Mediated Associations: Cinematic Dimensions of Social Theory

Rather than focusing on the abstract and individualizing character of cinema, Mediated Associations elucidates the collective character of cinematic objects. O’Connor argues that social theory must come to terms with the new mobilities and speed of cinema, and the various ways in which the affect – as a virtual moment of collective experience – is inserted into the flow of movement and structures cinematic events. In considering the primacy of the affect to cinematic forms of power, he examines the way in which cinema controls our associations, reconstituting our manners and habits of sociality and sociability in subtle and complex ways.