Journal of Philosophy of Emotion Volume 6, No. 2, 2025 (Winter) Commentary Affectivity, Continuity, and Separation Miguel José Paley Fordham University, NY, USA Paley, Miguel José. 2025. “Affectivity, Continuity, and Separation.” Journal of Philosophy of Emotion 6, no. 2: 23-29. https://doi.org/10.33497/2025.winter.4. Abstract: This commentary explores the issues of separation and continuity in Marjolein Oele’s E-Co-Affectivity. I begin by providing a summary of what makes the book unique and its important achievements before moving on to a critical discussion of Oele’s concept of temporality. There, I claim that an overemphasis on the continuity between an organic being and the material interfaces that constitute it might be responsible for essential confusions in the understanding of time. My commentary begins by using Bergson’s philosophy to distinguish two common views on time and then argues that in several instances, Oele’s descriptions of temporality are in fact describing space rather than time. As Bergson shows us, affect and emotion must be understood as qualities of experience rather than quantitative forms of presence. I then conclude by arguing that E-Co-Affectivity might benefit from further thinking about separation and auto-affectivity as essential features in the process of affectivity. Keywords: affectivity, Bergson, separation, duration, temporality, space Over the past few decades, the notion of affectivity has garnered increasing attention from all corners of academic life. Today, theoretical engagement with affectivity and its conceptual possibilities can be seen in fields as varied as philosophy, neuro- science, feminism, psychoanalysis, film studies, and many more. The apparent centrality and conceptual possibilities inherent in the notion of affectivity have even spawned the standalone field known as affect theory. Within these varied fields, however, certain basic assumptions regarding the nature of affectivity can usually be found. Affect- ivity, for the most part, is understood as a physical and psychological event that marks an experiencing subject or community. In many cases, affectivity is further determined as a social phenomenon, one whose occurrence importantly marks subjects’ social and political lives. Marjolein Oele’s (2020) new work, E-Co- Affectivity, is an important contribution to the field if only because of its entirely original approach. E-Co-Affectivity doesn’t simply eschew focus on people like Spinoza and Deleuze (Spinoza 2020, Deleuze and Guattari 2008), it in fact takes the un- usually radical step of considering affectivity through an analysis of material surfaces and what it Miguel José Paley © 2025 Author email: mpaley1@fordham.edu CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 23