The aim of this paper is to define the act itself of making gestures in its implication for human condition. Departing from Johann Jakob Engel′s definition of gestures as movements toward real external objects, the first part of this paper defines objects as everything opposed to the subject or to the present condition of the body, in line with Sartre and the epistemological tradition. The second part then investigates the relation of gesture with its possibilities to reach objects, that (...) is, its ability to be concrete actions as well. Starting from biblical image of the sacrifice of Isaac, gesture is defined as the rejection of being an action, in order to be ascribed to the Aristotelian category of power. Hence, gesture is what makes us perceive both the present condition of human body and its possibilities. (shrink)

Spoken language is an innate ability of the human being and represents the most widespread mode of social communication. The ability to share concepts, intentions and feelings, and also to respond to what others are feeling/saying is crucial during social interactions. A growing body of evidence suggests that language evolved from manual gestures, gradually incorporating motor acts with vocal elements. In this evolutionary context, the human mirror mechanism (MM) would permit the passage from “doing something” to “communicating it to someone (...) else.” In this perspective, the MM would mediate semantic processes being involved in both the execution and in the understanding of messages expressed by words or gestures. Thus, the recognition of action related words would activate somatosensory regions, reflecting the semantic grounding of these symbols in action information. Here, the role of the sensorimotor cortex and in general of the human MM on both language perception and understanding is addressed, focusing on recent studies on the integration between symbolic gestures and speech. We conclude documenting some evidence about MM in coding also the emotional aspects conveyed by manual, facial and body signals during communication, and how they act in concert with language to modulate other’s message comprehension and behavior, in line with an “embodied” and integrated view of social interaction. (shrink)

As a speculative and abstract discipline, philosophy is traditionally considered to be in dialectical tension with physical experience and daily practice. In contrast to this conventional and idealistic perspective, and in line with aesthetics as embodied knowledge, this article attempts to show that not only do we constantly think via gestures, movements, and physical experiences but also that there is no need to disconnect a concept from practice. Passing from Wittgenstein’s idea of “form of life” to the pragmatist aesthetics (...) initiated by Dewey’s idea of “art as experience,” I propose an analysis of the philosophical framework of postmodern dance (Yvonne Rainer) and of Happenings (Allan Kaprow), in order to underline the theoretical and conceptual research that is already at work in the field of contemporary art practice, the latter being understood as a sensorial dimension intrinsically linked to ordinary life. My general argument is that gestures, which are an inescapable and vital part of everyday life, can be foregrounded by certain artistic practices without corrupting or theatricalizing their ordinariness. (shrink)

Gesture is usually seen as a movement of the body that represents abstract meaning and accompanies speech. Yet we cannot help but wonder whether there may be another way of conceiving it, an approach not steeped in an “embodied” sort of cognitivism. Could gesture be defined as a performative movement that supports meaning? Can it be directed towards objects, like in cases of creative practice? And if it can indeed be found in contexts of creative material engagement, how does it (...) participate in the emergence of mind, signification, and agency? These are some fundamental questions that we attempt to address in this chapter by drawing upon the theoretical insights of scholars from different but not incompatible schools of thought. Setting off at the etymological root of the word gesture, we first seek to enunciate the freedom of will and the endurance of matter that characterize it by resorting to the writings of Flusser, Dewey, and Agamben. In view of this working definition, we then attempt to sketch an ecologically sensitive picture that includes gestures directed towards objects, focusing in particular on the gestures of work that drive creative practice. Building on Malafouris’ theory of material engagement, we specifically try to frame these gestures along the lines of enactive prosthesis, enactive sign, and enactive intention-always in the context of mind-matter interaction. Considering the existential implications of gesturing, we are ultimately obliged to conceive this kind of body movement as creative in the most fundamental of ways and the gesturer as Homo faber in the most autopoietic of senses. (shrink)

Gottlob Frege’s conception of works of art has received scant notice in the literature. This is a pity since, as this paper undertakes to reveal, his innovative philosophy of language motivated a theoretically and historically consequential, yet unaccountably marginalized Wittgenstinian line of inquiry in the domain of aesthetics. The element of Frege’s approach that most clearly inspired this development is the idea that only complete sentences articulate thoughts and that what sentences in works of drama and literary art express (...) are ‘mock thoughts’ (Schiengedanken). The early Wittgenstein closely followed Frege’s lead on this theme. One sees this, for example, in the Tractatus, where Wittgenstein announces that only sentential propositions model (‘picture’) states of affairs whereas works of art are objects we perceive sub specie aeternitatis (1961, 83). By the 1930s, however, Wittgenstein began to revise his view beyond his initial Frege-inspired standpoint. He came to insist that works of art can convey thoughts as well, but that thoughts do not model (picture) the world of facts and hence do not convey information about measurable objects and events. Rather, his contention was that aesthetically configured thoughts that artworks communicate impart information about our perspective on reality and reconfigure our view of life. To be more explicit, successful (gelungene) or ‘good’ works of art (ibid.), in Wittgenstein’s view, can supply aesthetically instructive ‘gestures’ that open to living experience promising new ways of being. It is in this respect, he held, that artists ‘have something to teach’ (1980, 36). (shrink)

Gestural and pantomimic accounts of language origins propose that language did not develop directly from ape vocalisations, but rather that its emergence was preceded by an intervening stage of bodily-visual communication, during which our ancestors communicated with their hands, arms, and the entire body. Gestural and pantomimic scenarios are again becoming popular in language evolution research, but this line of thought has a long and interesting history that gained special prominence in the Enlightenment, often considered the golden (...) age of glottogony. We highlight several themes key to this line of reflection, such as the idea of innate communication that consists of visual bodily signs and non-linguistic vocalisations; the division of labour between these two semiotic resources ; or the developmental trajectory of this bi-modal system of communication determined by its transmission through generations of users and the intervention of social factors. We confront these ideas with problems discussed in current language evolution research, focusing on polysemioticity, sign function, conventionality and modality transition. (shrink)

This study is concerned with the organisation of gestural phases of non-movement, in particular the prolonged hold and provisional home position, as accountably and in situ produced segments of behaviour. Through fine-grained transcriptions and multimodal analysis of videotaped conversation in natural and everyday settings, it is found that movement phases may be exploited by participants in order to indicate that a pursued trajectory or line of action is maintained, suspended or abandoned. Also, through constant monitoring, participants may adjust (...) the location of non-movement as the interaction unfolds in time. It is argued that various possible locations of non-movement are arranged along a continuum ranging from the space of gesticulation to a relaxed rest position and that these locations reflect various degrees of involvement or claim of speakership in the gesturer. (shrink)

This study explores the morphology of iconic gestures during deception. Participants narrated a static cartoon story twice. In one condition they provided an accurate account of the story, in the other they were instructed to introduce false details. Participants produced significantly fewer iconic gestures when describing plot-line events deceptively than when narrating comparable episode units truthfully. Deceptive gestures had significantly fewer post-stroke holds and shorter stroke phase durations than those produced alongside truthful utterances. Following Beattie (Visible thought: The new (...) psychology of body language, Routledge, 2003) three narrators in the deceptive condition produced gestures that in their morphology contradicted the semantic information encoded in their speech stream, and ultimately signaled possible deceit. (shrink)

The paper presents a cognitive semiotic perspective on spontaneous gesturing (or singular gestures), understood as spontaneous co-speech embodied activity, devoid of linguistic properties, and not conforming to social conventions. In line with the cognitive-semiotic attitude, the paper addresses the so far underexplored methodological issue of complementing third-person methods of gesture studies with first- and second-person perspectives on speech and gesturing in line with phenomenological triangulation. Merleau-Ponty’s ideas presented in Phenomenology of Perception are the starting point for the exploration (...) of aspects of a phenomenological view of gestural meaning-making. Gesturing, as a meaning-making activity, is analyzed in terms of embodied accomplishment of meaning. Gestural bodily activity is subsequently analyzed in terms of pre-reflective self-consciousness and reflective self-consciousness. The paper is intended as a contribution to studies on the phenomenology of gesturing, with perspectives for further research sketched in the concluding section. (shrink)

A number of language evolution researchers have argued that while language as we now know it is a predominately vocal affair, early language plausibly made extensive use of gesture. Relatedly, these same researchers often claim that while modern language in general uses arbitrary symbols, it is very likely that early language made extensive use of iconicity. Anyone accepting an account of early language along these lines must therefore explain how language shifted over time from a heavily gestural and iconic (...) communication system to a predominately vocal and highly arbitrary one. This article looks at an intriguing theory advanced by Woll as to how this shift was made. We find the spirit of the theory plausible but take issue with its details. Specifically, we identify a serious tension at the core of the theory. We then go on to explore how that tension might be plausibly resolved. The result is a blueprint for a much-improved version of the theory, in our view. (shrink)

This chapter presents the third step in the book’s exploration of the selfhood shaped in autobiographical graphic narratives, or autographics. The chapter focuses on the logic of trace—that is, the logic of the drawn line on the page. As many comics scholars argue, the materiality of this trace alludes to the hand and body of the cartoonist. This chapter explores this materiality further with the help of a psychoanalytical framework rooted in the works of (1) Donald Winnicott and Marion (...) Milner, and (2) Jacques Lacan. With the help of Winnicott and Milner, the chapter argues, through a dialogue with autographics by Lynda Barry and Alison BechdelBechdel, Alison, that line drawings in autographics generate a transitional space in which the cartoonist discovers themselves. With the help of Lacan, the chapter shows that a drawn line can be understood as a “unary trait” that functions as a self-positing. The chapter then explores this self-positing through a critical reading of Paul de Man’s interpretation of Fichte’s concept of the Tathandlung, which de Man links to an understanding of irony as permanent parabasis. The chapter argues that a graphic version of this Tathandlung—a self-positing through line drawing—is performed in Katie Green’s autographic Lighter Than My Shadow. (shrink)

This chapter presents the first step in the book’s exploration of the selfhood shaped in autobiographical graphic narratives, or autographics. The chapter employs Paul Ricoeur’s theory of identity to show that while autographics generate a variety of formal tensions, these tensions should be understood as dialectical. Through a close reading of several panels from Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis and Zoe Thorogood’s It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth, the chapter argues that autographics’ verbal narratives, which often present the self in (...) a first-person voice, shape what Ricoeur characterises as an ipse-identity, whereas the drawn figure, which represents this self from a third-person perspective, generates an idem-identity. Both forms of identity are rooted in what Ricoeur calls flesh, a concept that the chapter links to the cartoonist’s corporeality as it returns in the drawn lines of autographics. The chapter argues that the dialectical tensions between these understandings of identity shape a narrative identity, which, in the case of autographics that tell a story of cartoonist-becoming, is defined as a narrative cartoonist-identity. (shrink)

