Vertigo and urgency : affective resonances of crisis

Abstract

Crisis provokes a sense of urgency often experienced as vertigo – the intense disorientation as to where and when one belongs on the temporal timeline of pasts and futures. The nauseating affects of urgency can be located in both crisis as sudden rupture and as chronic condition – the former a cliff-edge moment where a schism in historical continuity induces dizziness and a sense of falling, the latter defined by inescapability and suffocating captivity. This article presents the relationship between crisis, urgency and the concept of vertigo, offering insights from philosophy and social theory. Further, based on ethnography from crisis-ridden Greece, it explores how vertigo orients collective timespaces and affectively fosters imaginative relationships with the imminent future.