Tuesday, July 4, 6:00 – 8:00 PM, CT
Casino Cas 1.811
For all that Jordan Peele’s lauded horror film Get Out (2017) appears to traffic in the conventional negative affects of the horror genre—anxiety, suspense, panic, shock — I will argue in my talk that the film in fact models a formal account of violence, one that grounds its critique of racialized terror and the dynamics of aggressions both micro- and macro – in its juxtaposition of the relationship of black life and survival to the question (and critique) of how to describe and interpret different formal registers of the image.
Eugenie Brinkema is Professor of Contemporary Literature and Media at MIT and currently a fellow at the University of Amsterdam. Her research in film and media studies focuses on violence, affect, sexuality, aesthetics, and ethics. In dialogue with critical theory and continental philosophy, she argues for the speculative value of formalist readings in texts ranging from horror films to works of the new European extremism, from gonzo pornography to contemporary photography. Her books include The Forms of the Affects (2014) and Life-Destroying Diagrams (2022), both published with Duke University Press. More info here…