Ebook: The grace of destruction: a vital ethology of extreme cinemas

For Elena del Río, extreme cinema is not only qualitatively different from the representations of violence we encounter in popular, mainstream cinema; it also constitutes a critique of the socio-moral system that produces (in every sense of the word) such violence. Drawing inspiration from Deleuze's ethics of immanence, Spinoza's ethology of passions and Nietzsche's typology of forces, 'The Grace of Destruction' examines the affective extremities common in much of global, contemporary cinema from the affirmative perspective of vital forces and situations - extremities such as moral/religious oppression, biopolitical violence, the pain involved in gender relations, the event of death and planetary extinction.