The article presents a comparative analysis of non-discursive and discursive perspectives on affect, drawing on Peirce’s modalities of experience (Firstness, Secondness, Thirdness). Focusing on the work of Brian Massumi and Margaret Wetherell, the paper demonstrates that these scholars' conceptualizations of affect are fundamentally different. Massumi’s perspective resembles Peirce’s concept of Firstness in the sense that it focuses on the immediacy and unmediated quality of affect. However, also for Massumi, affect is never “raw”: all experience is in-formed by prior “takings-form”. Wetherell’s discursive approach centres practice and negotiation and situates affect within the realm of mediation.