumi as a passionate scholar who whose excitations from his own epiphanies constantly release dopamine while triggering the urge to urinate/defecate. Not without empathy do I scoff at the author, for I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't accuse myself of making the same mistake of assuming my readers are as excited as I am about some obscure philosophical insight (or worse, merely reframing some old problem in some new way). Today's scholars might benefit from a little self-parody, perhaps even sincerity to the point of self-critical neurosis. "The sublime is a step removed from the ridiculous" Adorno says. I only need to step into the text from a slightly diff angle to parse out the "profound" insights, but I'm finding myself too turned off by the sentimental "fluff." Maybe 80% of this text is "fluff" worth skimming through while 20% is substance. I would find it more tolerable if Massumi spent less time inspiring with recycled/re-appropriated terminology and more time critically expanding on ideas that merit further explanation.
My disappointment stems in part from the fact that I love the outside sources Massumi brings together—namely Deleuze, though to a lesser extent: Bergson, Simondon, James, Spinoza, Derrida, and Benjamin. I sympathize completely with the need for a discussion of virtuality centered around affect, movement, and sensation. In fact, I'd go so far as to espouse them as crucial concerns for any aesthetic or phenomenological enterprise today. Fortunately, Massumi serves as only one of several scholars applying Bergsonian/Deleuzian conceptions of virtuality to contemporary contexts (e.g. new media theorists such as Mark D. N. Hansen.) In short, I agree with Massumi's cause but not his application or his methodology. I've heard enough scholars harangue Reagan, American football, and violent video games.
In passing, I'll note a few interesting points here and there worth mentioning:
* The extension of Bergson's eros (the latent capacity in matter, the tendency towards life, "as if matter possesses a yearning that is causally active in seizing upon a chance opportunity for the emergence of mind." to borrow the words of Lawrence Vogel) to technological evolution—technology of the body in particular, drives towards a potential, an unknown form like a flower towards sunlight. These ideas are reflected by later technologists like Steven Johnson and Kevin Kelly (http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiola...). From the macrocosmic perspective, technological development looks like an organic force.
* The notion that VR (virtual reality) reifies the virtual implicit in actuality by making the tension between "appearance" and "reality" all the more apparent. Nowhere does this seem more apparent than in cyberspace (in Gibson's sense of a collective dream), which drives towards and impossible communion between the two. This idea is only implied by Massumi in a footnote on Stelarc's "Movatar" in pp. 274-6. On that note, Massumi rightly draws a sharp distinction between the virtual (the almost) and virtuality, which popular cultural tends to confuse.
* The associations of the personal with one's sense of ownership, with volitive control: "For phenomenology, the personal is prefigured or 'prereflected' in the world, in a closed loop of 'intentionality.'" (191). Massumi somewhat obfuscates the personal in intentionality by referring to it in terms of affect.
* Pages 200-1, Massumi argues that sameness (eidos) necessarily entails change, which he includes in the body: "Nothing is all and only what it is. A body present is in a dissolve: out of what it is just ceasing to be, into what will already have become by the time it registers that something has happened…A body does not coincide with its present. It coincides with its potential…Anything that endures varies. Anything that varies in some way caries the continuities of its variations."
* Situating the real between the affective surprise and the effective expected: "Reality is not fundamentally objective. Before and after it becomes an object, it is an inexhaustible reserve of surprise. The real is the snowballing process that makes a certainty of change." (214) This of course comes from Deleuze, but then again the entire text is a Deleuzian project.
Only a small fraction of the convoluted jargon deployed in Massumi's arsenal, which, paired with his liberal use of italics, conveys an overall emphatic, quasi-inspirational visionary pathos that does not grip me as much as it probably should. Maybe I'm just growing jaded after reading too many texts stylistically similar to this one, but I envision Massumi as a passionate scholar who whose excitations from his own epiphanies constantly release dopamine while triggering the urge to urinate/defecate. Not without empathy do I scoff at the author, for I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't accuse myself of making the same mistake of assuming my readers are as excited as I am about some obscure philosophical insight (or worse, merely reframing some old problem in some new way). Today's scholars might benefit from a little self-parody, perhaps even sincerity to the point of self-critical neurosis. "The sublime is a step removed from the ridiculous" Adorno says. I only need to step into the text from a slightly diff angle to parse out the "profound" insights, but I'm finding myself too turned off by the sentimental "fluff." Maybe 80% of this text is "fluff" worth skimming through while 20% is substance. I would find it more tolerable if Massumi spent less time inspiring with recycled/re-appropriated terminology and more time critically expanding on ideas that merit further explanation.
