In this, his first book, Howard Slater extemporizes around what Walter Benjamin could have meant by the phrase `affective classes`. Rather than be restricted by an academic approach Slater is inspired by the possible implications of Benjamin`s `messianic shard` and is led towards a therapeutic micro-politics by way of a mourning for the Workers` Movement and a grappling with the `becomings of capital`. The essay, Anomie/Bonhomie, is the set piece of this book which also features tributary texts and poems drawn from the past ten years. These supplementary texts approach such themes as exodus, species-being, surrealist precedents, poetic language and the possibilities for collective `affective` practices to combat capitalism`s colonization of the psyche.