What follows is a story of affect as a set or series of encounters: affectionate encounters with enemies and allies, often proximate, sometimes more distant, and quite regularly both at the same time. Although this essay moves, in large part, by proper names (Guattari, Deleuze, Lacan, Lyotard, Foucault), it is simultaneously a story of affect's different modes of existence. Each encounter shifts slightly in its emphasis, while progressively navigating through the chief forms – and un-forms – of affect. It should be remembered that these affectional modes (as points, lines, vaporous atmospheres and planes) are, by their nature, perpetually tangled up in one another. However, it always takes far more than two or three to tangle, even if we begin with and between (seemingly) two: Guattari and Deleuze.

Brief prelude: affect as passion, or, when Felix and Gilles met