In a dialogue with fellow scholars Thijs Lijster and Robin Celikates, Rosa imagines resonance as a descendant of Emile Durkheim’s notion of “collective effervescence,” the ecstasy shared by participants in music, sports, dancing, or spirituality. Rosa believes that attuning ourselves to this intense feeling of invigorating camaraderie is a necessary alternative to measuring, mapping, analyzing, and exploiting the world. In this sense, resonance is the interpersonal sibling of the more inward-looking concept of mindfulness. It’s like having a dozen feelers placed on the things and people that surround you so that you vibrate collectively and share an experience.
Saved by Keely Adler and
Resonance—there is no wisdom without it. Resonance is a natural phenomenon, the shadow of import alongside the body of fact, and it cannot flourish except in deep time.
When positivity resonance moves between you and another, for instance, the two of you begin to mirror each other’s postures and gestures, and even finish each other’s sentences.