Departing from the intention to explore Frank Gehry’s drawings serving to their own designer to grasp ideas during the process of their genesis, the article examines Frank Gehry’s concern about the revelation of the first gestural drawings and all the sketches and working models concerning the evolution of his projects, and his intention to capture the successive transformation and progressive concretisation of architectural concepts. The article also compares Gehry’s design process with that of Enric Miralles, Alvar Aalto, Bernard Tschumi, (...) and Le Corbusier. It sheds light on Miralles, Aalto, Le Corbusier and Gehry’s interest in a holistic understanding of all the parts of an architectural project, which is expressed through their tendency to draw the different sketches concerning the same project on the same sheet of paper. At the core of Gehry’s design approach is the osmosis of function and morphology. This aspect of his design vision could be compared to Alvar Aalto’s design process. At the core of the article are the distinction between communication drawings and conceptual drawings, and Gehry’s concern about achieving an osmosis between function and morphology. The article also investigates Gehry’s use of uninterrupted self-twisting line in his sketches, exploring his intention to enhance a straightforward relationship between the gesture and the decision-making regarding the form of the building. (shrink)

The line most opposed to the technical virtual line is the line drawn in calligraphy. Chinese characters are not merely images but gestures linked to the movements of the body. Lines are “divested” (a word used by Michaux) because: (1) they are recognized as not being objects; (2) they are linked to vision (the image and I are linked through vision within a space we share), which undermines the object character of the line; (3) we are (...) always moving while looking. The line is never here nor there because our gaze is never here nor there. Though the lines of the calligraphic character are highly “divested,” calligraphy avoids a fourth divestment that would deprive the line of its bodily dimension. Calligraphy always maintains its bodily dimension. One could conclude that this makes the calligraphic line more present, more affirmed, and the contrary of self-negated. However, the opposite is the case. I also apply the Daoist principle of wuwei to Mondrian (Mondrian was interested in Daoism). (shrink)

El trazo gestual y la línea, originarios del campo del dibujo y de las artes visuales, poseen diversas funciones, además de numerosas finalidades comunicativas. En este trabajo realizamos primero un estudio de sus principales funciones: representativa, simbólica, y expresiva. Para posteriormente, corroborar como este elemento gráfico desvela un aporte de información y contenidos determinantes en manifestaciones y disciplinas ajenas a las artes.

In 1865, the Brussels educational reformer Pierre Temples advocated to take drawing as the cornerstone of education. He criticized that education was modelled on conventions and grammatical rules in order to learn to read and write, this way ignoring the potential of drawing to create new concepts. This paper is also concerned with the significance of drawing in the realm of education. However, not to elaborate on its added value for education, but to discuss the mode of thinking that it (...) seeks to disclose. The paper starts with a re-reading of two stories: Pliny the Elder's image of the origin of drawing and Viktor Lowenfeld’s artistic developmental theory. This brings us to an understanding of the significance of drawing not as a pure sensory experience, nor as a cognitive one, but as a new gesture that marks the visual as visual, to make it an object of thought. Unlike Temples, this contribution is not against grammar, but understands the act of drawing as a form of grammatisation in itself: i.e. a particular response to an event, which simultaneously enables us to visualize what confronts us. Hence, an ability to imagine and create new relationships with the world. (shrink)

Systematically addresses the philosophical implications of the postcolonial. In this book, Emanuela Fornari systematically examines the philosophical implications of postcolonial studies. She considers postcolonial critique not as a school or a current of thought but rather as a multiform constellation that—from the celebrated Orientalism of Edward Said to the contributions of authors like Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Spivak, Ranajit Guha, and Dipesh Chakrabarty—has called into question the assumptions that underlie key concepts in the history of philosophy. Fornari addresses themes such as (...) history and memory, borders, the subject, and translation, engaging classical authors such as Kant, Hegel, and Marx alongside more contemporary theorizations by authors such as Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Étienne Balibar, and Jacques Rancière. “Fornari’s book is purposeful in its construction, framed by themes she puts into motion and in which each considered thinker is set. The result is an investigation of philosophy and the postcolonial that does not rely on familiar associations and gestures, but rather rigorous, original theorizing of key concepts. This is a compelling book that displays mature, important thinking on some of our most pressing philosophical issues.” — John E. Drabinski, coeditor of Between Levinas and Heidegger. (shrink)

’Death’ and ’Furniture’ are emblems for two very common (predictable, even) objections to relativism. When relativists talk about the social construction of reality, truth, cognition, scientific knowledge, technical capacity, social structure and so on, their realist opponents sooner or later start hitting the furniture, invoking the Holocaust, talking about rocks, guns, killings, human misery, tables and chairs. The force of these objections is to introduce a bottom line, a bedrock of reality that places limits on what may be treated (...) as epistemologically constructed or deconstructible. There are two related kinds of moves: Furniture (tables, rocks, stones, etc. - the reality that cannot be denied) and Death (misery, genocide, poverty, power - the reality that should not be denied). Our aim is to show how these ’but surely not this’ gestures and arguments work, how they trade off each other, and how unconvincing they are, on examination, as refutations of relativism. (shrink)

After Science and Metaphysics, Sellars’ encounter with Kant was characterized by acknowledging and working out the role played by imagination in perceptual experience. The mediating imaginative function provided him with a somewhat new and more Kantian account of the relationship between concepts and intuitions. After stressing the peculiar theoretical and exegetical background of Sellars’ approach to Kant – his project of “translating” his own ideas in the lingua franca of Kantianism – which has been influential in current normative interpretations of (...) Kant, I will raise the following question: could imagination represent a solution to the Kant-Sellars problem of a «happy medium» between a conceptual-normative and a non-conceptual side of experience? As a mediating device, I will then suggest, imagination can be seen as a third way between two well-known theoretical strategies for facing Sellars’ dichotomy adopted by two prominent left-wing Sellarsians: doing without intuitions (Brandom) or fusing concept and intuitions (McDowell). Both of these strategies have given rise to respective interpretations of Kant. By suggesting a third way, I will also gesture toward a possible role for imagination within a conceptual account of intuition à la McDowell. (shrink)

The phenomenal draftsman Gustav Klimt occupies a unique place in modern art. His extant œuvre comprises some 250 paintings and more than 4,000 works on paper. The study of the human figure—above all female—lies at the heart of the artist’s activity as a draftsman, which he practiced assiduously. Through his study of the poses and gestures of his models, Klimt repeatedly examined the essence of particular psychological and existential states of being. In his constant quest for the ideal solution, Klimt (...) often went beyond the preparation of his paintings, which, particularly after 1900, were dominated by the themes of Eros, Love, Life, and Death. His art cannot be understood without carefully considering the drawings, which are characterized by an unsurpassed mastery of line, in all the phases of his artistic development—from Historicism, through Stilkunst around 1900, the Golden Period, and up to his freer late work. This lavishly illustrated publication accompanies the exhibition organized by the Albertina Museum in Vienna (March 13 to June 10, 2012) and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles (July 3 to September 23, 2012) to mark the 150th anniversary of Gustav Klimt’s birth. In both venues, the emphasis will be placed on showing not only the variety of his draftsmanship, but also the centrality of drawing to Klimt’s artistic enterprise. Most of the works on display will come from the Albertina’s outstanding collection, one of the most extensive and representative groups of Klimt drawings in the world, complemented by select Austrian and international loans. (shrink)

El trazo gestual y la línea, originarios del campo del dibujo y de las artes visuales, poseen diversas funciones, además de numerosas finalidades comunicativas. En este trabajo realizamos primero un estudio de sus principales funciones: representativa, simbólica, y expresiva. Para posteriormente, corroborar como este elemento gráfico desvela un aporte de información y contenidos determinantes en manifestaciones y disciplinas ajenas a las artes.

