Noir Affect
()
About this ebook
Noir Affect proposes a new understanding of noir as defined by negative affect. This new understanding emphasizes that noir is, first and foremost, an affective disposition rather than a specific cycle of films or novels associated with a given time period or national tradition. Instead, the essays in Noir Affect trace noir’s negativity as it manifests in different national contexts from the United States to Mexico, France, and Japan and in a range of different media, including films, novels, video games, and manga.
The forms of affect associated with noir are resolutely negative: These are narratives centered on loss, sadness, rage, shame, guilt, regret, anxiety, humiliation, resentment, resistance, and refusal. Moreover, noir often asks us to identify with those on the losing end of cultural narratives, especially the criminal, the lost, the compromised, the haunted, the unlucky, the cast-aside, and the erotically “perverse,” including those whose greatest erotic attachment is to death. Drawing on contemporary work in affect theory, while also re-orienting some of its core assumptions to address the resolutely negative affects narrated by noir, Noir Affect is invested in thinking through the material, bodily, social, and political–economic impact of the various forms noir affect takes.
If much affect theory asks us to consider affect as a space of possibility and becoming, Noir Affect asks us to consider affect as also a site of repetition, dissolution, redundancy, unmaking, and decay. It also asks us to consider the way in which the affective dimensions of noir enable the staging of various forms of social antagonism, including those associated with racial, gendered, sexual, and economic inequality. Featuring an Afterword by the celebrated noir scholar Paula Rabinowitz and essays by an array of leading scholars, Noir Affect aims to fundamentally re-orient our understanding of noir.
Contributors: Alexander Dunst, Sean Grattan, Peter Hitchcock, Justus Nieland, Andrew Pepper, Ignacio Sánchez Prado, Brian Rejack, Pamela Thoma, Kirin Wachter-Grene
Paula Rabinowitz
Paula Rabinowitz is Professor Emerita of English at the University of Minnesota and serves as editor-in- chief of the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature. Her publications include numerous essays and books on mid-twentieth-century American culture, including Black and White and Noir: America’s Pulp Modernism (2002) and the prize-winning American Pulp: How Paperbacks Brought Modernism to Main Street (2014). She is currently working on a collection of essays titled “Into the Image” and a double biography of two fathers, “Cold War Dads: Family Secrets and the National Security State.” She lives in Queens, New York.
Related to Noir Affect
Related ebooks
Hard-Boiled Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Pulp According to David Goodis Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUnder the Thumb Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Three Kinds of Fool Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCassidy's Girl Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Woman Chaser Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Neo-Noir Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsConversations with James Ellroy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPulp on Pulp: Tips and Tricks for Writing Pulp Fiction Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Whiskey Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Creatures of Darkness: Raymond Chandler, Detective Fiction, and Film Noir Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLead with Your Left Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Ameriguns Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFrom Antz to Titanic: Reinventing Film Analysis Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGeorge Clayton Johnson: Fictioneer from Ocean's Eleven, Through the Twilight Zone, to Logan's Run Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Crime Fiction MEGAPACK®: 20 Classic Crimes Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCormac McCarthy and Performance: Page, Stage, Screen Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Thriller: Scripting Seat-Gripping Suspense Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Murder of the Frogs and Other Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Half Man Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Touch of Treason Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTrends of Terror 2019: 58 Big Plot Twists: Trends of Terror Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHe Was Some Kind of a Man: Masculinities in the B Western Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Jaws in Space: Powerful Pitching for Film and TV Screenwriters Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Big Man, A Fast Man Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Tree Born Crooked Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Crime Uncovered: Antihero Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThree Thousand to the Good: Race Williams #2 (Black Mask) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Last Match Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dragnet: The Case of the Crime King Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Literary Criticism For You
Killers of the Flower Moon: by David Grann | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The 48 Laws of Power: by Robert Greene | Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/512 Rules For Life: by Jordan Peterson | Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Reader’s Companion to J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5As I Lay Dying Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Court of Thorns and Roses: A Novel by Sarah J. Maas | Conversation Starters Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Man's Search for Meaning: by Viktor E. Frankl | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself by Michael A. Singer | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Book of Virtues Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Oscar Wilde: The Unrepentant Years Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Between the World and Me: by Ta-Nehisi Coates | Conversation Starters Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Circe: by Madeline Miller | Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Art of Seduction: by Robert Greene | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Great Alone: by Kristin Hannah | Conversation Starters Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5SUMMARY Of The Plant Paradox: The Hidden Dangers in Healthy Foods That Cause Disease and Weight Gain Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Letters to a Young Poet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Speed Reading: How to Read a Book a Day - Simple Tricks to Explode Your Reading Speed and Comprehension Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain | Conversation Starters Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The Power of Habit: by Charles Duhigg | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5One Hundred Years of Solitude: A Novel by Gabriel Garcia Márquez | Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Noir Affect
0 ratings0 reviews