I, Daniel Blake (2016)

Vulnerability, Care and Citizenship in Austerity Politics

Bibliographic Data

ID4842582
AuthorsJacqueline Gibbs (0000-0001-7961-8206, London School of Economics and Political Science), Aura Lehtonen (0000-0001-6330-4640)
Year2019
Volume122
Issue1
Pages49-63
Publication date2019-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueFeminist Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0141-7789 • E-ISSN: 1466-4380
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0141778919847909
OpenAlexW2969579956
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited25

This article offers a reading of Ken Loach's 2016 film I, Daniel Blake, a fictionalised account of experiences of the UK welfare system in conditions of austerity. We consider, firstly, the significant challenge the film poses to dominant figurations of welfare recipients under austerity, through a focus on vulnerability to state processes. We follow with a reading of some of the film's interventions in relation to reciprocity, drawing on the important trajectories of care, community and resistance that the film renders visible through the collective stories of the major characters. Finally, we conclude with reflections on citizenship, subject narratives and alternative imaginaries of 'deservingness'. Our article offers an 'against the grain' reading (hooks, 1996; Wearing, 2013) of the film, highlighting some of the radical possibilities of the more minor moments, character arcs and subject positionalities within the film's central narrative of Daniel's experiences in the shadow of the steadily crumbling welfare state

Art · Austerity · Citizenship · Impossibility · Literature · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Reading (process) · Resistance (ecology) · Shadow (psychology) · Sociology · Subject (documents) · Welfare state · Gender Studies · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Law · Political and Economic history of UK and US · Psychology · Youth Education and Societal Dynamics

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