The Grace of Destruction: A Vital Ethology of Extreme Cinemas

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For Elena del Ro, extreme cinema is not only qualitatively different from the representations of violence we encounter in popular, mainstream cinema; it also constitutes a critique of the socio-moral system that produces (in every sense of the word) such violence. Drawing inspiration from Deleuzes ethics of immanence, Spinozas ethology of passions and Nietzsches typology of forces, The Grace of Destruction examines the affective extremities common in much of global, contemporary cinema from the affirmative perspective of vital forces and situationsextremities such as moral/religious oppression, biopolitical violence, the pain involved in gender relations, the event of death and planetary extinction. Her analysis diverges from the current literature on extreme cinema through its selection of films, which include key international examples, and through its foregrounding of relational, affective politics over representations of sexuality and graphic violence. Detailed formal and philosophical analyses of films like The White Ribbon, Dogville, Code Unknown, Battle in Heaven, Sonatine, Fireworks, Dolls, Takeshis, Inland Empire and Melancholia are meant to move us away from the moral appraisal of violence and destruction, and to compose an ethological philosophy of cinema based on Deleuzes idea that, when truth and judgment crumble, there remain bodies, which are nothing but forces.

Reviews

Del Ros Grace of Destruction [continues] to invigorate the conversation surrounding the new extreme cinema while also expanding the applicability of its terms in productive and challenging ways that particularly encourage us to consider the ethical and philosophical ramifications that only the extreme encounter can engender. * Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media *
The exploration of how Deleuzes inflections of Nietzschean and Spinozan thought are brought out ... are precise, well-researched, pertinent and compelling. he philosophies are engaged with and pursued in rigorous fashion often via contemporary scholarly reworkings, which elicit surprising yet convincing conclusions ... The chapters are well linked and build neatly upon one another, but readers familiar with the books philosophical touchpoints could nonetheless dive directly into individual chapters should they be so inclined. * Film-Philosophy *
[The Grace of Destruction]... is an inspiring and thought-provoking book that should appeal to a broad readership (interested in global film, film philosophy, cine-ethics, extreme cinemas, and politics) and is fit for an era when critically interrogating the habitual ways in which we think, live, and act (as citizens and a species) has never been more important. -- David H. Fleming * SYMPOSIUM: The Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy *
Elena del Ro's The Grace of Destruction is a remarkable book combining a passion for cinema that yields stunning critical insights with an acute theoretical genealogy of contemporary cultures moralism. Although thoroughly attuned to the most recent developments in Deleuzian philosophies of cinema and affect, and without being negatively reactive against the contemporary field of cinema studies, del Ro's work manages to be breathtakingly original. Anyone interested in cinematic aesthetics and the radical potential of cinema as a mode of thought should read this book. * Claire Colebrook, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English, The Pennsylvania State University, USA *
In her formidable new book, The Grace of Destruction, Elena del Ro examines a corpus of violent, shocking, and ultimately extreme filmsthe very films that moralists might otherwise condemnin order to mount furious critique of the transcendent values of modern morality. In conversation with Spinoza, Nietzsche, Deleuze, and Guattari, among others, The Grace of Destruction dares its readers to conceive of cinema as a vitalist ethics, but also to grasp ethics in the absence of humanism. A brave, uncompromising, and important book. * Gregory Flaxman, Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA *

Author Bio

Elena del Ro is Professor of Film Studies at the University of Alberta, Canada. Her essays have been featured in journals such as Camera Obscura, Discourse, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Film-Philosophy, The New Review of Film and Television Studies, SubStance, and Deleuze Studies. She has also contributed essays to edited collections on the films of Atom Egoyan, Rainer W. Fassbinder, and on the philosophy of film, and Deleuze and cinema. She is the author of Deleuze and the Cinemas of Performance: Powers of Affection (2008).