Tacit Alliances, Not Knowing Toghetherness

A while ago, speaking of alliances, Guattari and Negri stated: “One thing [...] is to reveal new social productive forces and another is to organise them outside and against capitalist and/or socialist structures.” (Guattari and Negri 2010, 94). Translated: an alliance is one thing, its politics quite another.Take the January 6th Capitol rioters, now officially rendered as“patriots”by the seating US President. By all means and measures - even the role of urbanity in it - their coming together speaks of an alliance and one of a multitude of kinds. We do not aim to offer a gratuitous provocation, but a gesture to indicate a question from which to (re)start. Rather than asking what is an alliance, we might query what is in an alliance. What kind of affective capacity engenders the coming together of individualised subjectivities, who might or might not share structural traits (at the class level, gender, ethnicity, and more)?