Pulse in Cinema

Dr Sharon Jane Mee is Publications Officer at Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS)

• AcknowledgementsList of IllustrationsIntroductionRosalind E. Krauss’s Theory of the PulseRhythm and Pulse The Pulse: A Philosophical EnquiryBody Horror1. The Rhythm of Life: The Pulse in the ImageRhythm and PulseRhythm in Experimental CinemaAmerican Avant-garde and the Structuralist/MaterialistsThe French ImpressionistsDadaProtocinema: Étienne-Jules MareyThe Pulse in Psychoanalysis: Sigmund Freud2. The Rhythm of Life: The Pulse in the SpectatorSurfaces of Inscription and Passages of IntensityMovement, and an OpeningThe Logic of Sensation as a Diastolic–systolic OpeningThe Aesthetics of the Open: Georges Franju’s Le Sang des bêtes/Blood of the Beasts (1949)A Libidinal Economy, and an OpeningCandour as the Body’s Openness to an Outside3. Aisthesis and Dispositif: The Pulse and its AnaloguesExtracting the Fear that Tingles the Spine: The Hype, the Buzz of the Gimmick, and the Bottom LineThe Execution: The Tingler (1959)Aisthesis and Prescribed LinesPrescription and the Aesthetics of Blood SpilledThe Pulse ‘Exposed’Dispositif: Lines of FrightFigural Analogues or ‘a Metonymy Without End’: The Heart that Throbs, the Spine that Tingles, the Mouth that Screams. Do you have the Guts?4. Automutilation and Metonymy: The Economy of the PulseGeneral Economy as Energetic ExpenditureTwo General Economies of Communication and CommunionAutomutilation: Effects on the FleshMetonymy and the ‘Operation’ to Undo IdentityAutomutilation and George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978)An Operation in the Morgue: Lucio Fulci’s L’aldilà/The Beyond (1981)The Sovereign Operation as Affective ExperienceThe Pulse as a Sovereign Operation in Horror Cinema5. Blood and Convulsive Affect: Vectors of the Pulse as Sovereign OperationsAndrzej Żuławski’s Possession (1981)Possession and DispossessionBody Horror and Convulsive AffectThe Copula and the Copulation of Bodies: The Convulsions of Language and Self, Even (Fucking Language)The Movement-Image and Vectors of SensationThe Machinic and the Non-MachinicThe Vector and CommunicationThe Magnitude and Direction of Vectors that Result in Possession and DispossessionMaterial Vectors and their (Non)senseBibliographyFilmographyIndex.

Mee’s impressive analysis of film is matched by her ability to connect complex ideas to films that are recognized as canon and films that are often marginalized. [...] Highly recommended.