As humans, we have the capacity to refer to the things in the world around us. In everyday spoken communication, we often use words to describe intended referents (such as objects, people, and events), and our bodies (e.g., eyes, head, and hands) to indicate the location to which our addressee should focus her attention in order to further identify what we are talking about (Bühler, 1934; Clark & Bangerter, 2004). Traditionally, referring has been described as an autonomous and addressee-blind act (...) that speakers do on their own without taking into account beliefs about their addressees' knowledge about a referent (e.g., Olson, 1970; see Clark & Bangerter, 2004). In contrast, more recent views consider it rather a collaborative enterprise that requires that speaker and addressee work together, for instance in reaching mutual agreement on how to conceptualize and name a particular entity (e.g., Brennan & Clark, 1996; Clark & Bangerter, 2004; Clark & Wilkes-Gibbs, 1986). Such agreement is established through interaction, and the addressee is at least as important as the speaker in reaching agreement and establishing reference. In prototypical instances of successful referring, speakers often produce spatial demonstratives like this and that to establish joint attention between speaker and addressee to a visible entity (Bühler, 1934; Levinson, 1983). Such demonstratives are among the most frequently used words in language, among the first words infants produce (Clark & Sengul, 1978), and possibly primordial in phylogeny (Diessel, 2006; Tomasello, 2008). Surprisingly, despite the advances made towards a social, collaborative account of referring more generally, the prevailing theoretical view on spatial demonstratives has remained deeply individual and egocentric, as illustrated by the following claims:1. "[T]he anchoring point of deictic expressions is egocentric (or, better, speaker-centric). Adult speakers skillfully relate what they are talking about to this me-here-now" (Levelt, 1989, p. 46).2. Spatial demonstratives “indicate the relative distance of an object, location, or person vis-à-vis the deictic center (…), which is usually associated with the location of the speaker" (Diessel, 1999, p. 36).3. "[D]emonstratives are interpreted based on the speaker’s body" (Diessel, 2014, p. 122). This egocentric account is intuitively appealing and still influential (e.g., Diessel, 2014; Stevens & Zhang, 2014). In the current paper, we question this account from both the production and the comprehension side, and discuss recent accumulating observational, experimental, and neuroscientific evidence that suggests an alternative social and multimodal view of demonstrative reference. Production of demonstratives: Beyond egocentricity and relative distanceAlthough it is generally acknowledged that demonstratives have a social function in establishing joint attention to a referent (e.g., Diessel, 2006), the egocentric account claims that when using a demonstrative “the speaker, by virtue of being the speaker, casts himself in the role of ego and relates everything to his viewpoint” (Lyons, 1977, p. 638). Diessel (2014, p. 128) even states that “speakers of all languages employ an egocentric coordinate system that is anchored by the speaker’s body at the time of the utterance”, and argues that the speaker's body is a conventionalized aspect of the demonstrative's meaning (Diessel, 2014, p. 122). But are speakers really egocentric when using a spatial demonstrative? Analyses of everyday multimodal and face-to-face spoken corpora suggest the opposite. Küntay and Özyürek (2006), for instance, show that speakers of Turkish use the demonstrative şu specifically for referents that are not yet in the addressee's visual focus of attention and the demonstrative o for referents that are in the addressee's visual focus of attention (see also Özyürek, 1998). Thus, speakers would not use an egocentric coordinate system, but rather take the viewpoint of their addressee into account. Jungbluth (2003), furthermore, reports that the physical orientation of both interlocutors relative to each other in a conversation drives demonstrative choice in Spanish. When speaker and addressee are face-to-face in a conversational dyad, all referents within the dyad are treated as proximal “without any further differentiation” (Jungbluth, 2003, p. 19). Hence, when using a demonstrative, speakers may not be that egocentric after all.Critically, the egocentric account generally claims that spatial demonstratives mainly express a distance contrast (e.g., Anderson & Keenan, 1985; Coventry et al., 2008; Diessel, 1999, 2006, 2014; Lyons, 1977). In the case of simple two-term demonstrative systems, this means that a proximal demonstrative (English this) indicates a referent relatively nearby the speaker and a distal demonstrative (English that) indicates a referent relatively remote from the speaker's location. For three-term systems it has been argued that the 'medial' demonstrative is used for entities close to the addressee or for entities at middle distance from the speaker. Diessel (2014, p. 123) claims that such "distance specifications of demonstratives are universals". However, descriptions of demonstrative systems in terms of relative distance (either to speaker or addressee) are often based on linguistic intuitions and not on extensive analyses of everyday communication or rigorous experimental testing. Observational and experimental studies suggest that relative distance to the speaker is often not primarily driving a speaker's demonstrative choice.Enfield (2003, p. 104), for instance, in describing the Lao two-term demonstrative system, concludes that “distance cannot be what distinguishes the meanings of these two demonstratives”. Rather, demonstrative reference is described as a social, interactive process in which the choice for a proximal or distal demonstrative depends on how interlocutors perceive and interpret the physical space during their interaction (Enfield, 2003). What is perceived as "proximal" may depend, for instance, on the engagement areas of speaker and addressee during their conversation (Enfield, 2003; see also Hanks, 1990). Piwek et al. (2008), moreover, argue that demonstrative choice in Dutch is not driven by the relative distance of a referent to the speaker, but by the cognitive and visual accessibility of a referent to speaker and addressee (see also Burenhult, 2003; Jarbou, 2010). Experimental studies supposedly showing effects of relative distance (Coventry et al., 2008; 2014) also show that what is considered as nearby or faraway is very flexible, for instance depending on whether participants point with their finger or with a stick, and on a referent's (context-dependent) visibility, familiarity, and ownership properties. This flexibility suggests that, rather than actual physical proximity, perceived (psychological) proximity is a more important factor in demonstrative choice (see below). Comprehension of demonstratives: Beyond egocentricity and relative distanceDue to its focus on the speaker, the egocentric view of demonstrative reference generally does not consider how addressees comprehend the demonstratives they hear. However, according to Diessel (2014), demonstratives are interpreted (by an addressee) based on the relative distance of an entity to the speaker's body. In this view, an addressee will expect that a speaker uses a proximal demonstrative in reference to an entity that is relatively close to the speaker’s body at the time of the utterance and a distal term for entities relatively farther away from the speaker. This claim is again purely based on linguistic intuitions and not on empirical testing. Studies actually investigating demonstrative comprehension are scarce. Stevens and Zhang (2013, 2014) presented participants with visual scenes that included a speaker, a hearer, and a referent, while they listened to an auditory stimulus that contained a demonstrative (e.g. this/that cat) and while their electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded. The referent was either near the speaker, near the hearer, or away from both, and participants were asked to judge whether the demonstrative matched the visual scene. Participants' linguistic judgments were in line with the egocentric view of demonstrative reference. However, analysis of their EEGs suggested that they took into account whether speaker and hearer both gazed at the referent or not (Stevens & Zhang, 2013) and whether the speaker produced a pointing gesture to the referent or not (Stevens & Zhang, 2014). Thus, a measure tapping into linguistic intuitions (the judgment task) was found to be in line with the egocentric view whereas a measure reflecting online processing (EEG) found an influence of social factors such as the presence of shared gaze. Recently, Peeters et al. (2015b) investigated demonstrative comprehension in a paradigm in which participants listened to sentences that contained a demonstrative while they saw a picture of a speaker manually pointing at one of two visible objects. Higher processing costs were found for comprehending distal compared to proximal demonstratives when referents were in the shared space between speaker and participant (see Figure 1). Addressees thus took into account whether a referent was inside or outside the space that was shared with the speaker. No effect of the relative distance of the referent to the speaker was found. These findings suggest that demonstrative comprehension is sociocentric and involves the we-here-now (Peeters et al., 2015b), rather than egocentric and driven by the me-here-now (Levelt, 1989). In sum, paradigms going beyond simple intuitions show that demonstrative reference, from both a production and a comprehension perspective, is a joint action rather than an egocentric, addressee-blind phenomenon. A social and multimodal approach to demonstrative referenceThe findings discussed above seriously question the egocentric view that demonstratives express a distance contrast as calculated from the speaker's location. We propose a social alternative: Demonstrative production and comprehension are not primarily governed by the physical proximity of a referent to the speaker, but rather by the psychological proximity of a referent to both speaker and addressee. Moving beyond other social accounts (e.g., Enfield, 2003; Jarbou, 2010), we suggest that speaker and addressee jointly establish which referents are psychologically proximal. Arguably, during interaction interlocutors keep track of the psychological proximity of possible referents. Many contextual factors may contribute to a referent's degree of psychological proximity. For instance, in face-to-face conversations, entities inside the shared space between interlocutors may be experienced as psychologically more proximal than entities outside the shared space (Jungbluth, 2003; Peeters et al., 2015b). An increase in visibility, familiarity, and ownership of possible referents may increase their psychological proximity (cf. Coventry et al., 2014; Jarbou, 2010). Physical and social boundaries between speaker, addressee, and referent may decrease a referent's psychological proximity (Enfield, 2003). Experimental manipulations, informed by careful analysis of everyday demonstrative use, are needed to disentangle the respective contributions of these different contextual influences to the perceived psychological proximity of a referent and the subsequent choice to use one demonstrative and not another.Furthermore, speakers often organize their use of a demonstrative in relation to their manual pointing behavior (Bangerter, 2004; Cooperrider, in press). Considering demonstrative reference a social undertaking goes hand in hand with its multimodal characteristics. Research on pointing gestures suggests that pointing is often a highly social and communicative act. It has been found that speakers tailor the kinematics of their pointing gesture to the communicative needs of their addressee, for instance by slowing down the stroke and prolonging the hold phase of their gesture for its recognition (Peeters et al., 2015a). Moreover, already in very early stages of life, pointing gestures are often produced with a declarative motive, i.e. to simply share interest in a certain referent and for the addressee to recognize one’s communicative intentions (Tomasello et al. 2007). It is hard to unite such a view of pointing as deeply social and communicative with an egocentric view of demonstrative reference in which the speaker is egocentric when choosing a demonstrative. Rather, the social and communicative nature of human pointing confirms that multimodal demonstrative reference is an interpersonal, collaborative process in which the addressee plays a pivotal role.ConclusionBoth observational and experimental findings on the production and comprehension of spatial demonstratives suggest that it is now time to move away from an egocentric perspective on spatial demonstrative reference. Demonstratives are better understood in an empirically supported social and multimodal account that considers demonstrative reference a joint action. Such an account fits well within the broader context of referring as a social, interactive phenomenon (Clark & Bangerter, 2004), and is in line with studies looking at joint actions beyond language (e.g., Vesper & Richardson, 2014). A social and multimodal approach to demonstrative reference may also offer new ways to understand how pragmatic language use is acquired in development (Küntay & Özyürek, 2006) and impaired in populations that have difficulties in social interaction and communication. (shrink)

This essay explores the lines of thought focused on the relationship between gesture and technique, examining the theories which have conceptualized the transfer of gestural matrices into inert matter, and understood technique as a result of this process. Although associated mainly with the writings of the palaeontologist André Leroi-Gourhan, this thought actually predates his work, and consists of multiple branches: having first taken root at the end of the nineteenth century, it became diffused throughout the following decades in different (...) forms. These nevertheless shared a constant reference to cinema, both as a privileged place that captures gestures, and as a technique that can absorb their quintessence. From Espinas to Simondon, via Jousse and Eisenstein, the theory of gestural transmission breaks down various polarities, such as body and environment, organic and inorganic, animated and inanimate, performativity and inner life. It foregrounds the imaginative logic of the body and the many forms of somatic thinking developed by man. Such forms lie at the heart of the creative processes and have found their highest appreciation in cinema, as a machine that, from its very origins, has been grafted not only on the eye but on the whole body. (shrink)

Depictive expressions of thought predate written language by thousands of years. They have evolved in communities through a kind of informal user testing that has refined them. Analyzing common visual communications reveals consistencies that illuminate how people think as well as guide design; the process can be brought into the laboratory and accelerated. Like language, visual communications abstract and schematize; unlike language, they use properties of the page (e.g., proximity and place: center, horizontal/up–down, vertical/left–right) and the marks on it (e.g., (...) dots, lines, arrows, boxes, blobs, likenesses, symbols) to convey meanings. The visual expressions of these meanings (e.g., individual, category, order, relation, correspondence, continuum, hierarchy) have analogs in language, gesture, and especially in the patterns that are created when people design the world around them, arranging things into piles and rows and hierarchies and arrays, spatial-abstraction-action interconnections termed spractions. The designed world is a diagram. (shrink)

