Review: Life-Destroying Diagrams, by Eugenie Brinkema

BOOK DATA Eugenie Brinkema, Life-Destroying Diagrams. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2022. $114.95 cloth, $31.95 paper. 496 pages.Eugenie Brinkema’s Diagrams is at once breathtakingly expansive in its frame of reference and almost entirely sui generis. In making case for radical formalism, the book develops an extended dialogue between cinema continental philosophy. Whether Levinas ethics, object-oriented ontology, Jean-Luc Nancy’s theory image, or Catherine Malabou’s plasticity, Brinkema aims to think relation major currents Her demand a more rigorous accounting affect resonates with work Lauren Berlant, whose thinking on love she cites approvingly. And extent that polemic––against affect, against phenomenology, political aesthetics, most ways horror film has been theorized––it must also be understood wide range scholarship it does not always cite directly, but forms terrain critique. Horror scholars from Robin Wood Noël Carroll Adam Lowenstein Tarja Laine name intellectual trajectory which marshals her argument. yet, locate within field challenging task, because nobody studies thinks writes like her: spectacularly original unique.This about horror, makes sure warn readers, depart provocative claim problem affect. complains treated solely as bodily concept. Across disparate theoretical approaches, finds turn constantly sensation, question what frightens them. To this, splendidly retorts, “Who cares you like? Who fear?” (14), insisting focus sensation leads superficial instrumentalized formal analysis. Instead, proposes deeply form, aesthetic qualities do lead directly fear might therefore other things. As earlier The Forms Affects, argues constructions foreclose meaningful systems form. Sharpening previous book’s polemic, extends method such reading form only becomes rebuttal theory, functions “the root all reading, grounds every one figures—violence, cruelty, finitude, relation, care, debt—that will carry across this book” (21).Life-Destroying regards popular films terms sets––geometric, grammatical, arithmetic––and selected respond well second chapter takes Final Destination series (James Wong, 2000; David R. Ellis, 2003; James 2006; 2009; Steven Quale, 2011) organized by sequence, rather than any psychoanalytic vision repression. structuring principle list, order victims were destined die; death manifests itself their position list. Thus, real topic itself.In way, discussion apparatus, ordered process, evokes Salomé Aguilera Skvirsky’s Process Genre. Skvirsky, too, promised cinematic can produce radically new understandings genre, whereas corpus attended labor processes production, ur-structure wholly arbitrary sequence abecedarium. alphabet seems meaningless meaningful: holding these ideas tension clarifies.How abstract way creates meaning? This beautifully compellingly. Cabin Woods (Drew Goddard, renders grid, suggesting unexpected affinities media database information, modernity (e.g., Lev Manovich Alex Galloway). points out, no negative space, complexity—unlike, say, network. It repeat pattern, simple Thinking allows histories aesthetics (Kant, Le Corbusier, De Stijl, Krauss) thus reach relationship textuality arrangements power. pushes reader understand places go. She discourse accelerationism film, antifuturity Lee Edelman, one, seem positively optimistic. reads exploration grid totality: –there end escape. hexagonal force surrounds cabin, so diegetic system teenagers (and––spoiler alert––everyone else world) cannot visual pattern recapitulates narrative nested enables speak totalizing violence.The apotheosis argument comes 4, Human Centipede (Tom Six, 2009) diagram. probably hardest sell readily admit loves sheer nerve it. starts diagram drawn evil doctor, showing how centipede surgically constructed. bravura comparison, links image Hogarth’s line beauty, object imaginatively “hollowed out” favor exterior lines—a figure speech provides opportunity compare Centipede’s violent redistribution insides. film’s unfortunate bodies are diagrammed undulating lines, best affectively aesthetically.You merely stepping-stone body fact, insists, repulsive details spectacle recapitulate. ordering A, B, C locks person B inextricably place ends death. worse squishy matter content. Content––all blood shit pain––may bad thing, really gets you, time.The final section love, here adds literatures European art cinema, philosophy, speaks Wheatley Brian Price, instance, intersection terms. continuation come before. love: refuses read sentiment, metaphor, history, forth should diagrammatic Love, argues, open served geometral (formal) scenographic (contextual) reading.In section, films, Jessica Hausner’s Amour Fou (2014) Michael Haneke’s (2012). Perhaps strongest account Stranger Lake (Alain Guiraudie, 2013), which, asserts, “something simultaneously horrific enters [the film] through impersonal measurement.” (308) If allegorical interpretations, flips script impasse meaning generated measurements fish space sex Where centers subtraction murder, Blue Is Warmest Color (Abdellatif Kechiche, 2013) maps withdrawal love. Lobster (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2015) surely designed attention, structured cold geometry hotel compulsory couple forest single. Like whole, determined imagine without sentiment. Notable Diagrams’s own academic writing virtuosic style, varying chapter. For example chapter, vertical structure, includes vertiginous proliferation footnotes footnotes. style responds argument, leading playful experimental ways.This important book, working highest level scholarship. Yet, draw criticism choice many see weakness, full intentionality. Right beginning rewrites passage Fredric Jameson thus: “This argue priority interpretation literary texts” (xvi). Yes, says, I am erasing politics replacing form; doing. consistently feminist, queer, postcolonial, historical asking wrong questions—that they are, even, side violence.Brinkema’s provocation strike exactly moment galvanized anew thought. impetus categories everywhere, influence #MeToo Black Lives Matter industry vast array drawing black, trans, Indigenous, pathways critique, mention vividly some significant recent years, Raw (Julia Ducournau, 2016) Candyman (Nia DaCosta, 2021). yet crosses out politics, take elsewhere. brave move make 2021.When emerge writing, often race. From Arab prisoner Inside (Alexandre Bustillo Julien Maury, 2007), outsider extrapolated presupposing his marginalized position, framework racialized violence concedes necessary understanding Get Out (Jordan Peele, 2017), Derrida’s “racism’s fascination form” (267), racism asserts trace excise. could contrasted black Boyce Gillespie Kara Keeling, whom race unavoidable instead offers formally rich conceptually sophisticated imaginary. locates blackness Keeling’s queer heuristic odds method, both closely engaged ethics speculative Such conceptions philosophy reveal something current shape stakes field.At heart text formalism practice among many, avoid called partial formalisms. Only grapple thought, stages truth human relationality anterior cultural subsequently drawn. Crucial philosophical modes inquiry over ones. “These forms,” writes, “are metaphors—for society, power, biopower, necropolitical, &c.—; structures themselves” (161).Those invested after all, things, questions epiphenomenal. remains unconvinced (these films) legible formalism. inspire debate means But point all. You follow path rejecting practices thought clearing frustrate, process attends immeasurable: very much system,