Making a Difference Through Atmospheres: The Orange Alternative, laughter and the possibilities of affective resistance

Abstract

The paper focuses on affective resistance with an emphasis on the context in which resistant action emerges, and on the liberating power of laughter. It adopts the approach of ‘affective ethnographic history’ to examine the activities of the Polish oppositional artistic collective, the Orange Alternative (OA), between 1986 and 1989. The OA organized interventions in the streets of Polish cities which engaged the general public as participants. The focus of the interventions was on the creation of affective atmospheres leading to affective transitions in the participants from fear to the lack of fear. The paper contributes to scholarly debates on resistance in three ways: (1) it proposes that resistance and its efficacy should be assessed not in terms of the form of resistance, but through consideration of resistant action in relation to the context of its emergence; (2) it demonstrates how affective resistance operates through affective atmospheres that result in affective transitions to the state of lack of fear; and (3) it reconsiders the significance of laughter as an affective force that has liberating consequences both within a particular resistance assemblage and beyond it.