Making Secular Atmospheres

Abstract The idea of atmospheres as spatially spilled emotions with the power to bodily move people has been the German contribution to the affective turn in academic discourse. In this article, I discuss Hermann Schmitz’ and Gernot Böhme’s ideas on the reception and production of atmospheres in order to argue that their conceptualization tells a “substraction story” that characterizes the secular age for Charles Taylor. The emotional forces that move the felt body [German: Leib ] became atmospheres only once the gods were discounted. Both Schmitz and Böhme refer to the explicit creation of atmospheres in National-Socialist politics, and I present the “Cathedral of Light” performance of the Nazi Party Rallies as paradigmatic for the making of secular atmospheres. On this basis, I discuss the use value of atmospheres for the analysis of material secularities, and its fascist affinities, at least in Schmitz’ rendition.