Migrations of Gesture

325 Pages·2008·2.98 MB·English

by  Carrie Noland

Migrations of Gesture
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Migrations of
Gesture
Carrie Noland and
Sally Ann Ness, Editors
University of Minnesota Press
Minneapolis • London
Portions of chapter 4 have been previously published in Deidre Sklar, “Qualities of Memory: Two
Dances of the Tortugas Fiesta,” in Dancing from Past to Present: Nation, Culture, Identities,ed. Theresa
Jill Buckland (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), 115–47; reprinted with permission.
“Mimique,” by Mark Franko (the second section of chapter 9), originally appeared in Bodies of the Text:
Dance as Theory, Literature as Dance,ed. Ellen W. Goellner and Jacqueline Shea Murphy (New
Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1995); reprinted with grateful acknowledgment to Rutgers
University Press.
Excerpts from Henri Michaux’s poetry in chapter 6 were originally published in Oeuvres complètes,
volume 2 (2001), and Mouvements(1957); copyright Editions Gallimard; reprinted courtesy of
Editions Gallimard.
Copyright 2008 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290
Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520
http://www.upress.umn.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Migrations of gesture / Carrie Noland and Sally Ann Ness, editors.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8166-4864-1 (hc : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-8166-4864-6 (hc : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-8166-4865-8 (pb : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-8166-4865-4 (pb : alk. paper)
1. Gesture. I. Noland, Carrie, 1958- II. Ness, Sally Ann.
PN2071.G4M45 2008
792.8—dc22 2007041674
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer.
15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction Carrie Noland ix
1. The Inscription of Gesture: Inward Migrations in
Dance Sally Ann Ness 1
2. Physical Graffiti West: African American Gang
Walks and Semiotic Practice Susan A. Phillips 31
3. Gesture and Abstraction Blake Stimson 69
4. Remembering Kinesthesia: An Inquiry into
Embodied Cultural Knowledge Deidre Sklar 85
5. Digesture: Gesture and Inscription in Experimental
Cinema Akira Mizuta Lippit 113
6. Miming Signing: Henri Michaux and the
Writing Body Carrie Noland 133
7. Ghosting: The Performance and Migration of
Cinematic Gesture, Focusing on Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s
Good Men, Good Women Lesley Stern 185
8. The Gestures of Bharata Natyam: Migrating into
Diasporic Contemporary Indian Dance
Ketu H. Katrak 217
9. Mimique Mark Franko 241
Conclusion Sally Ann Ness 259
Contributors 281
Index 285
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Acknowledgments
The editors express their sincere gratitude to the University of California
Humanities Research Institute, to Rosemarie Neumann for her admin-
istrative support and good cheer, and most especially to the director of
the Institute, David Theo Goldberg, who helped in every way possible
to facilitate the continuing work of the Research Residency Group on
“Gesture and Inscription” during fall 2002, without which this book
could never have been produced.
We also thank the contributors for their willingness to share ideas,
bibliographies, insights, and good times.
VII
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Introduction
Carrie Noland
What characterizes gesture is that in it nothing is being produced
[facere]or acted [agere],but rather something is being endured
and supported [gerere].
—Giorgio Agamben, “Notes on Gesture”
In one of those brief but intensely evocative fragments from Minima
Moralia,Theodor Adorno asks pointedly, “What does it mean for the sub-
ject that there are no more casement windows to open, but only sliding
frames to shove,” no portals to close “discreetly,” but only doors to be
“slammed”?1If modern subjects learn to slam and shove, rather than latch
and release, how will their general experience of movement be transformed?
“What does it mean for the subject” if, under the sway of advanced tech-
nology, only gestures “precise” and “brutal” may be executed within the
modernist regime?
Adorno is worried that the loss of even the smallest gestures, involv-
ing the wrist or forearm, reveals a “withering of experience,” a change in
the “most secret innervations” of human beings as they navigate an inter-
subjective and object world. Similar to many thinkers of the gestural before
him, Adorno recognizes the extent to which both instrumental and com-
municative gestures encode, express, and perpetuate the values of speciWc
historical and cultural formations. Adorno thus provides a useful starting
point for a volume on gestures and their migration because he understands
gesturing to be more than simply a conduit of socialization, a techne¯ that
constitutes subjects in a thoroughly mechanical and predictable way. He
also knows that gestures offer opportunities for kinesthetic experience;
they “innervate,” or stimulate, the nerves of a bodily part, and thus allow
the body to achieve a certain awareness and knowledge of itself through
IX