Aesthetics, Ethics and Trauma in the Cinema of Pedro Almodóvar

by Julián Daniel Gutiérrez-Albilla

Overview

One of Spain's most celebrated directors, Pedro Almodovar has won international recognition for his dark comedy—dramas like Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, All About My Mother and Volver. Reconceptualising Almodovar's films as theoretical and political resources, this innovative book examines a neglected aspect of his cinema: its engagement with the traumatic past, with subjective and collective memory, and with the ethical and political meanings that result from this engagement. With close readings of Almodovar's films from the 1990s and 2000s, including Bad Education and The Skin I Live In, Julian Daniel Gutierrez—Albilla explores how Almodovar's cinema mourns and witnesses the traces of trauma, drawing on theoretical approaches from trauma studies, psychoanalysis, philosophy, film studies and visual studies to suggest that his work proposes an ethical model based on our compassionate relations to others, and envisions a world co—inhabited by plurality and difference.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781474400107
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	06/02/2017
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.40(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Julián Daniel Gutiérrez-Albilla is Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese, Comparative Literature and Gender Studies at the University of Southern California.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction: Encountering the Trace
1. Im-Possibility of Not-Returning: Volver
2. Im-Possibility of Not-Sharing: Todo sobre mi madre
3. Im-Possibility of Not-Writing Otherwise: La mala educación
4. Im-Possibility of Not-Succumbing: La piel que habito
Notes
References
Index

What People are Saying About This

Professor Jo Evans. UCL

Brilliant and original work by one of the most intellectually and ethically committed scholars working on Spanish-language film. Gutiérrez-Albilla engages lucidly with, and generously elucidates Derrida, Lévinas, Deleuze and Ettinger to raise questions about the trace of trauma associated with the Franco Regime in recent films by Almodóvar.

Editorial Reviews

Brilliant and original work by one of the most intellectually and ethically committed scholars working on Spanish-language film. Gutiérrez-Albilla engages lucidly with, and generously elucidates Derrida, Lévinas, Deleuze and Ettinger to raise questions about the trace of trauma associated with the Franco Regime in recent films by Almodóvar.

Professor Jo Evans

Brilliant and original work by one of the most intellectually and ethically committed scholars working on Spanish-language film. Gutiérrez-Albilla engages lucidly with, and generously elucidates Derrida, Lévinas, Deleuze and Ettinger to raise questions about the trace of trauma associated with the Franco Regime in recent films by Almodóvar.

Professor Jo Evans. UCL