Drawing on microanalysis of interaction, this study examines the practice a pointing gesture accomplishes in initiating a new sequence in relation to what just happened when another line of interaction is still developing. Specifically, it is an investigation of the cases in which a participant points at a current or adjacent prior speaker with their index finger, comments on their current or adjacent prior action, and laughs. Such pointing spotlights what the target is currently doing or just did and (...) locates them as a cause of the laughter. The pointing participant then invites laughter from others by shifting their gaze toward others while continuing to point. The analysis shows that such practice presents new participation statuses of the recipients and enables the producer of the pointing to initiate a teasing sequence; the gaze shift can invite laughter from others while the pointing indicates the target of the teasing. The study thus reveals interactional tasks of pointing gestures beyond their referential function. (shrink)

Recently theorists have developed competing accounts of the origins and nature of protolanguage and the subsequent evolution of language. Debate over these accounts is lively. Participants ask: Is music a direct precursor of language? Were the first languages gestural? Or is language continuous with primate vocalizations, such as the alarm calls of vervets? In this article I survey the leading hypotheses and lines of evidence, favouring a largely gestural conception of protolanguage. However, the “sticking point” of gestural (...) accounts, to use Robbins Burling’s phrase, is the need to explain how language shifted to a largely vocal medium. So with a critical eye I consider Michael Corballis’s most recent expression of his ideas about this transition. Corballis’s view is an excellent foil to mine and I present it as such. Contrary to Corballis’s account, and developing Burling’s conjecture that musicality played some role, I argue that the foundations of an evolving musicality provided the means and medium for the shift from gestural to vocal dominance in language. In other words, I suggest that an independently evolving musicality prepared ancient hominins, morphologically and cognitively, for intentional articulate vocal production, enabling the evolution of speech. (shrink)

Storytelling pivots around stance seen as a window unto emotion: storytellers project a stance expressing their emotion toward the events and recipients preferably mirror that stance by affiliating with the storyteller’s stance. Whether the recipient’s affiliative stance is at the same time expressive of his/her emotional resonance with the storyteller and of emotional contagion is a question that has recently attracted intriguing research in Physiological Interaction Research. Connecting to this line of inquiry, this paper concerns itself with storytellings of (...) sadness/distress. Its aim is to identify factors that facilitate emotion contagion in storytellings of sadness/distress and factors that impede it. Given the complexity and novelty of this question, this study is designed as a pilot study to scour the terrain and sketch out an interim roadmap before a larger study is undertaken. The data base is small, comprising two storytellings of sadness/distress. The methodology used to address the above research question is expansive: it includes CA methods to transcribe and analyze interactionally relevant aspects of the storytelling interaction; it draws on psychophysiological measures to establish whether and to what degree emotional resonance between co-participants is achieved. In discussing possible reasons why resonance is (not or not fully) achieved, the paper embarks on an extended analysis of the storytellers’ multimodal storytelling performance (reenactments, prosody, gaze, gesture) and considers factors lying beyond the storyteller’s control, including relevance, participation framework, personality, and susceptibility to emotion contagion. (shrink)

Philosophical tradition influences the way we think about body and mind (Rogers, 1936). We have a body to move around and a mind to think and to learn (Descartes, 1637). At school, we sit, listen and read, but we are not allowed to move. However, cognitive science has shown that our body is tightly linked to the mind (Wilson, 2002; Gärtner, 2013; Pecher and Zwaan, 2005). In this paper, we provide evidence that better learning is achieved if the body supports (...) the mind. We review studies showing how physical movement impacts brain functions and structures, and why physical movement is beneficial to learning. Thereafter, we explain how the body supports the mind in difficult cognitive tasks. Finally, we discuss how the body can be employed as a tool in second language learning and mathematics. Body and mind … and the brain?The dichotomy body and mind grounds on the influential contribution of Descartes. In his Meditations of First Philosophy (1637), the French philosopher doubts on the existence of the body. The fact that he himself can think is his proof of the existence of his mind: cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am). Along this line, philosophy degrades the body to rex extensa (literally extended thing). The body is matter with organs and blood but ontologically distinct from the mind, the sole player in thinking. Interestingly, philosophical theories of the 20th Century have rejected this distinction (Shilling, 2012). Nonetheless, the dichotomy between body and mind is still well entrenched not only in everyday thinking but unfortunately also in education.In Western countries, this separation biases educational methods and how people learn. Most schools make pupils sit during lessons. While the mind is doing its job, the body is doomed to rest, to exercise subordinate functions, no more than providing the organic facilities for the mind to exist. However, it is undeniable that the body cannot only be a mere container for organs. Stroke or neurodegeneration alter or destroy the brain, hence the mind. Similarly, diseases of the mind are dysfunctions of the brain, for example in neurotransmitter release (Fakhoury, 2015). Physical activity shapes the brainIt is well known that physical activity has positive effects on the body. However, it is not taken for granted that physical activity also benefits brain functions. Walking, cycling and coordination training have a positive impact on academic achievement (Rasberry et al., 2011; Hötting and Röder, 2013). This is due to a number of mechanisms, as we describe below.First, physical activity induces neurogenesis (from ancient Greek, the “birth of neurons”). Neurogenesis is a self-regeneration mechanism of the brain. Cellular loss and enhanced demand of information processing trigger the production of brain cells. After birth, neurogenesis mainly occurs in the hippocampus (Lieberwirth et al., 2016). From there, neural stem cells migrate and differentiate in other areas of the brain (Genin et al., 2014) and are activated upon learning (Kee et al., 2007). New cells raise the gray matter density and consequently, if stimulated and therefore connected, they enhance cognitive performance (Narr et al., 2007; Frangou et al., 2004). Second, physical activity triggers the release of Brain Derived Neurotropic Factor (BDNF), a neurotrophin (protein) that encourages a large number of growth processes in the brain, first of all neurogenesis. Also, BDNF mediates the growth of dendrites, spine density and synapses (Knaepen et al., 2010; Mang et al., 2016). Studies have shown a connection between BDNF and learning performance. One study tested the effect of ergometric bicycling on memory for French vocabulary. The German natives had to learn a set of words while cycling and another set during sedentary learning. Better results were found in memory performance for words acquired during cycling. Furthermore, higher performance correlated with higher BDNF in serum (Schmidt-Kassow et al., 2013). In a similar study, compared to sitting and listening, treadmill walking improved long-term retention of French vocabulary (Schmidt-Kassow et al., 2014).Third, physical activity has an influence on two brain structures that mediate short-term memory, i.e., the hippocampus (Killgore et al., 2013) and the entorhinal cortex (Whiteman et al., 2016). Exercise induces growth of their volumes and this correlates with enhanced memory performance (Sayal, 2015; Erickson et al.). In the long term, hippocampus size is related to academic performance (Chaddock-Heyman et al., 2014).Fourth, physical activity has a positive impact on cognitive control (Guiney and Machado, 2013). Cognitive control includes a set of executive functions essential to human behaviors such as attention, reasoning, planning, problem solving, decision making, cognitive flexibility, inhibitory control and short-term memory (Diamond, 2013). Executive functions develop during childhood and adolescence and decline with age. Brain regions involved in cognitive control include the orbitofrontal cortex, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex. Larger volume and greater thickness of prefrontal cortex areas are associated with better executive performance (Yuan and Raz, 2014; Weinstein et al., 2012). Exercise in childhood and adolescence induces positive changes in brain tissue in these areas and therefore exercise is beneficial to cognitive functions, as reported in a meta-analysis by Verburgh et al. (2013).Fifth, physical exercise regulates neurotransmitter release. A recent study on humans has revealed that vigorous exercise leads to higher release of glutamate and gamma--Aminobutyric acid (GABA) in executive regions (Maddock et al., 2016). Because of its excitatory function, glutamate is essential to communication among neurons and is at the base of learning processes. Glutamate is the precursor of GABA and its antagonist. GABA inhibits cellular communication and performs regulative functions in neurogenesis, in the growth of neurites, and in the formation of synapses.Sixth, mood disturbances such as depression are known to be detrimental to learning and thus to academic achievement (Esch et al., 2014). Students who practice exercise show less mood disorders and greater propensity to mastering tasks. Matta Mello Portugal and colleagues (2013) explain this by mechanisms as neurogenesis, angiogenesis and brain plasticity induced through neurotransmitters and neurotrophic factors, as described in the preceding sections.In the 21st century, these studies among many others provide robust evidence that the Latin saying mens sana in corpore sano (a healthy mind in a healthy body) indeed is still a valid principle (Donnelly et al., 2016). Despite this, time spent in physical exercise in the weekly agenda is declining, and young generations are more sedentary than in the past (Biddle et al., 2014). Obesity is seriously menacing the cognitive performance of young generations worldwide (Wang et al., 2016). In fact, obesity has been found to correlate negatively with executive functions, attention, visuo-spatial performance and motor skills (Liang et al., 2013). Recently, Heyward and colleagues have discovered that obesity induces memory impairment,which is detrimental to academic achievement (Heyward et al., 2016). Progressive governments in Western countries have started to contemplate this and are moving to place physical activity at the center of the school day (Willeboordse et al., 2016). Programs are being tested to reduce weight and enhance cognitive performance (Wright et al., 2016). In practice, novel approaches prove the validity of physical exercise for cognitive performance; in research, empirical studies assess this (Donnelly & Lambourne, 2011; Bartholomew & Jowers, 2011; Norris et al., 2015). How the body helps the mind via gestures In line with the traditional view that body and mind are two separate identities, instruction has not considered employing the body as a tool during learning. Despite this, an increasing number of studies show the tight link between cognitive processes and gestures. Beaudoin-Ryan and Goldin-Meadow (2014) investigated how children learn moral reasoning at school, i.e. how to deal with moral issues such as gun control and the death penalty. At the base of the reasoning are perspective-taking and empathy. In the study, children were told to gesture and not to gesture while explaining their reasoning. The control group did not receive any instruction. Those children who were asked to gesture produced spatial gestures. By doing so, the gesturing children visualized the perspectives that they were taking. The same children outperformed their peers in the results because they were able to assume multiple perspectives while reasoning.Another domain in which gestures have been demonstrated to ease a cognitive task is spatial problem solving. In a series of experiments, Chu and Kita (2011) observed that participants spontaneously gestured when solving mental rotation problems. More interestingly, the researchers found a positive correlation between the number of gestures and the difficulty of the task. Gestures were dropped when the solving strategies had been internalized. In a study on working memory, subjects were asked to remember letters and to accompany them with gestures or meaningless movements while performing another cognitive task. Gestures, i.e., semantic movements, helped subjects to recall the letters better than did meaningless movements (Cook et al., 2012).Collectively, this research suggests that there is a strong relationship between cognitive effort and gesture use, and that the body spontaneously and consistently helps the mind with a strategy that we have not been overtly taught. Anectodically speaking, German has an expression to describe gesturing in a foreign country when we do not speak the language: speaking with our hands and feet. We all have experienced using a whole range of gestures to fill the gaps of missing words and expressions. We point to objects and use deictic, representative, symbolic gestures, etc. If concepts were abstract symbols and amodal (Fodor, 1983; Pylyshyn, 1984), we would not make use of our body to bridge cognitive gaps and support cognition altogether. We acquire knowledge via our bodily experiences in interaction with the world (Barsalou, 2008). Our representation of knowledge is detectable in the brain and its nature is sensorimotoric and by no means abstract (Gallese and Lakoff, 2005). In the early 1980s, research demonstrated that performing a gesture to a word/phrase enhances its memorability (Zimmer, 2001). This has been proven also in second language in the short and the long term (for a review, see Macedonia, 2014). Among other reasons, the effect of gestures on memory for verbal information is explained in terms of a motor trace left in the concept’s representation by the actions performed (Engelkamp and Zimmer, 1985). In an experiment with functional magnetic resonance imaging, participants were presented words that they had previously learned with semantically related gestures and unknown words. Passive recognition of learned words elicited activity in motor cortices and subcortical structures involved in action performance (Macedonia & Müller, 2016). The authors of the study explain the positive effect of gestures on memory for words with the formation of vast sensorimotor networks (motor trace) connecting declarative and procedural memory.In mathematics, hand gestures have also been shown to have a beneficial effect on learning. Cook and colleagues (2016) made an avatar explain mathematical equivalence to school children with and without (beat and representational) gestures. In the gesture condition, children had better performance in problem solving than their peers in the non-gesture condition. Moreover, the former were faster than the latter. These results are in line with a study by Alibali and Nathan (2011) that explains the effect of representational gestures as “mental simulations of actions”. These actions enact concepts and make them more understandable (Crooks and Alibali, 2014). We agree with Radford (2009) that “the very texture of thinking … cannot be reduced to impalpable ideas; it is instead made up of speech, gestures, and our actual actions with cultural artifacts (signs, objects, etc.)”.Language and mathematics provide examples that the body can be easily used as a learning tool. Specifically, as gestures are the natural and spontaneous tool that connects body and mind, gestures should be integrated in teaching methods and classroom activities: since Roth (2001) made this suggestion, little has happened in this regard. Education is still reluctant, despite publications for practice with concrete descriptions of how to use gestures as a tool to enhance second language vocabulary acquisition (Macedonia, 2013, 2014; Macedonia & Klimesch, 2014). In education the body must be taken into consideration and actively involved in the learning process. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to examine Wittgenstein’s reflections about the judgment of value. The purpose is to trace a line of continuity between the investigation about the criteria to distinguish propositions from nonsense, which is the main philosophical endeavour of the “first” Wittgenstein, and the subsequent philosophy of language games, presented in the Philosophical Investigations. According to the picture theory of language, as it is formulated in the Tractatus logico-philosophicus, the judgments of value do not represent facts (...) of the world and therefore they lack of sense. In this perspective, the attempt to express experiences of “absolute value”, as Wittgenstein says in the Lecture on Ethics (1929), is condemned to nonsense, even though it testifies a typical human tendency to force the limits of language. About ten years later, in the Lessons of Aesthetics (1938) Wittgenstein analyzes the use of aesthetic adjectives in the judgments of value and he underlines the proximity of these expressions with the gesture, intended as a way to convey the feeling of the speaker in reaction to a specific experience. In the expressivity of nonsense it is possible to foresee the importance of the notion of use, a central concept in Wittgenstein’s “second” philosophy; in the analysis of aesthetic adjectives, used as gestures, it remains a link with the early investigation about the limits of language. Through the reflection on nonsense and gesture Wittgenstein develops an idea of non-communicative and expressive use of language that we can find all along his philosophical work. (shrink)

