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 Río 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.
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.
- An analysis of the relation of the performative body to a feminist politics.
- New readings of classical melodramas as well as contemporary independent cinemas.
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
Elena del Río is Associate Professor of Film Studies at the University of Alberta, Canada.
