Visceral, Abstract
In what ways, to what ends, and with what violent consequences does the offshore mediate the onshore in late capitalism? This question is the (silent) spur for the essay that follows. In it I consider the interimplicated violences of labor and mediation in two contemporary maritime films: Leviathan...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Simon Dawes, Centre d’histoire culturelle des sociétés contemporaines (CHCSC), Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ)
2025-07-01
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| Series: | Media Theory |
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| Online Access: | https://journalcontent.mediatheoryjournal.org/index.php/mt/article/view/1167 |
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| author | Mark Simpson |
| author_facet | Mark Simpson |
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| collection | DOAJ |
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In what ways, to what ends, and with what violent consequences does the offshore mediate the onshore in late capitalism? This question is the (silent) spur for the essay that follows. In it I consider the interimplicated violences of labor and mediation in two contemporary maritime films: Leviathan (2012), about commercial fishing off the New England coast, and The Forgotten Space (2010), about the global shipping industry. My analysis juxtaposes the immersive aesthetic on view in Leviathan with the dialectical dilation offered in The Forgotten Space — two perspectives that, likewise modulating the visceral and the abstract, nonetheless constitute importantly distinct forms of materialist commitment. Despite such differences, both films connect or indeed mediate ocean-work and camera-work as practices in order to foreground, provocatively, labors of looking — the work involved in what Jonathan Beller terms “value-producing human attention” (2006: 4) — and thus manage to capture the arduous interchange of material processes (manufacture and circulation) with supposedly immaterial ones (attention and affect) in late capitalist life.
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| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-9ec74061a2fa4cbe99b8c33a8bdea8a3 |
| institution | DOAJ |
| issn | 2557-826X |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-07-01 |
| publisher | Simon Dawes, Centre d’histoire culturelle des sociétés contemporaines (CHCSC), Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ) |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Media Theory |
| spelling | doaj-art-9ec74061a2fa4cbe99b8c33a8bdea8a32025-08-20T02:41:02ZengSimon Dawes, Centre d’histoire culturelle des sociétés contemporaines (CHCSC), Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ)Media Theory2557-826X2025-07-019110.70064/mt.v9i1.1167Visceral, AbstractMark Simpson In what ways, to what ends, and with what violent consequences does the offshore mediate the onshore in late capitalism? This question is the (silent) spur for the essay that follows. In it I consider the interimplicated violences of labor and mediation in two contemporary maritime films: Leviathan (2012), about commercial fishing off the New England coast, and The Forgotten Space (2010), about the global shipping industry. My analysis juxtaposes the immersive aesthetic on view in Leviathan with the dialectical dilation offered in The Forgotten Space — two perspectives that, likewise modulating the visceral and the abstract, nonetheless constitute importantly distinct forms of materialist commitment. Despite such differences, both films connect or indeed mediate ocean-work and camera-work as practices in order to foreground, provocatively, labors of looking — the work involved in what Jonathan Beller terms “value-producing human attention” (2006: 4) — and thus manage to capture the arduous interchange of material processes (manufacture and circulation) with supposedly immaterial ones (attention and affect) in late capitalist life. https://journalcontent.mediatheoryjournal.org/index.php/mt/article/view/1167OceansRenderingContainerizationMaterialismLate CapitalismDocumentary Film |
| spellingShingle | Mark Simpson Visceral, Abstract Media Theory Oceans Rendering Containerization Materialism Late Capitalism Documentary Film |
| title | Visceral, Abstract |
| title_full | Visceral, Abstract |
| title_fullStr | Visceral, Abstract |
| title_full_unstemmed | Visceral, Abstract |
| title_short | Visceral, Abstract |
| title_sort | visceral abstract |
| topic | Oceans Rendering Containerization Materialism Late Capitalism Documentary Film |
| url | https://journalcontent.mediatheoryjournal.org/index.php/mt/article/view/1167 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT marksimpson visceralabstract |