This article proposes some lines to determine how scientific discourses on blogs are likely to make text. It focuses more specifically on hypertextual enrichment and comments that question textual boundaries. The analysis based on a corpus of 87 posts extracted from Hypothèses (a platform of blogs in the Humanities) identify the cognitive functions provided by these two components and their impact on the textual judgment (Adam 2011) that may be carried on the posts. Finally, it proposes a reading of hypertextual (...) enrichment and comments as discursive gestures of knowledge (Lttr13 2016) that play a role in the textualization process of scientific posts. (shrink)

This paper examines the competing ‘languages’ of line in Julie Mehretu’s series, Grey Area (2007–9) and elaborates on the implications these lines have for theories of space, bodies and, in particular, the relationship between the two. Grey Area explores what Mehretu describes as a grey and in-between space. The series is composed of seven large abstract canvases covered in an assortment of gestural tracings and neatly traced rational lines (e.g. architectural lines). The juxtaposition of these competing linely narratives (...) not only creates a grey space visually, but compels viewers to stretch their bodies across the canvases and between the lined layers thus, facilitating a brief inhabitance of grey space. Building from this analysis, the paper reflects on the relevance of the lines and the stretching they elicit for examining the complexities of contemporary modes of inhabitation that often extend across multiple geographical sites and temporal modes. Thus, engaging with Mehretu’s lined abstractions draws attention to the importance of space in the production of bodily boundaries, what I call geographical and temporal bodily outlines. In addition to contributing to body-space theories, the paper also demonstrates the valuable insights gained by attending to the unique social-aesthetic analyses of visual art and artists. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:diacritics 30.2 (2000) 113-126 [Access article in PDF] Dissenting Words:A Conversation with Jacques Rancière 1 Davide Panagia:In your writings you highlight the political efficacy of words. In The Names of History, for instance, this emphasis is discussed most vividly in terms of what you refer to as an "excess of words" that marks the rise of democratic movements in the seventeenth century. Similarly, in On The Shores of Politics, (...) you begin your discussion with an excursus on the end of politics as the end of the promise. Finally, in Dis-agreement you speak of "the part of those who have no-part" as voicing a "wrong" for the sake of equality.In each of these instances, however, your treatment of words (and language more generally) is very different from those thinkers of the "linguistic turn" in political philosophy who expound on an ethics of deliberation as the first virtue of modern democracies. For that matter, your approach is quite different from those thinkers who focus on the aporias of language as such.Could you discuss this thematic of the proliferation of words in your thinking about democratic politics?Would it be fair to characterize your research on and exposition of democratic thinking as a "poetics of politics"?Rancière's Reply:In order to address your question adequately, it would be wise to enlarge the sense of "linguistic turn" you invoke. In its most generally accepted sense, the linguistic turn in philosophy consists in ascribing to linguistic processes certain phenomena and specifiable modes of relating objects attributed, in a previous instance, either to factual processes or lines of thought. This approach is not limited to the two figures you invoke in your question. The linguistic turn also has two stages of development that, from my experience, have been more noticeable in France than in the United States. The first phase, then, emerged with Lévi-Strauss and his structural approach to social relations founded on a linguistic model of relationality, subsequently reprised in Lacan's psychoanalytic notion that "the unconscious is structured like a language" that, in its turn, conjoins the energetic mental processes Freud discusses to linguistic practices. The primacy of "the linguistic" thus granted language all the properties of the Freudian unconscious [End Page 113] along with those of a Marxist notion of infrastructure. The Saussurian opposition between langue and parole provided a privileged status to a linguistic model whose role was that of a general law that unconsciously structures the behavior of individuals and societies. It is on the basis of these parameters that the structuralist moment of the linguistic turn was constituted. At one and the same time, the analysis of speech acts became first and foremost a "symptomatic" analysis of those procedures of misrecognition that linguistically structured both the behavior of individuals and social relations. When we "read" Le Capital with Althusser, the interpretive and methodological schema for linguistic phenomena operated like a kind of "policing of the enunciated": that is, a search for those unsuccessful (i.e., inadequate) modes of expression that exemplify such symptomatic procedures of misrecognition.The second phase of the linguistic turn constituted itself more ambiguously. For those who shared intellectual experiences similar to my own, this version involved a critique of the langue/infrastructure model; that is, a further and more favorable consideration of the value of the political and the linguistic games therein that, according to the Althusserian/Marxist model (and, indeed, with structuralism more generally), were to be treated as ideological artifacts. In a very real sense, it all began with the May '68 assertion that "we are all German Jews"--an entirely ideological statement, the validity of which, if analyzed at the level of its content, one finds to rest entirely on the capacity to overturn the political relationship between the order of designations and that of events by emphasizing the gap that separates subject and predicate. From there, an entire field of understanding speech acts as political gestures opened up: a field that reconfigured the division between words and things while rearranging the distinction between legitimate... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Editor’s Introduction: The State of Movement—or, Unassuming TheoryErik DoxtaderMotion [kinēsin], then, is both the same and not the same; we must admit that without boggling at it.—Xenos (the stranger), Plato’s SophistThe only answer is that we trace a path.—Walter Benjamin, “The Metaphysics of Youth”Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?—Lisa and Bart (from the backseat)The state of movement is a question—of movement, in theory.What (...) is movement, a movement, perhaps not least as the condition of arrival, an “original” beginning? Where does it come from? How does it work, in better and worse ways? To what does it lead—and why? If these standing questions remain open, there is also a chance that they are not questions at all, that they remain in some basic way beyond inquiry, precisely as they beg the question, as Giorgio Agamben has contended, of how “movement” remains “our unthought,” of the way in which “movement” presents us with the puzzle of an unconceived concept, the tension of a word whose work demands forgetting the “defeats and failures” of its use in the name and at the edges of democracy, and getting around the aporia of its necessary power without end (2005, 1). Perhaps we can only boggle—and perhaps we should. To inquire into the “state of movement” may be less a struggle for answers than the condition of question-ability itself, a movement of movement that appears in theory.Inspiring gesture. Endless stasis. Myriad advances. Countless retreats. Emerging hopes. Multiplying panics. Forced dislocation. Involuntary relocation. Indefinite incarceration. Sovereign and disciplinary borders crossed, closed, and blurred. Speech acts—in action. Moving words—gone [End Page 54] sideways. Gathering judgments. Calling out and compounding injustice. Cancelling the show. Incursions, attacks, invasions. History’s (always) incoming storm. Recalling, extending, and setting aside law’s precedent. Blown away, in a gust and a measure of time. Rising sea levels, receding forests, spiraling temperatures. Rustling aspen trees at altitude. Getting back on the bike. Staying put for the planet. Finding, instilling, and following desire. Unbounded discovery. Undue appropriation. Undoing what’s been done. Bodies at work, play, and ecstasy—and in decay, duress, and internment. Swept off the streets—and the quad. Vectors of transmission and expression. Breaking quarantine—and cliché. Soft landings and winding supply chains. Streaming words. Tropes turning into (intelligent) algorithms—and back again. Bullets flying... in homes, hospitals, classrooms. Struck by the light of a nebula and a sky full of kinetic kill vehicles. Populist uprising—progressive overreach. Equal and opposite reactions. Runway culture. Throwaway sociality. Publicity’s collapse. Privatization’s disclosure. Hopes for stillness and repose. Travel bans... for life. Packing the U-Haul for a better life. Generations letting go—and digging in. Rounds of chants. Days of marches. Cycles of emergency. Revolutionary aspirations in the avenues. Circling the leader, demanding commands. Running resistance. Caught out. Making way—and away.Asking after the state of movement may be less about the pause of cataloguing than the open that appears with being still, making a way of moving without movement, for a moment—to reflect on our understanding of the modes, manners, grammars, and vocabularies of movement and to speculate on the experience and so, in some basic sense, the assumption of movement, the line between those movements that remain in the background, out of view and taken for granted, often in the name of being able to simply get on with things, and those that provoke, invite, and disturb inquiry. If, for instance, the sort of movement named a “journey” is a long-standing and basic feature of the human condition (one can think variously, of better and much worse instantiations, from the Odyssey to the bloody quests for “salvation” that might have but mostly didn’t hinge on the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow to the Trail of Tears and Middle Passage to the moon shots), what’s happening in an American culture currently besotted with the idea of “being on a journey”—of discovery, fitness, creativity, acceptance, recovery, parenthood, leadership, home ownership, and so on and so forth. One wonders... (shrink)

