The Making of Us : How affects shape collective bodies resisting gentrification

Abstract: This thesis explores how we can think of collective bodies as amalgamations of interplaying affects (i.e., multiplicities), rather than compositions of individuals. Using ethnography as my main method, I study urban activism collectives resisting gentrification in the city center of São Paulo, Brazil. Following affect-based theorizing, I focus on the collective body as a composition of affective intensities. I explore disgust, fear, (dis)comfort, and hope as affective intensities that travel with different orientations, directions, and potencies. I take the position that, through such travelings, bodily surfaces become felt and unfelt. That is, I explore the surfacing of the collective body as a continuous process through the circulation and accumulation of such affects. I also explore how collective bodies become organized as packs and crowds, whilst disputing spaces for consumption within a gentrification process. Whereas packs are seen as a condensed form of multiplicities, crowds are expanded forms of multiplicities. The findings of this thesis then contribute to the marketplace culture literature by exploring how the formation of the collective body is a continuous affective process that unfolds into different forms of multiplicities (i.e., packs and crowds). This study proposes viewing the collective body as a continuous process of affective amalgamation. This study also contributes to extant CCT studies regarding affect and emotions. The findings of this study interlink felt experiences with surfacing effects. That is, I focus the analysis on how affects work in delineating the relation between and of bodies and, thereby, marking what we understand as I, you, us, and them. Thirdly, this study also contributes to discussions regarding space and place in marketing. This study extends the discussion regarding spatial injustices and neoliberal cities, which are driven by wider consumption ideology.