My disappointment stems in part from the fact that I love the outside sources Massumi brings together—namely Deleuze, though to a lesser extent: Bergson, Simondon, James, Spinoza, Derrida, and Benjamin. I sympathize completely with the need for a discussion of virtuality centered around affect, movement, and sensation. In fact, I'd go so far as to espouse them as crucial concerns for any aesthetic or phenomenological enterprise today. Fortunately, Massumi serves as only one of several scholars applying Bergsonian/Deleuzian conceptions of virtuality to contemporary contexts (e.g. new media theorists such as Mark D. N. Hansen.) In short, I agree with Massumi's cause but not his application or his methodology. I've heard enough scholars harangue Reagan, American football, and violent video games.
In passing, I'll note a few interesting points here and there worth mentioning:
* The extension of Bergson's eros (the latent capacity in matter, the tendency towards life, "as if matter possesses a yearning that is causally active in seizing upon a chance opportunity for the emergence of mind." to borrow the words of Lawrence Vogel) to technological evolution—technology of the body in particular, drives towards a potential, an unknown form like a flower towards sunlight. These ideas are reflected by later technologists like Steven Johnson and Kevin Kelly (http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiola...). From the macrocosmic perspective, technological development looks like an organic force.
* The notion that VR (virtual reality) reifies the virtual implicit in actuality by making the tension between "appearance" and "reality" all the more apparent. Nowhere does this seem more apparent than in cyberspace (in Gibson's sense of a collective dream), which drives towards and impossible communion between the two. This idea is only implied by Massumi in a footnote on Stelarc's "Movatar" in pp. 274-6. On that note, Massumi rightly draws a sharp distinction between the virtual (the almost) and virtuality, which popular cultural tends to confuse.
* The associations of the personal with one's sense of ownership, with volitive control: "For phenomenology, the personal is prefigured or 'prereflected' in the world, in a closed loop of 'intentionality.'" (191). Massumi somewhat obfuscates the personal in intentionality by referring to it in terms of affect.
* Pages 200-1, Massumi argues that sameness (eidos) necessarily entails change, which he includes in the body: "Nothing is all and only what it is. A body present is in a dissolve: out of what it is just ceasing to be, into what will already have become by the time it registers that something has happened…A body does not coincide with its present. It coincides with its potential…Anything that endures varies. Anything that varies in some way caries the continuities of its variations."
* Situating the real between the affective surprise and the effective expected: "Reality is not fundamentally objective. Before and after it becomes an object, it is an inexhaustible reserve of surprise. The real is the snowballing process that makes a certainty of change." (214) This of course comes from Deleuze, but then again the entire text is a Deleuzian project.
April 28, 2017
When Parables for the Virtual burst onto the philosophical scene at the turn of the millennium, it did so as if a bombshell lobbed from an alien world. Against the reigning spirit of the time which spoke in terms of signs, discourses and 'subject positions', Parables presented an alternate universe in which the interlaced notions of movement, affect, event, and sensation were to be taken seriously as vectors of philosophical investigation. While the groundwork was laid down by those like Gilles Deleuze and Gilbert Simondon in the years preceding, Massumi staked his claim to be among the first to show - really show, rather than tell - what awesome and fantastical territory both philosophy and cultural studies could find itself in when viewed through the lens of these powerful ideas.
