The Uses of Phobia: Essays on Literature and FilmISBN: 978-1-4443-3384-8
Paperback
180 pages
June 2010, Wiley-Blackwell
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The essays brought together in this book understand phobia not as a
pathology, but as a versatile moral, political, and aesthetic
resource – and one with a history. They demonstrate that
enquiry into strong feelings of aversion has enabled writers and
film-makers to say and show things they could not otherwise have
said or shown; and in this way to get profoundly and provocatively
to grips with the modern condition.
- Makes extensive reference to original readings of a wide range of literary texts and films, from the 1850s to the present
- Places a strong emphasis on the value phobia has held, in particular, for women activists, writers, and film-makers
- Discusses a range of writers and film-makers from Dickens, Thackeray, and George Eliot through Hardy, Joyce, Ford and Woolf; from Jean Renoir through Hitchcock and Truffaut to Margarethe von Trotta and Pedro Almodóvar
- Intervention in key debates in cultural theory and cultural history