Decadence: affect and concept: two approaches from recent Argentine documentary

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DOI:

https://doi.org/10.52292/csf5320244765

Keywords:

decadence, affect, Argentinean documentary

Abstract

Whether as a strictly political gesture or as an impulse for a certain artistic strategy, the historical experience of decadence has been evoked in different ways over time. In its incarnation of disillusionment, boredom and/or metaphysical pessimism, its pattern seems to account for something more than the mere opposite side of progress to sustain itself in the affective order. Indeed, beyond expressing a sequence of decline that starts from a past imagined as better, its characterization is crossed by a complex and not necessarily univocal affective dimension. The aim of this paper is to problematize these issues through the analysis of two recent Argentine documentaries based on family archives: La vida dormida by Natalia Labaké (2021) and Esquirlas (2021) by Natalia Garayalde. I understand that in each of them two alternative ways of expressing the affective dimension of decadence are staged: the association with monstrosity, emotional excess and degeneration in one case, and crisis, emptiness and desolation in the second film.

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References

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How to Cite

Macón, C. (2024). Decadence: affect and concept: two approaches from recent Argentine documentary. Cuadernos Del Sur Filosofía, (53), 95–109. https://doi.org/10.52292/csf5320244765

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