Deleuze and the Cinemas of Performance: Powers of Affection

249 Pages·2008·1.13 MB·English

by  Elena del Río

‘A highly original and insightful contribution to the study of both Deleuze and film studies.’
Professor 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 Río 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. This is a truly
innovative book that points the way toward the continuing development of a multifaceted
Deleuzian approach to film criticism. Highly recommended.’ D
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Professor Ronald Bogue, The University of Georgia l
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This book offers a unique reconsideration of the performing body that privileges the notion of
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affective force over the notion of visual form at the centre of former theories of spectacle and e
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performativity. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy of the body, and on Deleuze-Spinoza’s n
relevant concepts of affect and expression, Elena del Río examines a kind of cinema that she D
calls ‘affective-performative’. The features of this cinema unfold via detailed and engaging t
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discussions of the movements, gestures and speeds of the body in a variety of films by Douglas e
Sirk, Rainer W. Fassbinder, Sally Potter, Claire Denis, and David Lynch. Key to the book’s C
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engagement with performance is a consistent attention to the body’s powers of affection.
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Grounding her analysis in these powers, del Río shows the insufficiency of former theoretical m
approaches in accounting for the transformative and creative capacities of the moving body of a
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performance. o
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Deleuze and the Cinemas of Performance will be of interest to any scholars and students of film P
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concerned with bodily aspects of cinema, whether from a Deleuzian, a phenomenological, or a r
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feminist perspective.
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Features m
• The first study of the interface between Deleuzian theory and a
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film performance
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• A sustained consideration of the links between the body of e

performance and the body of affect
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• A re-evaluation of central concepts in earlier film theory – from l
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fetishistic spectacle and performativity to Brechtian distanciation, n
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sadomasochism, and narcissism d
• An analysis of the relation of the performative body to a el PerformanCe

