Feeling like a State: Affect and Control in the Age of AI

Many commentators fear that AI enables new levels of surveillance and thus a crisis for liberal democracy. I argue that an obsession with surveillance has clouded other forms of control that are more difficult to notice, operating through the production and circulation of affect. Twenty years ago, the Aarhus Conference published some of the first critical writing on the themes of affect, AI, and control. I return to this groundbreaking work that offers fresh insights for how we understand contemporary governance of people, nature, and regions. This article offers a feminist ethnography to rethink control and pursue avenues for resistance and alternatives, bringing into conversation my observations from research in rural China and the use of AI in population management.