Reading Literature and the Political Ecology of Gestures in the Age of Semiocapitalism

This article presents the activity of reading literature as the inculcation of relational gestures (within the larger scope of the development of semiocapitalism) and the humanities as reflexive practices of interpretation. It calls for literary studies to be conceived within the emerging field of media archaeology as a form of gestural resistance to the algorithmic protocolization of our behaviors. A political ecology of gestures is needed in order to soften (and reorient) the various protocols which tend to rigidify our reactions. Literary studies and the humanities can bring a crucial contribution to such a political ecology of gestures.