Bodies in Suspense: Time and Affect in Cinema

(Paperback)

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According to Alanna Thain, suspense films allow us to experience the relation between two bodies: that of the film and that of the viewer. Bodies in Suspense presents a powerful new way to think through post-digital cinema and the affective turn in critical theory, arguing that the "body in time" enables us to experience the temporal dimension of the body directly.

Reviews

"A significant contribution to contemporary cultural theory, to film studies, and to the philosophy of time, Bodies in Suspense connects the cinematic experience of time to its production of the body in a way that no previous theorist has doneby bringing together the study of temporality and affect theory."Todd McGowan, author of Out of Time: Desire in Atemporal Cinema

"Working in the fold between two 'turns' in cinema studiesthe corporeal turn and the affective turnThain wraps the field around a new concept: immediation. Original, erudite, and conceptually acute, Bodies in Suspense is necessary reading for those interested in film theory, and, more generally, media studies and the philosophy of the image."Brian Massumi, author of Semblance and Event: Activist Philosophy and the Occurrent Arts

Author Bio

Alanna Thain is associate professor of English and world cinemas, and director of the Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at McGill University.