WHEN THE BODY HESITATES, THE WORLD OPENS UP: PHILOSOPHIES OF AFFECTION BETWEEN BERGSON, DELEUZE, AND THE GLOBAL SOUTH

Abstract

This article investigates the concept of affect in the works of Henri Bergson and Gilles Deleuze, articulating their formulations with the contributions of contemporary Brazilian authors—Marilena Chauí, Suely Rolnik, and Vladimir Safatle. The research adopts a qualitative, theoretical, and comparative approach based on philosophical hermeneutics. It starts from the hypothesis that affect, understood as intensity, variation of power, and impersonal event, constitutes a fundamental operator in the critique of modern subjectivity and in the formulation of ethical-political alternatives. In Bergson, affect appears as a vibration of the body's duration and hesitation, inseparable from freedom and memory. In Deleuze, it takes the form of variation of power between bodies, challenging the representational model and inaugurating a politics of creation and difference. The approaches of Chauí, Rolnik, and Safatle update and tension these conceptions in the Brazilian context, highlighting the political dimension of affect as a force of servitude or liberation, a device of capture or resistance, a symptom of suffering or a vector of collective recomposition. The analysis points out that affection is not an isolated subjective phenomenon, but a field of relational forces that traverses the body, desire, and time, offering paths for the reinvention of ways of life. The philosophy of affections thus becomes central to thinking about the critical and creative powers of contemporary experience.