This paper offers a critique of affect theory using the analytical concept of scale that is made concrete through an ethnography of Pentecostal Christianity and an exploration of current neuroscientific thinking. Affect theory is one recent form of a Western philosophical concern about the loss of agency in modernity, what I call “agency-anxiety.” Affect theorists tend to privilege the sense of freedom gained by immediate and individual experience over the constraints of more extended experiences and collectivity. That is, affect theory often scales its analysis tightly. This paper responds with an ethnography of Pentecostal practice and exploration of work in neuroscience that describes an analytic space in which broader scales can be useful as well. Ethnography scaled beyond the instant reveals that the Pentecostal ideal of surrendering to God in a moment of abandonment often results from a “fake it until you make it” approach; in other words, from extended, effortful, willful practice. This practice leads to the formation of habits and dispositions that allow the attainment of spontaneous rupture. Likewise, neuroscience can scale out its analysis by focusing on dispositions, moods and habits, rather than simply a more immediate view. Further, “scale effects” and emergent properties in scale-to-scale relations undermine reductionism. Finally, because Pentecostals are generally right wing yet also exemplify ruptural practice, it seems that outside of a particular conjuncture, the tightly scaled eruptive moment of affect is by no means per se a productive or (politically) progressive formation. As such, making scale an explicit analytical category might help us to see agency, change, and structure more clearly.

中文翻译：

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规模的影响：西方代理焦虑如何塑造理论，五旬节主义和神经科学如何教会我们以不同的方式思考

本文通过对五旬节式基督教的民族志和对当前神经科学思想的探索，将规模的分析概念具体化，从而对情感理论进行了批判。情感理论是西方哲学关注现代性中代理丧失的一种新形式，我称之为“代理焦虑”。情感理论家倾向于将即时和个人经验所获得的自由感置于更广泛的经验和集体的约束之下。也就是说，情感理论通常会紧缩其分析范围。本文以五旬节实践的民族志和神经科学工作的探索作为回应，它描述了一个分析空间，在该分析空间中，更广泛的规模也可能有用。超越瞬间的人种学研究表明，五旬节派在被遗弃的瞬间屈服于上帝的理想通常源于“伪造直到实现”的方法。换句话说，是经过长期，努力，故意的实践。这种做法导致习惯和性格的形成，使习惯性破裂成为可能。同样，神经科学可以通过关注性格，情绪和习惯来扩展其分析范围，而不仅仅是简单地观察。此外，“比例效应”和比例关系中出现的性质破坏了还原论。最后，由于五旬节派通常是右翼分子，但也代表了断裂实践，因此看来，在特定的时刻之外，紧紧缩放的情感爆发时刻本身绝不是生产性或（政治上）渐进的形式。