From the theatrics of Reagan to the art of Stelarc (the bloke who grew an ear on his arm - look him up), from the anomalies of science to the rigors of high theory, Parables plunges all these and more into dizzying mix of performance and argument, illustration and staging - of what? Of a world composed by the singular and the unique, the irreplaceable, ungeneralizable quality and 'glow' that marks all existence and leaves philosophy - if not us all - perennially in a state of wonder. It is to this world that Parables draws our attention, over and against those who would instead insist upon its formulaic reproducibility, its parsing into the bloodlessness of the general and the particular, deprived of the fringes of excess and the eruptions of singularities that accompany its being.
At stake in fact is nothing less than a defense of the 'supra-empirical' - a defense of the reality of that which is not (yet) actual, but nonetheless undeniably real: tendencies, potentialities, virtualities and relations, which, as much as tables, chairs and planets, count among the furniture of the world. Although in some sense taken right out of the Deleuzian playbook (who referred similarly to a 'superior empiricism'), Massumi's achievement here is to give these ideas concrete grounding in the universe of the everyday - not abstraction but 'lived abstraction' is what marks the territory here. Consider his wonderful discussion of a game of football (or soccer, to please the Americans), in which every element is given dynamic standing: goalposts 'induce', the ball 'catalyses', kicks are 'expressions', fans 'individuate'; in movement, in relation - in process - a parable of the world at large indeed.
Finally, a necessary word about the language here. As anyone with even a passing knowledge of Massumi will attest, his prose is... one of kind. The writing arcs from idea to idea like a lightning sprawl of electric light, threading concepts through concepts and weaving thoughts through examples in a way that can leave a reader gasping in its frenzied trail. Less though an index of Gallic grandiloquence than a surging of urgent inventiveness demanding to be made equal to the philosophical creativity within. It's anything but easy (at times, downright exhausting), but then again, it's nothing like anything else either. The fact is, reading Parables today, it nonetheless remains a beacon and a signpost for all those who continue to wonder what a philosophy of the future might yet look like.
From the theatrics of Reagan to the art of Stelarc (the bloke who grew an ear on his arm - look him up), from the anomalies of science to the rigors of high theory, Parables plunges all these and more into dizzying mix of performance and argument, illustration and staging - of what? Of a world composed by the singular and the unique, the irreplaceable, ungeneralizable quality and 'glow' that marks all existence and leaves philosophy - if not us all - perennially in a state of wonder. It is to this world that Parables draws our attention, over and against those who would instead insist upon its formulaic reproducibility, its parsing into the bloodlessness of the general and the particular, deprived of the fringes of excess and the eruptions of singularities that accompany its being.
At stake in fact is nothing less than a defense of the 'supra-empirical' - a defense of the reality of that which is not (yet) actual, but nonetheless undeniably real: tendencies, potentialities, virtualities and relations, which, as much as tables, chairs and planets, count among the furniture of the world. Although in some sense taken right out of the Deleuzian playbook (who referred similarly to a 'superior empiricism'), Massumi's achievement here is to give these ideas concrete grounding in the universe of the everyday - not abstraction but 'lived abstraction' is what marks the territory here. Consider his wonderful discussion of a game of football (or soccer, to please the Americans), in which every element is given dynamic standing: goalposts 'induce', the ball 'catalyses', kicks are 'expressions', fans 'individuate'; in movement, in relation - in process - a parable of the world at large indeed.
Finally, a necessary word about the language here. As anyone with even a passing knowledge of Massumi will attest, his prose is... one of kind. The writing arcs from idea to idea like a lightning sprawl of electric light, threading concepts through concepts and weaving thoughts through examples in a way that can leave a reader gasping in its frenzied trail. Less though an index of Gallic grandiloquence than a surging of urgent inventiveness demanding to be made equal to the philosophical creativity within. It's anything but easy (at times, downright exhausting), but then again, it's nothing like anything else either. The fact is, reading Parables today, it nonetheless remains a beacon and a signpost for all those who continue to wonder what a philosophy of the future might yet look like.
August 30, 2007
Completely changed my life, not just academically, but personally, socially, poetically...
March 16, 2015
The kind of theoretical text that makes you wonder: "Interesting, but are humans this complex or are we just fooling ourselves that we are this intriguing?".