Scholarly opinions vary on what language is, how it evolved, and from where or what it evolved. Long considered uniquely human, today scholars argue for evolutionary continuity between human language and animal communication systems. But while it is generally recognized that language is an evolving communication system, scholars continue to debate from which species language evolved, and what behavioral and cognitive features are the precursors to human language. To understand the nature of protolanguage, some look for homologs in gene functionality, (...) brain areas, or anatomical structures such as the supralaryngeal vocal tract; others point toward primates, their gestural, vocal, multimodal, and in later evolving hominins also their pantomimic communication systems; and still others draw parallels between the musicality that characterizes language and the pitch found in the numerous sounds produced by animals. Accordingly, protolanguage theories today are multiple and diverse, and protolanguages might have also been diverse. This special issue on Evolving (Proto)Language/s for Lingua bundles several of the protolanguage theories that were put forward at the sixth edition of the Ways to Protolanguage conference series, held at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, in 2019. Not aimed at surveying all the different ways there are to conceptualize, study, and model protolanguage/s, this issue provides interested readers with good overviews on the role played in current theorizing on protolanguage/s by (paleo)anthropology, genetics, physiology, developmental, evolutionary, ecological, and pragmatic research lines. (shrink)

A persistent controversy in language evolution research has been whether language emerged in the gestural-visual or in the vocal-auditory modality. A “dialectic” solution to this age-old debate has now been gaining ground: language was fully multimodal from the start and remains so to this day. In this paper, we show this solution to be too simplistic and outline a more specific theoretical proposal, which we designate as pantomime-first. To decide between the multimodal-first and pantomime-first alternatives, we review several lines (...) of interdisciplinary evidence and complement it with a cognitive-semiotic experiment. In the study, the participants saw – and then matched to hand-drawn images – recordings of short transitive events enacted by 4 actors in two conditions: visual and multimodal. Significantly, the matching accuracy was greater in the visual than the multimodal condition, though a follow-up experiment revealed that the emotional profiles of the events enacted in the multimodal condition could be reliably detected from the sound alone. We see these results as supporting the proposed pantomime-first scenario. (shrink)

Empathy, and its role in human-human and human-animal relationships has been discussed at length in recent years. Empathy for plants has received little to no attention. In this essay I briefly examine existing theory about human-plant empathy, primarily Marder’s account of a projective empathy. I use contemporary scholarship by Dan Zahavi, as well as phenomenological accounts of empathy, to query this understanding of empathy and to lay the conceptual groundwork for developing an account of empathy for plants in line (...) with Max Scheler’s embodied empathy. In doing so, I sketch an account of the basis for human-plant empathy, including the gestures and behaviors that an empathy for plants may pay particular heed to. The essay concludes by outlining how such an empathy for plants may be developed. (shrink)

That human social interaction involves the intertwined cooperation of different modalities is uncontroversial. Researchers in several allied fields have, however, only recently begun to document the precise ways in which talk, gesture, gaze, and aspects of the material surround are brought together to form coherent courses of action. The papers in this volume are attempts to develop this line of inquiry. Although the authors draw on a range of analytic, theoretical, and methodological traditions (conversation analysis, ethnography, distributed cognition, and (...) workplace studies), all are concerned to explore and illuminate the inherently multimodal character of social interaction. Recent studies, including those collected in this volume, suggest that different modalities work together not only to elaborate the semantic content of talk but also to constitute coherent courses of action. In this introduction we present evidence for this position. We begin by reviewing some select literature focusing primarily on communicative functions and interactive organizations of specific modalities before turning to consider the integration of distinct modalities in interaction. (shrink)

This paper discusses the phenomenological method’s reliance on imaginative procedures in view of ethnomethodological research. While ethnomethodology has often been seen in continuity with Alfred Schütz’ phenomenological sociology, it mainly parts ways with phenomenology by stressing that the decisive details structuring mutual understanding (gestures, bodily expressions, or the myriad trifles that regulate casual conversation) are „not imaginable, but can only be found out”. This paper reflects from a phenomenological perspective on what such a claim entails by first delineating this (...) class='Hi'>line of criticism from other objections raised against the use of imaginative procedures in phenomenology and by showing how this line of questioning departs from the core philosophical debates concerning imaginabilitiy and unimaginability in the Kantian tradition. Further on, the paper offers an in-depth interpretation of the aforementioned ethnomethodological claim in order not only to outline its methodological implications for phenomenology, but also to show that it involves possible key insights for understanding interaction, which phenomenology needs to take into account despite its eidetic scope. (shrink)

The revolutionary potential of the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technique has created a resurgence in enthusiasm and concern in genetic research perhaps not seen since the mapping of the human genome at the turn of the century. Some such concerns and anxieties revolve around crossing lines between somatic and germline interventions as well as treatment and enhancement applications. Underpinning these concerns, there are familiar concepts of safety, unintended consequences and damage to genetic identity and the creation of designer children through pursuing (...) human enhancement and eugenics. In the policy realm, these morally laden distinctions and anxieties are emerging as the basis for making important and applied measures to respond to the fast-evolving scientific developments. This paper argues that the dominant normative framing for such responses is insufficient for this task. This paper illustrates this insufficiency as arising from a continued reliance on misleading genetic essentialist assumptions that generate groundless speculation and over-reactionary normative responses. This phenomenon is explicit with regard to prospective human genetic enhancements. While many normative theorists and state-of-the-art reports continue to gesture toward the influence of environmental and social influences on a person and their traits and capacities, this recognition does not extend to the substance of the arguments themselves which tend to revert to the debunked genetic determinist framework. Given the above, this paper argues that there is a pressing need for a more central role for sociological input into particular aspects of this “enhancement myth” in order to give added weight, detail and substance to these environmental influences and influence from social structures. (shrink)

For more than a century after its appearance on the modern philosophical scene, Spinoza’s philosophy was considered surprising and even scandalous for its assertion of the oneness or singularity of substance. From Bayle’s early Dictionary article to Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy, the core of Spinoza’s philosophy was said to be its unprecedented gesture of making God the sole res that could be thought through the concept of substance. Substance, according to definition 3 of part I of the (...) Ethics, is “that which is in itself and is conceived through itself.” The enormous emphasis placed on this move by the interpretative tradition almost into the twentieth century managed, however, to obscure every other dimension of Spinoza’s thought, so that Spinoza’s thought was simply a metaphysics of the oneness of substance. It is this coupling of Spinozism and the metaphysics of substance that I want to undo. In line with a series of interpretative developments in France over the last thirty years, I want to dispel this identification by employing a paradoxical formulation. Far from being a metaphysics of substance, I contend that Spinoza’s philosophy is instead an ontology of relation. By emphasizing his negation of the substantiality of what he calls res singulares, we can locate Spinoza’s originality less in having posited the existence of a single substance—Letter 50 in fact suggests that substance can only “improperly” be called “single” or “one”—than in having laid out the foundation for this ontology of relation. (shrink)

The richness of the term “unsettling” has made it readily employable for phenomenological accounts of racism in philosophy of race literature; yet, the term has been left largely under-theorized. Here, I argue that unsettling encounters can be said to occur when the unfamiliar other has come into contact with the boundary of one’s existential home. For many white people, interracial interactions produce an (often unwarranted) feeling of physical danger, but as I hope to show, this habitual (mis)perception of such encounters (...) is not merely a conditioned response; it also functions to subvert situations that might unsettle white identifies partially constituted by phenomenological demarcations of space along racial lines. Drawing on empirical literature and recent developments in critical phenomenology, I suggest that by exercising habitual, racist gestures and perceptions, white people (mis)perceive ontological threats to their worldview—e.g., a bookish Black student or a masculine gay man—as ontically threatening so as to avoid the kind of work and existential anguish that altering one’s normative expectations would require. (shrink)

