Melodrama is not just a film or literary genre but a powerful political discourse that galvanizes national sentiment to legitimate state violence. Finding virtue in national suffering and heroism in sovereign action, melodramatic political discourses cast war and surveillance as moral imperatives for eradicating villainy and upholding freedom. In Orgies of Feeling, Elisabeth R. Anker boldly reframes political theories of sovereignty, freedom, and power by analyzing the work of melodrama and affect in contemporary politics. Arguing that melodrama animates desires for unconstrained power, Anker examines melodramatic discourses in the War on Terror, neoliberal politics, anticommunist rhetoric, Hollywood film, and post-Marxist critical theory. Building on Friedrich Nietzsche's notion of "orgies of feeling," in which overwhelming emotions displace commonplace experiences of vulnerability and powerlessness onto a dramatic story of injured freedom, Anker contends that the recent upsurge in melodrama in the United States is an indication of public discontent. Yet the discontent that melodrama reflects is ultimately an expression of the public's inability to overcome systemic exploitation and inequality rather than an alarmist response to inflated threats to the nation.
eBook - PDF
Orgies of Feeling
Melodrama and the Politics of Freedom
- 353 pages
- English
- PDF
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF
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Information
Publisher
Duke University Press BooksYear
2014Print ISBN
9780822356974
9780822356868
eBook ISBN
9780822376545
Table of contents
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction. Melodrama and the Politics of Freedom
- Chapter 1. The Venomous Eye: Melodrama, Media, and National Identity after 9/11
- Chapter 2. The Melodramatic Style of American Politics: A Transnational History
- Chapter 3. Felt Legitimacy: Victimization and Affect in the Expansion of State Power
- Chapter 4. Orgies of Feeling: Terror, Agency, and the Failures of the (Neo)Liberal Individual
- Chapter 5. Heroic Identifications; or, You Can Love Me Too—I Am So Like the State
- Chapter 6. Left Melodrama
- Conclusion. Melodramas of Failed Sovereignty: The War on Terror as a Women’s Weepie
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
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Yes, you can access Orgies of Feeling by Elisabeth R. Anker,Elisabeth Robin Anker in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Politics & International Relations & Political History & Theory. We have over 1.5 million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.