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Derived from the Latin verb “gerere”-to carry, act, or do-“gesture” has accrued critical currency but has remained undertheorized. Migrations of Gesture addresses this absence and provides a complex theory on the value of gesture for understanding human sign production.

 

Gestures migrate from body to body, from one medium to another, and between cultural contexts. Juxtaposing distinct approaches to gesture in order to explore the ways in which they at once shape and are influenced by culture, the contributors examine the works of writers Henri Michaux and Stéphane Mallarmé, photographers Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Frank, and filmmakers Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Martin Arnold, along with cultural practices such as gang walking, ballet, and classical Indian dance. The authors move deftly between an organic, phenomenal appreciation of human expression and a historicist, semiotic understanding of how the “human” is itself created through gestural routines.

 

Contributors:  Mark Franko, U of California, Santa Cruz; Ketu H. Katrak, U of California, Irvine; Akira Mizuta Lippit, U of Southern California; Susan A. Phillips, Pitzer College; Deidre Sklar; Lesley Stern, U of California, San Diego; Blake Stimson, U of California, Davis.

Carrie Noland is associate professor of French literature and critical theory at the University of California, Irvine.

Sally Ann Ness is professor of anthropology at University of California, Riverside.

 

Table of Contents

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  1. Cover
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  1. Title Page, Copyright
  2. pp. i-iv
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  1. Contents
  2. pp. v-vi
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  1. Acknowledgments
  2. pp. vii-viii
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  1. Introduction
  2. Carrie Noland
  3. pp. ix-xxviii
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  1. 1. The Inscription of Gesture: Inward Migrations in Dance
  2. Sally Ann Ness
  3. pp. 1-30
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  1. 2. Physical Graffiti West: African American Gang Walks and Semiotic Practice
  2. Susan A. Phillips
  3. pp. 31-68
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  1. 3. Gesture and Abstraction
  2. Blake Stimson
  3. pp. 69-84
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  1. 4. Remembering Kinesthesia: An Inquiry into Embodied Cultural Knowledge
  2. Deidre Sklar
  3. pp. 85-112
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  1. 5. Digesture: Gesture and Inscription in Experimental Cinema
  2. Akira Mizuta Lippit
  3. pp. 113-132
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  1. 6. Miming Signing: Henri Michaux and the Writing Body
  2. Carrie Noland
  3. pp. 133-184
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  1. 7. Ghosting: The Performance and Migration of Cinematic Gesture, Focusing on Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s: Good Men, Good Women
  2. Lesley Stern
  3. pp. 185-216
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  1. 8. The Gestures of Bharata Natyam: Migrating into Diasporic Contemporary Indian Dance
  2. Ketu H. Katrak
  3. pp. 217-240
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  1. 9. Mimique
  2. Mark Franko
  3. pp. 241-258
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  1. Conclusion
  2. Sally Ann Ness
  3. pp. 259-280
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  1. Contributors
  2. pp. 281-284
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  1. Index
  2. pp. 285-296
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