Deleuze and the Cinemas of Performance
Powers of Affection
Published on 25. June 2008
Book
Hardback
248 pages
978-0-7486-3525-2 (ISBN)
Description
This book offers a unique reconsideration of the performing body that privileges the notion of affective force over the notion of visual form at the centre of former theories of spectacle and performativity. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze's philosophy of the body, and on Deleuze-Spinoza's relevant concepts of affect and expression, Elena del Rio examines a kind of cinema that she calls 'affective-performative'. The features of this cinema unfold via detailed and engaging discussions of the movements, gestures and speeds of the body in a variety of films by Douglas Sirk, Rainer W. Fassbinder, Sally Potter, Claire Denis, and David Lynch. Key to the book's engagement with performance is a consistent attention to the body's powers of affection. Grounding her analysis in these powers, del Rio shows the insufficiency of former theoretical approaches in accounting for the transformative and creative capacities of the moving body of performance.Deleuze and the Cinemas of Performance will be of interest to any scholars and students of film concerned with bodily aspects of cinema, whether from a Deleuzian, a phenomenological, or a feminist perspective.Key Features*The first study of the interface between Deleuzian theory and film performance.*A sustained consideration of the links between the body of performance and the body of affect.*A reevaluation of central concepts in earlier film theory-from fetishistic spectacle and performativity to Brechtian distanciation, sadomasochism, and narcissism.*An analysis of the relation of the performative body to a feminist politics.*New readings of classical melodramas as well as contemporary independent cinemas.
Reviews / Votes
A highly original and insightful contribution to the study of both Deleuze and film studies. -- Ian Buchanan, editor of Deleuze Studies When Deleuze's books on cinema appeared in 1983 and 1985, some questioned the usefulness of his abstract theoretical distinctions for practical film criticism. With the appearance of Deleuze and the Cinemas of Performance, skeptics need doubt no more. In this compelling analysis of works by Sirk, Fassbinder, Potter, Denis and Lynch, Elena del Rio has combined elements of performance theory, feminism and various Deleuzian concepts to form an elegant analytic tool capable of illuminating the specific elements of a wide range of films. Without seeking to supplant the methodologies of cultural critique and psychoanalysis, del Rio has argued persuasively for the existence of an affective dimension of cinematic images that exceeds and supplements the categories of these critical approaches. This is a truly innovative book that points the way toward the continuing development of a multifaceted Deleuzian approach to film criticism. Highly recommended. -- Professor Ronald Bogue, The University of GeorgiaMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Edinburgh
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
Weight
538 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-7486-3525-2 (9780748635252)
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Schweitzer Classification
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Book
05/2012
Edinburgh University Press
€41.50
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E-Book
06/2008
1st Edition
Edinburgh University Press
€0.00
Available for download
Person
Elena del Rio is Professor Emerita of Film Studies at the University of Alberta, Canada. Her essays on the intersections between cinema and philosophies of the body in the areas of technology, performance, and affect have been featured in journals such as Alphaville, Angelaki, Camera Obscura, Canadian Journal of Film Studies, Deleuze Studies, Discourse, Film-Philosophy, Image and Narrative, Necsus, The New Review of Film and Television Studies, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Science Fiction Studies, Studies in French Cinema, and SubStance. She has also contributed to numerous edited volumes on the films of Atom Egoyan, Michael Haneke, and Rainer Fassbinder, and on topics such as Asian exploitation film, cinema and cruelty, the philosophy of film and new media, film noir, film phenomenologies, and Deleuze and cinema. She is the author of The Grace of Destruction: A Vital Ethology of Extreme Cinemas (Bloomsbury, 2016) and Deleuze and the Cinemas of Performance: Powers of Affection (Edinburgh University Press, 2008).
Content
Introduction: Cinema and the Affective-Performative; 1. Animated Fetishes; 2. Choreographies of Affect; 3. Dancing Feminisms; 4. Kinesthetic Seductions; 5. Powers of the False; Conclusion.