Recent decades have seen a development of a variety of approaches for examining lived experience in the context of cognitive science. However, the field of first-person research has yet to develop a pragmatic epistemological framework that would enable researchers to compare and integrate – as well as understand the epistemic status of – different methods and their findings. In this article, we present the foundation of such a framework, grounded in an epistemological investigation of gestures involved in acquiring data on (...) experience. We examine the acts of turning towards one’s experiential field and attending to experience within the process of reflection. We describe what we call the horizon of attending to experience by analogy to the “experimental arrangement” in quantum observation: this horizon, we argue, co-defines experiential phenomena that end up being observed and reported; at the same time, it itself forms an element of experience and is therefore amenable to phenomenological investigation. Drawing on the constructivist notion of enaction, we show that acknowledging the inherently constructive nature of attending to experience and accepting one’s lack of epistemic access to the “original”, observation-independent pre-reflective experience is not a dead end for first-person research when situated in a constructivist (but not relativist) understanding of the reflective act and its results. Expanding the notion of the horizon to encompass all epistemic acts involved in producing phenomenological data and final results of a first-person study (i.e., horizon of the method), we suggest some lines of inquiry that would allow researchers to identify and articulate horizons of particular methods, opening a way towards integrating past and future findings of different complementary first-person approaches into a comprehensive map of lived experience. (shrink)

She was lying in the bed: had been lying there for some time, had indeed lost track of time, just lying there observing the progress of shadows across the wall, up the wall actually and then across the ceiling; watching the way the sheer white curtain, lifted every now and then by a sneaking finger of breeze, exposed brief glimpses of outside. Since she, narcotized, lacked the will to look at the clock (though she could hear it, very close by: (...) its relentless accusatory ticking), the room for her with its very white walls and very sharp corners, its terrain of familiar landmarks—the mirror; the walnut bureau, on which lay scattered the hairbrush in which a dark twist of hair was caught, the little yellow jewelry box with its peculiar surface like granulated sugar, decorated with small seashells, the book lying spread-eagled, open to page 119, the small lamp, its stiff, frilly shade with the plastic wrap still on; then too the wooden chair upon which she had thrown, possibly carelessly, expecting but then unable to hang up the following day, as was her usual habit, the blue shirt, the black slacks, and the taupe brassiere she had worn the last time she went out; the closet door, slightly ajar, with its glass knob glittering gemlike at certain times, when the beam struck it—this museum as it were of her last day before the pain began—had become for her a sundial upon which, as the shadows crept across, she read or rather inferred the passing of the day. Though she was not sure how long she had been lying there—how many days, in the bed. She had tried to count the days on the nubbles of the white bedspread or else tried to read the nubbles with her fingertips like braille or feel them like a sort of impasto forming pictures or patterns, fields forests mountain ranges, a long tapestry unwinding, but she was always losing her place, starting over without realizing she had started over. On the table beside the bed was the importuning clock, the glass of water, the empty bowl slick with the remains of the soup, another frilly lamp preserved in plastic, the bottle of pills, the framed black-and-white photo of a smiling white poodle in whose obsidian eyes the image of the photographer was reflected... and another, of a young woman in tennis shorts and a sweater, perched on the top rung of a wooden fence or gate, smiling, chest thrust preeningly forward: it may have been herself, in a past life, or it may not have been... the resemblance between the woman in the bed and the woman in the photo was uncertain... and at any rate she in the bed seldom looked at these objects, or, if she did, forgot them immediately and had to learn of them again. She was propped up on pillows, her long dark hair spread around in loops and glissandos: these she felt or rather intuited but had not seen in several days. Nor had she seen the neatly stitched incision or the disconcertingly stained bandage covering it: preferred not to: but nonetheless could not un-know that her chest had become a cage in which pain lived, if unseen. If she lay very still she might not feel it, or only in a small way: and she did lie still. Possibly she had just awakened: she had a sense of emerging from something, of rising up as if from underwater, her awareness enlarging beyond the ticking of the clock to the frisking curtain, the window with its square of light, the room her sundial, then to the house sensed but unseen around and beneath her, its uneasy inanimate creaks and shiftings, an echo suggesting size, distance, emptiness, but then too certain other, volitional sounds coming up from downstairs—footsteps, a cabinet opening and closing, a drawer pulled out on its runners, as if from a great, echoing distance. Who, she wondered, who...? But could not know. Outside the window a bird was singing, a car was passing in the street... And now certainly she was indeed awake, but all the same the decision was not volitional, possibly there was no decision at all, instead rather suddenly and unaccountably she found herself trying to rise, trying to get out of the bed despite the insistent pain and despite the great weight of her limbs, of each limb individually and of all four limbs collectively; she could not, she found, sit up in the bed where she had lain for who knew how many days now, but rather could only, like a turtle on its round hard back, attempt to roll, to swing herself, leveraging the great unaccountable weight of her legs, up onto the edge of the bed and off it. In her chest there was something like the grip of a hand or of a clamp that somebody had left inside her. Nonetheless, her robe. And now entering the long hallway, doors opening off either side, she could hear, from very far away, a small tinny buzzing that she recognized as music though without discerning, for she could not discern, either the voice or the tune: it was rather a small thread that she followed along the hall, where nobody was, to the staircase of dark wood which she began to descend, slowly and bent over from the pain and the weight and the great effort involved in moving these limbs which had at one time surely belonged to her but which seemed now to be somebody else's, so awkward were they, so unwilling. Though surely she too, once upon a time, had danced... Down and down she went, around the several turnings of the staircase (certainly it was farther than she remembered), passing, on one landing, a large framed photographic close-up of a golden cock-of-the-rock, with its resplendent crest like a half-wedge of orange, and a dark, bellicose eye... on the next landing, the photo of a girl in a little sealskin cap and tippet, hands hidden in a matching muff... on the next landing, in a recessed niche, a plaster bust of Queen Victoria with a chip out of the nose and several curls missing off the back of the head. Though the cock-of-the-rock reminded her of something (she wasn't sure what), she was sure she had seen none of these objects before... Nor had the staircase ever seemed so wide, so deep, so dark. Is this, she wondered, descending, really Ma's house? She clung to the fraying thread of music that was leading her down, emerging at last like a ghost into what was certainly Ma's capacious kitchen. A dark-haired woman uncannily like herself sat at the table barefoot, swinging her leg rhythmically to the music issuing from the transistor radio on the counter while sipping a glass of something yellow on ice and paging absorbedly through a Life magazine. At her elbow sat a bottle of golden liqueur in which a mysterious object—a bit of flowering branch, an antler of coral, possibly the efflorescent finger of a saint—was floating; on the cover of the magazine a model in a crescent hat gazed provocatively, while holding out her hands to display, on the right hand, a white glove with black polka dots, and on the left hand, a black glove with white stripes. Above the model's shoulder a caption read: News In Gloves.The sick woman hovered on the threshold; her doppelganger at the table did not look up, but, fully absorbed, continued obliviously paging and sipping.Maybe, thought the other, amazed, I really am invisible—The tableau persisted, until at last somebody (it was unclear who) said, I don't know how you can drink that stuff—Now the woman at the table did look up, jumped up in fact, dropping the magazine and crying, Rose! What are you doing down here? You shouldn't be out of bed, you silly!She flung herself at her sister, waving her hands and making small, solicitous noises and appearances of kissing.Ma'll never forgive you, the other said calmy, for breaking into her special bottle—Rose regarded the vessel, along with its enigmatic contents: then suddenly felt that the mysterious branch or wand or finger in the bottle had gotten lodged inside her, somewhere beneath her right breast; it was rotating, playing her ribcage like a harp.Oh Rose! cried the sister in a tone of anguish, who cares what Ma says! You need to go back to bed—let me help you—I'm all right Lucy! I'm all right! Though blanching slightly.Here, let me—Lucy took Rose around the waist and began to lead, or rather pilot, but instead of taking her up the stairs, was ushering her down.Lucy, what are you doing? It's so dark down here I can't see a thing—clinging tight, however, as they descended into what must have been the basement: though it could not be seen, but only smelled and heard. The mildew was characteristic, as was the aroma of fermenting apples. There was as well a soft, subtle scurrying, suggestive of unseen, inhabited corners.Subtly Lucy withdrew: Rose felt herself hovering, blind, above an abyss.The patient thrashed, panicking.I can't see! I can't see!Oh Rose! said Lucy, somewhat fed up. Just open your eyes then!The woman in the bed did: and found herself propped on pillows, her sister Lucy leaning over her with a spoonful of broth. The room was very bright; somewhere a bird was singing, or shouting, loudly.Oh Micheletto! Shut up Micheletto! You're bothering Rose! said Lucy crossly: but the canary, undaunted, continued its racket, leaping from perch to perch, hanging upside down from a bell, committing wild acrobatics on the swing, and regarding the patient, from behind the bars of its prison, with a darkly defiant jujube eye.I don't know how you can stand having him in here, Rose. He's so noisy.I like him.But not the soup evidently, from which the patient shrank with a scowl. Sister and spoon therefore subsided, one into a chair, the other into a bowl.I could take him out of here, if he's bothering you.No.The woman in the bed shut her eyes, easing back, if not disappearing, into the trailing vinelike thicket of her hair: turning inward, perhaps, to attend to the branch or wand or finger that was still plucking at her ribcage, playing a music more compelling even than that of Micheletto the canary. This, though, the sister could not allow.Joey called, Rose. Did you hear me? Joey called. He's so worried about you.Joey? A green glimmer between dark lashes.Don't tell me you've forgotten Joey!Lucy gestured to the photo on the bedside table, which was no longer that of a poodle but was, rather, of a curly-haired young man with a long, somewhat sanctimonious nose. If she was disappointed by the transformation, Rose was careful to conceal it.Course not. Don't be silly. How could I forget Joey?The patient spoke softly, slurring: that was the narcotic.He's awfully worried about you, Rose.Suddenly Lucy began to giggle. Rose, peering out from behind her thicket, saw her sister perched forward in her chair.D'you remember, Rose? You were so sick you threw up in the back seat of the convertible. Snickering now.I did not.You did.I didn't.Though in fact that night, with its wild ride of pain, was a blur to Rose: she recalled, vaguely, parking on the bluffs, seeing the lights of the town below, a smeared fistful of rhinestones flung at random along the silvery-black thread of the river: Joey, easing his arm around her shoulders: and the first mild, then abruptly definitive jabs just below and to the right of the breastbone... But then too, she thought she remembered gazing into the dark, empathetic eyes of a poodle... This, though comforting, was difficult to understand.Joey's been wonderful about it. He's not mad at all. Apparently the upholstery cleaned up great. He had the entire car detailed too. He said he's going to visit later. Isn't that nice? Isn't it? Rose, did you hear me?But the patient, lowering pale lids, had disappeared again.Rose? Rose?Yes Lucy, resurfacing, I heard you. ’S nice. But wondered whether her sister had always been so annoying. It was difficult to give this question the attention it deserved because of the ragged strumming, rising almost to the level of a pain, from somewhere deep inside, just beneath her right breast. So absorbing was this internal music that Rose found she could not resist the urge to sing along... which she did do, for an unknowable, perhaps immeasurable, period of time.Rose, the sister was saying, Rose. I think it's time for your pill.Lucy was leaning over her again, brow creased, this time with the pill in her hand, and the glass of water in which, somehow, certain stars had been contained: Rose consumed these along with the medicine.Now, Lucy said, I'll let you sleep. Hush! Micheletto! Hush! Rose is sleeping!But the canary, rocketing crazily, continued.Later, when Rose woke (or so it seemed), the sun had shifted considerably, the shadows moving around the sundial, or room, in such a manner that certain things loomed larger than they had before: the crucifix on the wall for example, and the little box on the bureau, the hairbrush with the curls of hair caught in it, the lampshade, the wooden chair in which Lucy was no longer sitting all cast monstrous elongated shadows, as if implying some significance they did not have. The white curtains, on the other hand, hung quite still now on the open window. Rose emerged slowly from a dream in which she and her sister were acting in a play Joey had written: they were seated side by side on stage, on a green velour couch, and Lucy, turning toward her, had very sincerely said, What's the pup, Rose? What's the pup? which made no sense at all: maybe Rose had misheard: in the dream she replied, over and over, What's the what? What's the what?, growing more and more annoyed, to which Lucy answered, every time, What's the pup? until at last Rose awakened very cross. And now she lay, propped on pillows, becoming aware once more of the pain she had forgotten while dreaming, and of Micheletto's song. What's the what? thought Rose, what's the what? Until suddenly she realized she was saying it out loud. And then at last the dream truly fell away, and she realized her pain felt very near, but that Micheletto's singing had grown very distant: no matter how she squinted she could not see the canary in his cage, though she could hear the distant singing: until at last she realized that the cage was empty, and that Micheletto was singing from somewhere else. Lucy must have taken Micheletto away, Rose thought, bitterly. She wanted to do something about it, get Micheletto back, he was her friend, her only friend, but she didn't do anything; she lay perfectly still, listening to the familiar fugues and arias, which were emanating, it seemed, from some other room, or other dimension: as if Micheletto had become a ghost, or phantasm. I can hear you, Micheletto, she thought, or said, but I can't see you... In response (if it was a response), the song, with its characteristic trills and arabesques, seemed to draw nearer, though a barrier remained, the voice sounded muffled, as if Micheletto were smothered under a bolster, or stuffed in a sack. Rose's eyes probed the room, rummaged the corners, explored the elongated and vaguely palpitating shadows, searching for Micheletto, though her body remained motionless, paralyzed, as if still dreaming. Micheletto, where are you? Rose sang, or said, to herself, or to the room: this was unclear, though the reply when it came was startlingly distinct, a spirited coloratura pronounced right at her elbow, or so it seemed: though Micheletto himself, as a small, yellow, feathered entity, continued imperceptible. Rose lay rigid like a mummy, wrapped in sheets, propped on pillows, anointed with juniper, sealed with beeswax... I too am an artifact, she thought, of my former self... Micheletto however spoke back, with asperity, demanding some solution, some action on her part—I can't, Micheletto, she said, it's not possible—taking in with desperate eyes the room around her, lingering especially over the crucifix with its gargantuan shadow, the glass of water on the bedside table whose stars she had consumed (she could feel them now, sparking inside her, the sharp edges lodged beneath her sternum), the photo of the white poodle, with its gentle dark eyes and sympathetic smile: none of these however offering any help, or advice... I'm sorry, Micheletto, I can't—The bird, however, was inexorable.Therefore Rose as she had done earlier rolled herself to the edge of the bed, using the weight of her legs to lever herself up until she sat, curled wormlike but facing the window: through which she could see the canary perched outside, on the slope of the roof.Oh Micheletto!, said Rose, dismayed, how did you get out there?Certainly the canary did reply, but his words, conveyed in a series of runes, were eclipsed by a delivery truck passing in the street below.What, Micheletto? What the—what?She couldn't hear him, and maybe it didn't matter: out was out, after all: though the closed door of the cage and the firmly lowered window screen rendered the mode of escape enigmatic... possibly even supernatural... Unless Lucy, Rose thought, conjuring an image, masticating upon it in her mind with the satisfaction that comes of blaming, till at last she struck the gristle: which was, why would Lucy? Since Lucy also loved Micheletto... And anyway what mattered now was not the escape, but the rescue... Micheletto, outside the window, made further cryptic remarks conveying urgency, possibly even gruff impatience.All right, all right—Sinking down slowly tentatively painstakingly from the edge of the bed to the floor Rose inched on her buttocks to the window and with some effort and tugging of incision managed to raise the screen, allowing into the bedroom a greater blueness, along with several mosquitoes. Inside her chest the wand of coral was cryptically turning, though what she felt was not exactly pain: and as for the disconcertingly stained bandage, of this she continued willfully unaware.Micheletto! Micheletto!The canary, bright on black shingles, cocked its head. There was a throb of a sort, Rose thought, in the bright black eye. But Micheletto did not come toward. She leaned out, to gesture.Here, Micheletto! Here!The small blond figure hopped along the ridgeline of the roof.Micheletto! Micheletto!Though the canary did not come, Rose suddenly found herself, or the upper half of herself at least, partially extended through the open window. If only I had a thistle to offer him, she thought, or some suet... But she had only herself, dangling, and, either in eagerness or desperation (this was unclear), extending further out and then down, palms first, onto the surprising rough warmth of the shingles.Micheletto! Micheletto!She could no longer see him, but took hope from a small, eager scrabbling in the gutter.Oh, Micheletto... Suddenly she found she was curled up right beside the dormer, on the black shingled slope of the roof. Looking down she could see the cracked concrete walk, and, in the sullen green shadow of the house, Ma's small garden, the tomatoes and zucchini quivering on their stakes, the brown pendulous faces of the sunflowers as they contrived, unsuccessfully, to look the other way. In the upstairs bathroom in the house next door, the neighbor Mrs. Benedetti, squatting in her housecoat of dusty rose pattern, gave a quick, scandalized look, and abruptly drew down the shade... Well, thought Rose, refusing to feel bad about it, you can't please everyone... Lulled by the warmth of the shingles, she had stretched out tentatively upon the somewhat tacky surface. It was impossible to lie comfortably on her right side—she had been wounded on the right side, damaged, something in her had been breached, she'd been ripped up, she couldn't remember how—or on her left either for that matter, because of the stars gyrating relentlessly inside her; nonetheless she did lie somehow, along the slope of the roof, with her head turned toward the gutter. Above her was a blue dome upon which a pink line of cloud languorously reclined: it was beautiful: but looking made her feel dizzy. Micheletto! Micheletto! she called. The response was not immediate, giving her time to notice, in the lee of the dormer, an abandoned hammer and a roll of tape evidently left behind by some workman, who knew when... Nobody cleans up anymore, thought Rose. Ma, she thought, wouldn't like it at all, if she knew. But Ma would never know, because she, Rose, would never tell her. Now resumed the scrabbling in the gutter. Micheletto! Is that you, Micheletto? Though there was no reply, the scrabbling went on, until, suddenly, a bright yellow head with a mischievous, berry-bright eye popped up out of the drainpipe. Micheletto looked in her direction and spoke with some severity... Well, it's not my fault, is it, Rose said, bitterly. Just look at all I've done for you already, all this for your sake—The bright eye bulged. There was a volley of expostulation.But I can't! Yes of course I love you, I just can't! It's... physically impossible! Her voice dropped to a whisper. I think there's something wrong with me, Micheletto... Then Rose fell silent. She had become confused, trying to remember what was wrong. Micheletto, while not unsympathetic, did not cease his complaining: the yellow head turned furiously round and round in the drainpipe, there was a sound of scrabbling feet as he espoused various arguments, interspersed with moments of fugue and passages of overripe bel canto. Rose lay back on the slope of the roof so that her long dark hair fell in rivulets over the gutter... If she stretched out her arm from there, she could almost, but not quite, reach the drainpipe.All right, she said somewhat feebly, I'll try—Meanwhile something was going on down below. There was a clamor of car doors and tires; somebody was speaking. Rose, Rose! What are you doing up there! Oh Rose! Joey, come quick—Rose is up on the roof!It was very silly of Lucy, Rose thought dreamily as she reached: certainly I'll wake up in bed in a minute. Leaning back, she saw the line of pink recumbent upon the cerulean dome of the sky: and heard, from somewhere in the distance, the sound of a poodle barking. (shrink)

