Argument
Del Río proposes an affective-performative cinema, using the Deleuze-Spinoza body, expression, and capacity to affect in place of performance theory's priority of visual form. Across films by Sirk, Fassbinder, Sally Potter, Claire Denis, and David Lynch, she analyses bodily movement, choreography, speed, and seduction, connecting these microforces to feminist politics. The body becomes an event that redistributes capacities within a scene.
Core question
Is screen performance merely the visible form of identity and narrative, or an affective force prior to meaning that can alter other bodies? How do gesture, speed, dance, and pause produce political relations?
Argument structure
The distinction between representational performance and affect-producing performance organizes the argument. Animated fetishes, choreographies of affect, dancing feminisms, kinesthetic seductions, and powers of the false develop changes in posture, speed, contact, and bodily capacity. Politics concerns what bodies can do and how those capacities increase or diminish.
Related concepts, chapters, and films
Original editions, translations, and access
Deleuze and the Cinemas of Performance: Powers of Affection
English · Edinburgh University Press · 2008
ISBN 9780748635252Original edition detailsNo translation details listed.