Disformations

Reviews / Votes

Through a series of intriguing examples from literature, cinema, and contemporary arts, Jirsa's book takes readers on a delightful cross-disciplinary journey into affectively driven generative deformations. Passionate and erudite, Disformations's claim about the performative force of affects will be much debated in the contemporary media theory. * Pietro Conte, Associate Professor in Aesthetics, Ca' Foscari University of Venice, Italy * In this astonishingly inventive and wide-ranging book, Jirsa expertly traverses the domains of literature, painting, cinema, and video art for figures that push the formal limits of representation-the face destroyed by war, wallpaper patterns, the garbage dump, the empty chair-and thus reveal the dynamic force of affect at work in the secret heart of all formation. Arriving in the turbulent wake of the so-called affective and formal turns, Jirsa's media-philosophical concept of disformation brilliantly shows us a new way through the all-too familiar impasses of both. This book should be read by anyone interested in thinking deeply about the affective operations of form in our contemporary mediated moment. * Abraham Geil, Senior Lecturer of Film Studies, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands * The central project of Disformations: Affects, Media, Literature is to reactivate the vital question of the affective operations of aesthetic objects. Through close readings of a range of fascinating figures-from empty chairs to wallpaper patterns-Jirsa insists on treating representational limits neither as ineffable nor as deficient, but instead as generative processes that expose the speculative potential of disturbances to form. * Eugenie Brinkema, Associate Professor of Contemporary Literature and Media, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA * Disformations is admirable for its erudite close readings and unexpected comparisons that illuminate one another in a manner likely to engage both specialized and nonspecialized readers with different degrees of familiarity with literary and media studies, art history, and cinema. * Discourse: Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture *