Cinematic Discourses of Deprivation: Analyzing the Representation of Precarity and Exclusion in European Fiction Film and Documentary – Renewal Proposal

• Applicant: Dr. Guido Kirsten
• Subject Area: Theatre and Media Studies
• Term: since 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 399199520

The renewal proposal serves to conclude my research on cinematic discourses of depravation. Two research gaps need to be addressed: firstly, with regard to the socially critical cinema of the Weimar Republic, I am testing two interrelated theses on the temporal development of this corpus: a) that questions of poverty, precariousness and class society were increasingly no longer merely thematised but moved to the centre of discourses in the diachronic development, and b) that this was accompanied by a shift in emphasis from the textual system of narration to that of discourse. To test these theses, it is necessary to watch and analyse thematically relevant films that are only accessible in archives. Secondly, previous research on cinematic discourses of depravation has revealed the need to pay greater attention to questions of intersectionality. Based on relevant theories and detailed analyses of thematically central films, the goal is to design a model of intersectional film analysis. The research is guided by the thesis that there are several categorically different ways in which class, race and gender are intertwined, which can be worked out by researching the existing literature on intersectionality in combination with focussed film discourse analyses. Theories of intersectionality make certain entanglements of social categories visible that would remain unaddressed without them; conversely, analysing the construction of cinematic quasi-arguments yields possibilities for a more precise description and differentiation of various types of intersectional entanglement.

• DFG Programme: Emmy Noether Independent Junior Research Groups