Entrepreneurial subjectivation and capitalist desire – affective potentials of ‘expressive videography’

In this essay, we explore the productive potential of ‘expressive videography’ in marketing and consumer research by drawing on Deleuze’s and Guattari’s theorisation of desire in capitalism. We illustrate how videography both express and take part in the production of affective capitalist tendencies through the project If Your Heart Wants It — an artistic video montage of scenes and conversations from the entrepreneurial event SLUSH. This allows us to theorise how ‘capitalised subjectivation’ is produced, and how desire for accumulation and competition readily overtakes other social relations by channelling cruel forms of enjoyment. We discuss how videography is well-suited for exploring desiring-production that does not lend itself to subjective meaning-making and direct attention to the dark affective horizons which, arguably, are increasingly subsuming us in ever-deepening semiocapitalist and technological life-worlds.