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THE VICISSITUDES OF POSTNATIONAL AFFECTS:
VISUALITY, TEMPORALITY, AND CORPOREALITY
IN GLOBAL EAST ASIAN FILMS
by
Jecheol Park
_________________________________________________________________________
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(CINEMA-TELEVISION: CRITICAL STUDIES)
December 2012
Copyright 2012 Jecheol Park
Object Description
| Title | The vicissitudes of postnational affects: visuality, temporality, and corporeality in global east Asian films |
| Author | Park, Jecheol |
| Author email | jchlpark@yahoo.com;jchlpark@gmail.com |
| Degree | Doctor of Philosophy |
| Document type | Dissertation |
| Degree program | Cinema-Television (Critical Studies) |
| School | School of Cinematic Arts |
| Date defended/completed | 2012-07-17 |
| Date submitted | 2012-11-29 |
| Date approved | 2012-11-30 |
| Restricted until | 2012-11-30 |
| Date published | 2012-11-30 |
| Advisor (committee chair) | Lippit, Akira |
| Advisor (committee member) |
James, David E. Lloyd, David |
| Abstract | One of the salient changes East Asian films have undergone during the past decade of globalization is their increasing tendency to foreground affective intensities that are excessive in relation to their thematic or signifying aspects. My dissertation, The Vicissitudes of Postnational Affects: Visuality, Temporality, and Corporeality in Global East Asian Films, explores political implications of these affective features as expressed in some of the recent East Asian films, focusing on their relationships with the postnational condition that has increasingly swept over East Asia during the past two decades. By the term postnational condition, I mean the recent remarkable change in the mode of socio-political power, which is characterized by the gradual simultaneous processes of the decline of sovereign and disciplinary powers and the rise of global neoliberal governmentality. As such, the postnational condition needs to be understood as a double-edge sword in the sense that it makes it possible for hitherto unrepresentable affective others to emerge at the same time that it prepares for a new condition that makes it possible to manage and rationalize them in such a calculative manner that it may preempt subversive forms of affective otherness from appearing. My dissertation calls attention to how recent East Asian films have responded to this postnational condition in different ways by developing various kinds of narrative and stylistic strategies that can cinematically express, as well as cope with, this affective otherness. ❧ My dissertation focuses on three aspects of film experience—its visual, temporal, and corporeal ones—in which affective otherness is expressed in films. Part I focuses on the phenomenon of global exoticism and discusses and compares different ways East Asian films deploy the aesthetics of the exotic vis-à-vis the dominant neoliberal tactics of valorizing visual alterity or excess. If Kim Ki-duk’s recent films such as Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring (2003) and 3-Iron (2004) show how the exotic can undergo generification, thereby losing its singularity in accordance with the neoliberal governmental management of visual excess, Hou Hsiao-hsien’s recent films, such as Flowers of Shanghai (1998) and Flight of the Red Balloon (2007) illustrate the possibility that the residual, unvalorizable exotic can appear in the cinema of the era of neoliberal governmentality. ❧ Part II addresses how affective otherness can be expressed through contingency and temporal heterogeneity. The compulsive repetition characteristic of Hong Sang-soo’s Tale of Cinema (2005) serves to turn otherwise singular contingencies into probabilistic, and thus valorizable chances. This examination of Hong’s film shows how neoliberal governmentality regularizes these temporal disturbances through the process of the real subsumption of time. Yet, alternative thoughts on time such as Deleuze’s notion of the empty form of time and Benjamin-Agamben’s notion of the dialectical image indicate the possibility that unvalorizable temporal excess can remain in the form of a potential for becoming other. Kore-eda Hirokazu’s Distance (2001) expresses this possibility by employing narrative and formal strategies that fill the time for repetition with immeasurable possibilities and hesitations. ❧ Part III shifts its focus to the dark underside of these seemingly subversive affects. Biopolitical valorization of affects accompanies, as its underside, the thanato-political suppressions of unvalorizable bodies and gestures. Yet, thanato-politics is not simply a matter of processes of suppressing corporeal otherness, but is crucial to maintaining neoliberal biopolitical governmentality because it justifies the need to remove unvalorizable corporeal otherness by negatively regularizing it. Park Chan-wook’s Thirst (2009), though performing this thanato-political valorization, discloses how unvalorizable corporeal otherness is already internal rather than external to neoliberal biopolitical valorization, thereby problematizing the call for the thanato-political suppression of others. Part III also examines how unvalorizable corporeal otherness can elude the thanato-political valorization process and subsist in the form of the pure means without ends. Kore-eda Hirokazu’s Air Doll and Jia Zhang-ke’s Useless illustrate how these films allow audiences to encounter unvalorizable gestures and corporeal residues beyond the Sadean fantasy and thereby enable them to imagine a new community grounded on pure communicability without end. |
| Keyword | east Asian cinema; postnational condition; affect; visuality; temporality; corporeality |
| Language | English |
| Part of collection | University of Southern California dissertations and theses |
| Publisher (of the original version) | University of Southern California |
| Place of publication (of the original version) | Los Angeles, California |
| Publisher (of the digital version) | University of Southern California. Libraries |
| Provenance | Electronically uploaded by the author |
| Type | texts |
| Legacy record ID | usctheses-m |
| Rights | Park, Jecheol |
| Access conditions | The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the author, as the original true and official version of the work, but does not grant the reader permission to use the work if the desired use is covered by copyright. It is the author, as rights holder, who must provide use permission if such use is covered by copyright. The original signature page accompanying the original submission of the work to the USC Libraries is retained by the USC Libraries and a copy of it may be obtained by authorized requesters contacting the repository e-mail address given. |
| Repository name | University of Southern California Digital Library |
| Repository address | USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 7002, 106 University Village, Los Angeles, California 90089-7002, USA |
| Repository email | cisadmin@usc.edu |
| Archival file | uscthesesreloadpub_Volume6/etd-ParkJecheo-1375.pdf |
Description
| Title | Page 1 |
| Full text | THE VICISSITUDES OF POSTNATIONAL AFFECTS: VISUALITY, TEMPORALITY, AND CORPOREALITY IN GLOBAL EAST ASIAN FILMS by Jecheol Park _________________________________________________________________________ A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (CINEMA-TELEVISION: CRITICAL STUDIES) December 2012 Copyright 2012 Jecheol Park |
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