October 12, 2019
Massumi’s Parables is kind of a unique text: while retaining an exceptionally human account of the socius and its relation to the body and motion, it still deviates wildly from the usual, formal analysis of what the body is, and virtuality of the socius. This amounts to an adoption of a Spinozo-Bergsonian perceptive from which potentiality is replaced by virtuality, displacement by motion, and knowledge by affect. In this regard Massumi’s work is joyous, important and special; a crucial contribution to theory.
The position the text seeks to occupy is that of conceptual play, a series of trial, which, by negative feedback, seeks to introduce a new field of useful concept. This is a double edged sword: on the one hand it is noble and inviting, harboring a revolutionary horizon more attractive than most of what is happening in philosophical literature; on the other hand, it produces a meandering, aimless, and seemingly endless text. The parables are a nice structural idea, but they fails to provide the urgency and force that moves the text, and the reader with it, through itself. Ironically, “Parables for the Virtual” fails to do what the virtual is tasked to do — be the motor of motion, the stream of creation, of actualization.
The position the text seeks to occupy is that of conceptual play, a series of trial, which, by negative feedback, seeks to introduce a new field of useful concept. This is a double edged sword: on the one hand it is noble and inviting, harboring a revolutionary horizon more attractive than most of what is happening in philosophical literature; on the other hand, it produces a meandering, aimless, and seemingly endless text. The parables are a nice structural idea, but they fails to provide the urgency and force that moves the text, and the reader with it, through itself. Ironically, “Parables for the Virtual” fails to do what the virtual is tasked to do — be the motor of motion, the stream of creation, of actualization.
December 17, 2012
With regards to the intention of the author to offer the reader the gift of headache, this book is clearly successful because it made my head throb with pain. But equally I must say that I feel this headache is a gift, because it opens the possibility to review Deleuzian thought in altenative ways and has opened up many possibilities . Thank you very much, it has been received.
August 24, 2013
Only read relevant chapters. An awesome book that proposes tons of scintillating questions and a new paradigm of thinking about humanities and science.
December 26, 2014
chapter 8 will follow me forever
August 3, 2011
Massumi here strikes out from his Deleuzian base to new, relatively unbroken ground. I was impressed with his ambition. At times he is unabashed in his creation of a new vocabulary for describing the phenomena he is exploring, namely 'movement, affect and sensation,' as the title sets out. This work will be indispensable in the future to others working on the same problematic Massumi takes up here.
As a student of architecture, I found this work challenging and provocative for its implication on building design, if not my consciousness as a whole. It has changed the way I view my experiences. I can't think of a more ambitious goal for a work of philosophy!
As a student of architecture, I found this work challenging and provocative for its implication on building design, if not my consciousness as a whole. It has changed the way I view my experiences. I can't think of a more ambitious goal for a work of philosophy!
October 29, 2018
Massumi's Parables for the Virtual might be a dense text for anyone new to phenomenology, but his ideas on analogues, ideality, potentiality, the virtual, time, and space make this book well worth reading for anyone interesting in deconstructing "the [implictly universal] body's" relationship with space. Although Massumi's gestures towards some forms of alterity, this book does not interrogate the role ability, race, gender, etc. affect this relationship at any substantial length.
August 1, 2025
bold book, starts off by setting out an aim, an exploration of what Massumi calls the “middle terms”
The “middle terms” are movement and feelings; the direct, unfiltered link between the body and the changes it undergoes in its environment. These are the raw, affect, pre-thought pulses that carry intensity from displacement or into transformation.
Each chapter is a “parable,” from Reagan’s disorienting film scene to Stelarc’s cyborg experiments, each showing how pre-thought affective "jolts" ripple beneath everyday experience
The book’s strength lies in its treating bodies, images, and technologies as co-creative agents of feeling. Whether analysing color patches that pulse with “too-blue” intensity or mapping the "biograms" of architectural spaces, Massumi keeps us grounded in a moment-to-moment description. Though occasionally dense, the parables provide very interesting readings
The “middle terms” are movement and feelings; the direct, unfiltered link between the body and the changes it undergoes in its environment. These are the raw, affect, pre-thought pulses that carry intensity from displacement or into transformation.
