THE BIOPOLITICS OF DOMESTIC WORK AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE FEMALE 'OTHER' : REIMAGINING SPACES, LABOR, AND REPRESENTATIONS OF LIVE-IN DOMESTIC WORKERS IN FILM

Abstract: Representations of female characters in cinema have the effect of othering the female in front of the viewer’s gaze. Women’s characters are constructed along the lines of their gender and race difference. In this paper I focus entirely on the character of the woman domestic worker in four films: Ilo Ilo, The Second Mother, The Maid, and At Home. The paper aims to provide a different reading of this mostly trivialized character and rethink its otherness by pinpointing it in biopolitical labor and homes of biopower, namely of affect and oppression. I am interested in how labor can reconfigure the domestic space to a heterotopia, or what I call a ‘heterooikos’, which is the space occupied by the other. Finally, I will attempt an analysis that reimagines otherness captured by cinema, by locating, in the film text, techniques of resistance as a countersuggestion to techniques of character identification. My aim is to provide a different way to interact with subaltern subjects in film by recognizing otherness as part of an ethical response.