Five ‘Exits’ from Brecht: Towards New Brechtian Subjectivities in Film. How can Brechtian v-effekts be developed or adapted in the light of contemporary understandings of subjectivity?

I am an artist-filmmaker working in, and against, the Brechtian tradition. My practice experiments with ways to repurpose the alienation technique, the Verfremdungseffeckt (v-effekt), challenging the limitations of the continued use of formal critical methods in the Brechtian tradition. For this reason, my films have incorporated various non-Brechtian techniques to both supplement and subvert the assumptions of Brechtian theory.

This thesis interrogates traditional Brechtian alienation techniques such as non-diegetic sound in film, disjointed or displaced props, and nonAristotelian narrative techniques. My interrogation of alienation extends it from a set of techniques used to construct a critical subject for the theatre to enable a rethinking of how critical subjectivity can be repurposed to other areas of research. These critical subjects are understood through reflections on psychology (neurodivergency), psychoanalysis (desire, and gaze), political philosophy (alienation), feminism (performativity, intersectionality, and language), cultural tropes (madness), and literary criticism (nonsense). All of these topics are examined insofar as they are expressed in film.

Subsequently, moving in an experimental and exploratory way from the formal use of Brechtian methods towards an investigation into artistic techniques centred upon alienated or imaginative realms, this thesis investigates several new ways of approaching Brechtian techniques - and thus multiple ways of rethinking Brecht. For instance, I have looked at feminist methods of representation that acknowledge Butlerian ideas of subjectivity developed since Brecht's era. These strategies also draw on JJ Lecercle's theory of nonsense.

This practice-centred Ph.D. explores ways in which Brechtian techniques can be applied and interrogated in new ways to create a novel language of alienated art. The investigation embraces alienated working methods which emerge through Brecht's more formal techniques to create a resistant critical method. Each film is therefore conceived as an attempt to reanimate Brechtian film for the twenty-first century, and, also, as an exit from his ideas