• Precarious Intimacies: The Politics of Touch in Contemporary Western European Cinema

    Author(s):
    Maria Stehle, Beverly Weber (see profile)
    Date:
    2020
    Subject(s):
    Motion pictures--Social aspects, Feminist criticism, Europe, Area studies, Germany
    Item Type:
    Book
    Tag(s):
    Film and society, Precarity, Feminist critique, European studies, German studies
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/yj9t-jt48
    Abstract:
    Drawing on and responding to the writings of theorists such as Judith Butler, Sara Ahmed, Lauren Berlant, and Lisa Lowe, this book proposes the notion of “precarious intimacies” to navigate a dilemma: how to recognize, affirm, and value love, touch, and care while challenging the racialized and gendered politics in which they are embedded. Twenty-first-century Europe is undergoing dramatic political and economic transformations that produce new forms of transnational contact as well as new regimes of exclusion and economic precarity. These political and economic shifts both circumscribe and enable new possibilities for intimacy. Many European films of the last two decades depict experiences of political and economic vulnerability in narratives of precarious intimacies. In these films, stories of intimacy, sex, love, and friendship are embedded in violence and exclusion, but, as Maria Stehle and Beverly Weber show, the politics of touch and connection also offers avenues to theorize forms of attention and affection that challenge exclusive notions of race, citizenship, and belonging. Precarious Intimacies examines the aesthetic strategies that respond to this tension and proposes a politics of interpretation that identifies the potential and possibility of intimacy.
    Notes:
    This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem)—a collaboration of the Association of American Universities, the Association of University Presses, and the Association of Research Libraries—and the generous support of the University of Tennessee. Learn more at the TOME website, available at openmonographs.org.
    Metadata:
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    Published as:
    Book     Show details
    Publisher:
    Northwestern University Press
    Pub. Date:
    2020
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    3 years ago
    License:
    Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
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