Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

9-2026

Document Type

Master's Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Program

Liberal Studies

Advisor

Elizabeth Alsop

Subject Categories

Film and Media Studies | Queer Studies

Keywords

Psychoanalysis, Affect Theory, Queer Formalism

Abstract

This thesis argues that anxiety is the form of a decision, a division that always multiplies the form of what it divides. It is my contention that this doubleness that marks anxiety’s structure makes it an essential affect for thinking through the political problem of action, particularly for those with distance from the material violence of the world. Using the work of the psychoanalysts Jean Laplanche and Avgi Saketopoulou, I elucidate the psychic structure of anxiety as the tug-of-war between the desired stasis of the ego and the exigency of the sexual drive as these opposing forces pull on either end of the rope. It is both the thought, I could act, and the resounding rejection of that thought at once. Anxiety is thus the affective condition of possibility through which action can occur. This claim suggests that in order to move toward risk, one must first encounter the anxious conditions that produce the possibility that one could risk. To further draw out the value of thinking with and through form when theorizing anxiety, I perform a close reading of Oliver Laxe’s film Sirāt (2025), where I formalize the affect of anxiety as the form of the line that bends without breaking. This commitment to form, following Eugenie Brinkema’s method of radical formalism, allows me to read the neocolonial politics of the film without making recourse to the aesthetic object as a mere representation of reality. My hope is that this method, which I call queer formalism, allows for the aesthetic to function as a site for speculative thinking.

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