Each chapter is a “parable,” from Reagan’s disorienting film scene to Stelarc’s cyborg experiments, each showing how pre-thought affective "jolts" ripple beneath everyday experience
The book’s strength lies in its treating bodies, images, and technologies as co-creative agents of feeling. Whether analysing color patches that pulse with “too-blue” intensity or mapping the "biograms" of architectural spaces, Massumi keeps us grounded in a moment-to-moment description. Though occasionally dense, the parables provide very interesting readings
September 30, 2019
Completed after reading Agamben’s Coming Community- shines when synthesizing with his definition (agambens) of the example- becomes pretty unrelenting with its sprawling connections and rapid introduction of new concepts. Still prefer affect theory pared with poetry I.e. Berlant/Stewart and Moten’s politics which provide something more concrete for the community to come
October 21, 2021
playful and intricate, pushes against the furthest edges of thought. flipping philosophy into politics, looping back into science, and extending it through the arts. recommend at least two readings of this.
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October 4, 2022“Philosophy is the activity dedicated to keeping wonder in the world” (260). Granted, sometimes what I was wondering was "what in the world is Massumi on about?" but this is a lovely notion and indeed much of Massumi's book is strikingly lovely.
April 15, 2024
Ok this is good. There are some nice ideas. And he obviously understands Deleuze. But there is a stylistic shortcoming - he seems to take writing as a narcissistic endeavor - so long as he understands it! He does not seriously contemplate how his writing comes across to others.
November 3, 2018
Heavy reading, that demands you take your time with it.
June 16, 2022
Wild and impenetrable - most twisted, but intensely enjoyable to understand and unpack.
Read
May 9, 2025i have had to read 'the bleed' almost six times now so even though i've only really skim read the rest of the book (bar some bits on synesthesia) i am considering this logged, for my sanity
March 10, 2024
Ok if I am like marking books I haven't read in their entirety then fine let that be the case, then this fits; I read the first 60 pgs for my Blackness and Affect class cool asf. Honestly idk what oberiano was on last sem cuz even this class and my infinity philosophy class which r supposed to be hard and reading-intensive are nowhere NEAR last sem like that shit was genuinely insane. This sem my BnA class is like 100pg of critical theory a week? Not that bad tbh. And infinity philosophy is like only like 60 pgs of galileo or wtv (omg I should mark that I read that!). Bust last sem??? Fucking 300 pages a week w Menace to Empire? And 200 pages of Said + 2 articles?? That was like 150-250 pages approx. per week. Lowk missed it though, can't believe she's going on leave THATS SO ILLEGALLL. Anyway: read pg. 6 where Massumi resolves Zeno's paradox in a cool asf way actually I lowk think abt that a lot.
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April 7, 2020I stumble across Massumi while i am researching Deleuze, and I think Massumi gave a lucid commentary. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/u...
I stop in 30s page and skim though some chapter, because I found it is complex to digest upon heavily explanatory tone and repeating arguments, when I expect more illuminate insight. But I believe he is theorising virtual, affect, sensation etc, poststructural terms into psycho-cultural account, and tackle some ago question, prior-posterior question into a original dialogue that stimulate it to academic-researcher?
I stop in 30s page and skim though some chapter, because I found it is complex to digest upon heavily explanatory tone and repeating arguments, when I expect more illuminate insight. But I believe he is theorising virtual, affect, sensation etc, poststructural terms into psycho-cultural account, and tackle some ago question, prior-posterior question into a original dialogue that stimulate it to academic-researcher?
Read
August 22, 2008Gotta love a book where the author writes of his intention to be headache-inducing in the introduction...one day I'll finish this one!
December 20, 2007
esp chapter 2 & 3
March 22, 2012
Absolutely breathtakingly brilliant. Your mind will be blown.
September 11, 2016
Review published in Criticism 46.1 (2004): 145-150
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews