Affect As An Artistic-Political Strategy

Abstract

Another special issue that gains relevance when we are confronted with cinematic image-thinking, is affect. The “affective turn”, as academic fashion-speak would call it, is one of the tendencies that come and go as being “in” or “hot” for a while. But this one is not so easily dismissed once we immerse ourselves in what we study. The case of the Flaubert-based project Madame B offers the opportunity to reconsider both the fashionable use and the facile dismissal of “affect” as an important tool for political thinking in cultural criticism. The concept of affect is examined in its conceptual meaning, but also in the way it helps or hinders detailed analysis of cultural texts. The affective charge will be especially explored in how the videos present the most political, as well as “pre-posterous” (anachronistic) bond between Flaubert's time and ours: “emotional capitalism” (a concept so named by Eva Illouz). Madame B foregrounds affect in its aesthetic. The role of “beauty” – in landscapes as well as figures – is made prominent in the cinematography, in order to raise the question of the affective charge of the combination with sadness, frustration, and despair.