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Looking Beyond Neoliberalism
French and Francophone Belgian Cinema and the Crisis
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Book Presentation:
Looking Beyond Neoliberalism explores how cinema is responding to the economic crisis that sprang to public attention in 2008 and continues to shape our politics and societies. Bringing French and francophone Belgian films into dialogue with carefully selected theories, O’Shaughnessy develops insights and an analytical framework that will become important resources for other scholars of contemporary cinema.
This book explores cinema's capacity to register mutations in subjectivity, the material grounds for identity construction and the machinic dimension of neoliberal subjection. It also probes its capacity to imagine alternative economies and identities and an exit from neoliberal labour. By developing fresh insights into political cinema, this book provides engages with cinema’s response to neoliberalism in crisis.
About the Author:
Professor Martin O'Shaughnessy is the Subject Leader of Film and Television Studies at Nottingham Trent University
Press Reviews:
Looking Beyond Neoliberalism offers an invaluable map of cinema’s affective economy, identifying its sad passions and traps, while at the same time never forgetting the quintessential power residing in the ambiguous and unresolved status of moving images: that by ‘moving’ us, they make us tend towards each other. -- Francesco Sticchi ― Studies in European Cinema
Looking Beyond Neoliberalism offers an invaluable map of cinema’s affective economy, identifying its sad passions and traps, while at the same time never forgetting the quintessential power residing in the ambiguous and unresolved status of moving images: that by ‘moving’ us, they make us tend towards each other.
-- Francesco Sticchi ― Studies in European Cinema
Looking beyond Neoliberalism offers a thought-provoking examination of a vitally important issue by one of the leading voices in the field. It is a welcome addition to studies of contemporary French and francophone cinema.
-- Ginette Vincendeau ― French Studies
O’Shaughnessy argues convincingly that one of the properties of cinema is to render systemic violence visible. In his opinion, if the films do not resolve the crises or offer solutions to the containment and ‘machinic enslavement’, they nevertheless engage the audience’s imagination for possibilities―balanced against social constraints. This is probably the most promising encouragement that can be given to political film-makers to pursue their vital work of resistance within the diversity of French and Francophone Belgian cinema. -- Isabelle Vanderschelden ― Modern Language Review
Looking Beyond Neoliberalism provides a thorough and incisive description of the stakes involved in political cinema today. O’Shaughnessy conveys complex critical theory clearly and concisely, making its relevance immediately apparent. He argues, convincingly, that if neoliberalism structures human life through debt, precarity, solitude, and other forms of violence, the cinema, by reassembling the lives of its characters, and even moving beyond character, can provide a look elsewhere. Going forward, Looking Beyond Neoliberalism will be an essential resource to those of us thinking about the politics of cinema.
-- Joseph Mai ― SubStance
Martin O’Shaughnessy deploys film studies and insights drawn from social theory to produce a compelling political analysis of Francophone cinema's responses to the complexity of the current crisis in neoliberalism. Interrogating instances of popular and arthouse cinema, he envisages films as both sources of critique and spaces for imagining alternative ways of being beyond neoliberal logics.
-- Thomas Austin, University of Sussex
Looking Beyond Neoliberalism provides a thorough and incisive description of the stakes involved in political cinema today. O’Shaughnessy conveys complex critical theory clearly and concisely, making its relevance immediately apparent. He argues, convincingly, that if neoliberalism structures human life through debt, precarity, solitude, and other forms of violence, the cinema, by reassembling the lives of its characters, and even moving beyond character, can provide a look elsewhere. Going forward, Looking Beyond Neoliberalism will be an essential resource to those of us thinking about the politics of cinema.
-- Joseph Mai ― SubStance
Looking beyond Neoliberalism offers a thought-provoking examination of a vitally important issue by one of the leading voices in the field. It is a welcome addition to studies of contemporary
French and francophone cinema.
-- Ginette Vincendeau ― French Studies
See the publisher website: Edinburgh University Press
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