feminist politics r
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Powers of affeCtion
Elena del Río is Associate Professor of Film Studies at the University of Alberta, Canada.
ISBN: 978 0 7486 3525 2
Edinburgh University Press E
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22 George Square in
Edinburgh EH8 9LF b
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www.eup.ed.ac.uk r
g elena del río
Cover Image: The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant © Tango/The Kobal Collection h
Cover Design: Barrie Tullett
M1245 ELENA PRELIMS.qxp:Andy Q7 6/5/08 09:50 Page i
Deleuze and the Cinemas of Performance
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A mis queridos padres Victoria y Enrique
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Deleuze and the Cinemas
of Performance
Powers of Affection
Elena del Río
Edinburgh University Press
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© Elena del Río, 2008
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
22 George Square, Edinburgh
Typeset in Monotype Ehrhardt by
Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and
printed and bound in Great Britain by
Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn, Norfolk
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7486 3525 2 (hardback)
The right of Elena del Río to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Cinema and the Affective-Performative 1
From representation to performance 4
Deleuze and performance: the affective-expressive event 7
Genre and the affective-performative 13
Trajectory 17
1 Animated Fetishes 26
Ruling out expression: feminist theories of spectacle and
performativity 31
Imitation of Life 38
Upward thrust: ideal abstraction 38
Downward thrust: anomalous repetition 40
Sadomasochism, a shock to thought 47
Written on the Wind: lethal powers of the fetish 51
The Tarnished Angels: Bakhtinian carnivalesque as Deleuzian
affective shock 55
2 Choreographies of Affect 67
Fassbinder’s Brechtian aesthetics: in the realm of the
emotions 70
Between Brecht and Artaud: The Marriage of Maria Braun 76
Zones of affect: psychoanalysis, melodrama, trauma 77
“Der Hermann Ist Tot,” or how Maria began to move 80
Frame and performance: dancing in Oedipal enclosures 85
Cruel performance: The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant 89
Performance: an intensive kind of theatre 89
Words that “strike a pose” 91
Bits and pieces of bodies 95
The frame and the open: the moving tableau 97
Petra’s narcissism, the film’s self-affection 101
Cruelty as love 102
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3 Dancing Feminisms 113
Thriller: counter-narcissistic performance 117
“Redefining melodrama for our times” 118
Disciplining the body 120
Affective/conductive powers of the voice 125
The thrill of tango: Potter’s narcissistic performance 129
From Rageto dance 131
Powers and capacities 133
Lessons on narcissism 135
Actions and passions 138
4 Kinesthetic Seductions 148
Nénette and Boni: a disorder of the senses 150
Beau Travail: performing the narrative of seduction 155
Friday Night: a line of flight against all odds 165
Let the film love you 174
5 Powers of the False 178
Affective contagion 181
An affective unconscious: asymmetrical resonances 188
Creative forgers 194
At the limits of genre 199
Conclusion: Everything Is “Yes” 208
Works Cited 218
Index 228
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Acknowledgments
Under the title “Between Brecht and Artaud: Choreographing Affect in
Fassbinder’s The Marriage of Maria Braun,” an earlier version of a part of
Chapter 2 has appeared in The New Review of Film and Television Studies,
3:2 (November 2005). Under the title “Rethinking Feminist Film Theory:
Counter-Narcissistic Performance in Sally Potter’s Thriller,” an earlier
version of a part of Chapter 3 has been published in Quarterly Review of
Film and Video, 21:1 (January 2004). An earlier version of a part of Chapter
4 has been published in Kinoeye, 3.7 (June 9, 2003) under the title
“Performing the Narrative of Seduction: Claire Denis’ Beau Travail”; an
expanded version of the latter has appeared in Studies in French Cinema,
3:3 (December 2003) under the title “Body Transformations in the Films
of Claire Denis: From Ritual to Play.”
This book could not have materialized without the intervention of many
intellectual and personal encounters over the course of twenty years. I con-
sider myself very fortunate to have met the most outstanding scholars and
the warmest of friends at each step along the way.
I am grateful to Kaja Silverman for providing me with the first model
of feminist scholarship. Professor Silverman’s intellectual passion and
commitment to feminist thought were crucial in ushering me into film
studies and in giving me the confidence I needed in my first years as a grad-
uate student. I am grateful to Judith Butler for listening and helping at a
time when I was in great need of support. I am deeply indebted to Vivian
Sobchack’s work and support over the years. My encounter with Vivian
was instrumental in enabling me to find my own voice and to articulate the
philosophical interests and concerns closest to my heart. Of my peers at
UC Berkeley, I want to thank Susan Courtney for her continued friendship
despite geographical and temporal distance.
I also want to thank the many colleagues and friends who have been close
to me in either a professional or a personal capacity while I was writing this
book. My belief in this project was sustained and encouraged by the stim-
ulating feedback I received from those who read or listened to portions of
the manuscript – Brenda Austin-Smith, Jennifer Barker, Jodi Brooks,
Janina Falkowska, Homay King, Patricia Pisters, and George Toles. I owe
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a special debt of gratitude to Ian Buchanan and Ronald Bogue for sup-
porting this project, to David Martin-Jones for his detailed answers to my
questions, to Amy Herzog for her willingness to engage with me in a really
stimulating exchange of ideas, and to Corrinne Harol and Rosalind Kerr
for their unwavering generosity with their time and their amazing minds.
I am grateful to Sarah Edwards and James Dale at Edinburgh University
Press for their guidance throughout the editing and publishing process.
Finally, I wish to thank my brother Enrique for his interest in my work
and for making me laugh till it hurts, the Edmonton gang for the love and
the laughter that keep us warm and sane, and Rita, for being the loyalest,
kindest friend one could hope for.
My greatest debt is to P. Rawat for teaching me the most necessary kind
of knowledge.
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INTRODUCTION
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Cinema and the A ective-Performative
Thought lags behind nature.
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus
An intensive trait starts working for itself, a hallucinatory perception, synesthesia,
perverse mutation, or play of images shakes loose, challenging the hegemony of the
signifier. In the case of the child, gestural, mimetic, ludic, and other semiotic systems
regain their freedom and extricate themselves from the “tracing,” that is, from the
dominant competence of the teacher’s language – a microscopic event upsets the local
balance of power.
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus
Once again, I am watching the scene of Dorothy Malone’s “dance of
death” in Written on the Wind. First, I see a female body dancing to the
brassy sounds of a Latin jazz score. Then, as the music and the body
become one, their force can no longer be confined within the frame of the
dancer’s body. Such fury cannot survive the contours of a thing. It gives
way to a red, headless and armless, amoeba-like stain that pulsates on the
surface of the screen with a movement that lacks calculation or goal, its
purpose spent on its own maddening undulations. The framed portrait of
Rock Hudson has long been forgotten as the dancer’s invited audience, its
formal rigidity inadequate to the demands of such an unruly force. Shots
of Malone’s frantic dance clash against shots of Robert Keith, the actor
playing Malone’s father, as he laboriously works his way up the mansion’s
staircase, lets go of his frail grasp of the banister, and then spirals down to
the bottom of the stairs. The boundaries of life and death, rise and fall, have
once more been scrambled in an impossible affective knot. The moment is
always different, but one thing remains constant. Each time I watch, I am
moved and affected in my body and in my senses. The Oedipal significance
of the scene will surface later, or it may have been thought of countless
times before. For now, I am being overtaken by a whirlwind of emotions
and sensations. And the more aware I become of their difference from
rational language, the more compelled I feel to describe them. It is
moments like this that inspire me to write about moving images that have