Marriage, adultery, and sexuality (unelided) in Tuesday, After Christmas

Abstract

Building on Spivakian notions of epistemic violence and combining them with Judith Butler’s analysis representational frames, this article explores the effects of such violence in relation to the Romanian New Wave and all fictional subjects regardless of gender or class. First, I confront film’s tendency towards realism which generally assists in filmic epistemic violence and find that the abandonment of realism is not a necessary solution to this problem. Second, I use Tuesday, After Christmas (2010) as a positive example from the Romanian New Wave which alleviates this violence through its use of ‘anti-ellipsis’, a lengthening of the frame which elides less and allows more of life in, pluralising the fictional subject and making them less susceptible to epistemic violence as they cannot be pinned down for long enough for it to be effectively inflicted.