[Commlist] New Book: Affirmative Aesthetics and Wilful Women: Gender, Space and Mobility in Contemporary Cinema

New Book: *Affirmative Aesthetics and Wilful Women: Gender, Space and 
Mobility in Contemporary Cinema* (Palgrave Macmillan)
Author: Maud Ceuterick

Open Access book, available here: 
https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030370381 
<https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030370381>


Abstract:
Fifty years of feminist thought have made the idea that women stay at 
home while men dominate the streets seem outdated; nevertheless, 
Ceuterick argues that theoretical considerations of gender, space, and 
power in film theory remain limited by binary models. Looking instead to 
more fluid models of spatial relations inspired by Sara Ahmed, Rosi 
Braidotti, and Doreen Massey, this book discovers wilful, affirmative, 
and imaginative activations of gender on screen. Through close, 
micro-analysis of historic European Messidor (Alain Tanner, 1979) and 
contemporary world cinema:  Vendredi Soir (Claire Denis, 
2002), Wadjda (Haifaa Al-Mansour, 2012), and Head-On (Fatih Akin, 2004), 
this book identifies affirmative aesthetics: light, texture, rhythm, 
movement and sound, all of which that participate in a rewriting of 
bodies and spaces. Ultimately, Ceuterick argues, affirmative aesthetics 
can challenge the gender categories and power structures that have been 
thought to determine our habitation of cars, homes, and city streets. 
Wilful women drive this book forward, through their movement and 
stillness, imagination and desire, performance and abjection.

Table of content

Chap 1. Introduction: Gender, Space, and Affects in Film
Chap 2. Women’s Road Movies and Affirmative Wandering: Messidor
Chap 3. Cars: A Micro-analysis of Space and Bodies in Vendredi soir
Chap 4. Houses and Wilful Women: Wadjda
Chap 5. Streets: Freedom, Diaspora, and the Erotic in Head-On
Chap 6. Conclusion: Forms of Affirmative Aesthetics

Author’s bio: Maud Ceuterick is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie research fellow 
in Digital Culture at the University of Bergen, Norway. She has 
previously published on the ‘road movie’ genre, gender and domesticity 
in transnational cinema, and space tourism in film.


Early reviews of the book:

“/Affirmative Aesthetics and Wilful Women/ offers a genuinely original 
and sophisticated analysis of gendered space and cinematic (wilful) 
bodies. Ceuterick argues elegantly and persuasively that film can open 
up sites of contestation within which fixed, binary categories can be 
parsed and subverted as a form of ‘affirmative aesthetics’. This is a 
beautifully written monograph that combines radical intent with lucid 
thought; it will be a vital resource for feminist, gender and cinema 
scholars alike. Both timely and necessary, I, for one, welcome it 
wholeheartedly.”
— Anna Backman Rogers, University of Gothenburg

"This splendid and thoughtful book connects Rosi Braidotti's affirmative 
ethics and Sara Ahmed's concept of the willful subject to film in a way 
that many have been waiting for. Complementing feminist phenomenological 
approaches to film as well as Deleuze-inspired (feminist) theory and 
Eugenie Brinkema's work on affect, the extended and subtle discussion of 
both acclaimed (Claire Denis's /Vendredi soir/) and lesser-known (Alain 
Tanner's /Messidor/) films in /Affirmative Aesthetics and Wilful Women/ 
forges a newly affirmative mode of critique that will interest all 
scholars of film, gender and space.”

-- Kate Ince, University of Birmingham
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