Onflow and consumption: Affect and first encounters

Abstract

In this paper, we are concerned with how we might account for the under-appreciated relation of intensities that flow through and around consumption experiences. In pursuing clarity, researchers have tended to treat consumer experiences as bounded and discrete, segregated from the messy unfolding of life around them. In this work, we look to acknowledge this everyday unfolding of the experience to appreciate how we might articulate the more-than-representational excess of seemingly un-spectacular, quotidian moments of encounter, and how we might attune ourselves to the constant unfolding of consumer experiences. In addressing these concerns, we produce a series of narratives designed to reveal both the ecologies and processual registers of experience. These narratives seek not just to inform, but also to evoke and provoke. Moreover, they work to engage readers with the messiness of everyday life attempting to give form to phenomena that are essentially formless and in continuous circulation.