Media, Masculinities, and the Machine F1, Transformers, and Fantasizing Technology at Its Limits

Fleming and Sturm have achieved a rare success in academic writing, by producing a book that is both important in its arguments and engaging in its style of writing and presentation. This book focuses on the complex relationship between humans, and more specifically men, and machines, but through their dual treatise of Transformers toys and Formula One racing, they provide insights that will have resonance with a wide variety of disciplines and subjects, including the study of masculinity, fandom, play, everyday life, material culture, technology, sport, social theory and media. - Garry Crawford, Senior Lecturer in Cultural Sociology, University of Salford Like a Formula 1 driver negotiating a hairpin turn through the sheer downforce of acceleration, Fleming and Sturm stick fast to their objects of analysis and don't let go. Linking affective resonances and processual materialities with hyper-reflexive riffings on methods, theories, fans and their attachments, this book continually assembles and then reassembles itself into new configurations of meaning and intensity. This is a book not only about machines but a machinic book!-- Gregory J. Seigworth, co-editor of The Affect Theory Reader The key contribution this book makes is to a non-representational media theory that teases out the complex interrelation between mediated elements ( texts, objects, and so forth) in the 'affective substrate" of culture. -- Glen Fuller, University of Canberra, AUS Cultural Studies Review