Cinematic Poetics of Guilt: Audiovisual Accusation as a Mode of Commonality

How do the temporal and dynamic patterns of media forms and practices create complex constructions of meaning, identity and value? How can we describe the way cinematic images generate and transform the affectively grounded structures that survey, confirm or revise a political community’s horizon of values?

Using the exemplary case of feelings of guilt, the author develops an approach that makes patterns of audiovisual compositions intelligible as aesthetic modulations of moral feelings. A...