Pub. date: 19 Apr 2012
In the first book-length introduction to Deleuze’s work on film from a feminist perspective, Teresa Rizzo ranges across Deleuze’s books on Cinema, his other writings, and feminist re-workings of his philosophy to re-think the film viewing experience. More than a commentary on Deleuze’s books on Cinema, Rizzo’s work addresses a significant gap in film theory, building a bridge between the spectatorship studies and apparatus theories of the 1970s, and new theorisations of the cinematic experience. Developing a concept of a ‘cinematic assemblage’, the book focuses on affective and intensive connections between film and viewer. Through a careful analysis of a range of film texts and genres that have been important to feminist film scholarship, such as the Alien series and the modern horror film, Rizzo puts Deleuze’s key concepts to work in exciting new ways.
Introduction \ 1. The Cinematic Apparatus and the Transcendental Subject \ 2. Re-thinking Representation: New Lines of Thought in Feminist Philosophy \ 3. Cinematic Assemblages: An Ethological Approach to Film-viewing \ 4. The Slasher Film: A Deleuzian Feminist Analysis \ 5. The Alien Series: Alien-Becomings, Human-Becomings \ 6. The Molecular Poetics of the Assemblage: Before Night Falls \ Conclusion: A Feminist Cinematic Assemblage \ Bibliography \ Index
Teresa Rizzo, Teresa Rizzo is currently lecturer in film studies at the University of New South Wales,where she also gained her PhD. She has previously taught as Lecturer in Screen Studies at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School.
‘Both an accessible introduction to Deleuze's cinema philosophy and a major advance in feminist film theory, this is a tour de force of lucid and creative thought. Rizzo's focus on the body of the viewer provides a provocative reconfiguration of Deleuze's cinematic taxonomy while opening lines of inquiry beyond the psychoanalytic models and theories of spectatorship currently dominant in film theory. An essential contribution to the field.’
Ronald Bogue, Distinguished Research Professor at University of Georgia, USA and author of Deleuze on Cinema (Routledge)
‘In Deleuze and Film: A Feminist IntroductionTeresa Rizzo presents us with a ‘third Deleuze’, that is a Deleuze who is a cineaste and a feminist. In this way we are given not only a new and rich introduction to Deleuze’s thinking and writing on film, but also a provocative rethinking of his work from the perspectives of gender and film-making. This is an important intervention into the growing body of work on the intersection between Deleuze and cinema.’
Ian Buchanan, Editor of Deleuze Studies
