JM: The notion of affect has become a key concept in a whole range of current discussions from questions of immaterial labour to theories of new media reception. It's a concept that obviously takes many different forms. Can you explain the particular role that affect plays within your thought?

BM: The notion of affect does take many forms, and you're right to begin by emphasizing that. To get anywhere with the concept, you have to retain the manyness of its forms. It's not something that can be reduced to one thing. Mainly because it's not a thing. It's an event, or a dimension of every event. What interests me in the concept is that if you approach it respecting its variety, you are presented with a field of questioning, a problematic field, where the