Extended Deadline | Call for Papers for the May 2026 Issue of Mídia e Cotidiano | Dossier “Consumption, Affects, and Subjectivities”

2025-10-06

Due to instability on the journal’s website, Revista Mídia e Cotidiano has extended the deadline for the dossier “Consumption, Affections, and Subjectivities” until January 23, 2026. 

The journal Mídia e Cotidiano has a new call for papers open until January 15, 2026, for the second issue of 2026 (scheduled for publication in May 2026). The theme of the dossier is: “Consumption, affects, and subjectivities.” The dossier will be edited by Patrícia Burrowes (UFRJ), Mariângela Toaldo (UFRGS), and Pedro Henrique Conceição dos Santos (UFF). We look forward to your contributions, and remind you that the Open Section remains available.

Dossier: “Consumption, affects, and subjectivities”

In capitalist society, marketing was the first to perceive the power of affects (not in the sense of emotions, but of affects and percepts—indeterminate, pre- and trans-individual intensities, as developed in Deleuze and Guattari, 1996), multiplying and updating the modes of their capture by investing in the production of subjectivities for consumption. Perhaps for this reason, Deleuze (1992) considered this the new form of control and warned of the dangers of the “joys of marketing.” At the same time, Guattari (1992) proposed that an “aesthetic power of feeling” was becoming crucial in contemporary collective assemblages of enunciation.

Persuasive content is structured by exploring human passions through constructed imaginaries that promise the fulfillment of needs in the pursuit of achievements. The information, images, and ideas we constantly receive are affective artifacts that activate the force of desires in order to move us in suggested directions. The persuasion machine aims to mobilize needs and desires through the consumption industry of goods and services, brands and content, permeated by models of personalities, behaviors, values, beliefs, lifestyles, among others (Bauman, 2008).

Given the reality we experience daily, identifying consumerism as a place that assumes excessive importance in life is an arduous task. Through its seductions, the capitalist world attracts with promises of dreams easily attainable through acquisition. As Fraser (2009) points out, its cunning lies in creating adherence to different ways of life and even to their contradictions.

In a moment of reflection, we ask ourselves whether, and how, the promotion of consumption at all these levels truly allows for the fulfillment of people’s needs, wants, and desires. How do these promises of fulfillment seek to affect our experiences and reactions to external stimuli? What types of assemblages and interactions have emerged from this intensity (affect) to feed certain agencies and establish emotional connections with people, among them, and with the world (Massumi, 1995)? Which subjectivities have been stimulated: reproductions of sociocultural and media conditioning; tendencies toward transformation; triggers and developments of critical ways of thinking about what is received; investments in capacities for choice and invention; pursuits of living autonomy and strengthening collective potency?

Recently, collective assemblages capable of mobilizing affects and percepts in directions divergent from consumerism seem to be emerging—assemblages that could give consistency to universes of value and existential territories in which other ways of life might flourish.

This dossier is interested in offering a critical perspective to discuss the traps into which we collectively sink, encompassing the three dimensions of Ecosophy—mental, social, and environmental (Guattari, 1993)—as well as pointing to the cracks and lines of flight that could constitute other worlds.

The proposal of this dossier is to open space for studies, research, and experiences that address the issue of affects in their relationship with consumption and subjectivity, in the modes proposed and used by the media and consumption industries, and/or in productions, ways of life, communicational expressions, etc., that deal with the affect–consumption–subjectivity triad, aiming at new subjectivations. The idea is that the articles bring records, questions, implications, and proposals regarding the approach to affect from one or both perspectives.

Among the main expected topics, we highlight:

  • Theorization on affects and percepts, mobilizing emotions and feelings
  • Modes of affective operations orchestrated by the media industry (information and disinformation, expanded advertising, entertainment, etc.) for the promotion of consumption
  • Micropolitics of affection: affects, production of subjectivities, potency, and powers
  • The dimension of affects and percepts and their interconnections with consumption in physical and/or virtual spaces
  • Games, affects/percepts, and playfulness in world-building
  • Activation of affects/percepts for dissident subjectivations
  • Modes of affective operations and consumer literacy

References

BAUMAN, Zygmunt. Vida para o consumo: a transformação das pessoas em mercadorias. Rio de Janeiro, RJ: Jorge Zahar Ed., 2008.

DELEUZE, Gilles. Conversações, 1972-1990. São Paulo: Editora 34, 1992.

DELEUZE, Gilles; GUATTARI, Félix. Mil Platôs – Capitalismo e Esquizofrenia, Volume 3. São Paulo, SP: Editora 34, 1996.

FRASER, Nancy. O feminismo, o capitalismo e a astúcia da história. Mediações, Londrina, v. 14, n. 2, p. 11-33, jul./dez. 2009.

GUATTARI, Félix. Caosmose: um novo paradigma estético. São Paulo: Editora 34, 1992.

GUATTARI, Félix. As três ecologias. Campinas, SP: Papirus, 1993.

MASSUMI, Brian. The Autonomy of Affect. Cultural Critique, Minneapolis, n. 31, p. 83-109, 1995.