In this article I argue not only for the value of hermeneutics today but also, and especially, how the crucial gesture of hermeneutics is that of changing the subject for the sake of our today. Surveying briefly the main lines of hermeneutical positions along its history and critiques, and connecting these critiques to the discrepancy between theory and practice, between interpretation and the need to change the world, the article proposes that our reality today, reshaped through globalization and the virtual, (...) is performed as a hermeneutics of history. The challenge for today’s hermeneutics is to work out categories for understanding the present as on-going in a world that tends to capture and distort more and more the meaning of freedom of thought. In the final section, I propose a hermeneutics of the on-going, of gerundive time, partially under the inspiration of Paul Celan, as a response that develops the meaning of the freedom of thought. A defense of nearness and how to think in narrow nearness to the on-going is discussed. (shrink)

In Politics of Friendship Derrida characterises his extended discussion as a contribution to a genealogical deconstruction of the link that ties democracy to autochthony. In Rogues a few years later, he adds to this work by articulating what might be figured as an extensionist hypothesis, raising the question of ‘how far’ ‘the people of democracy’ is to be extended. Here, I read these two lines of problematisation alongside each other, seeing in each a certain decentring of the place of ‘people’ (...) in the formation of democracy. Reading the later gesture for its potential to usher in a ‘more-than-human’ politics in view of anthropogenic climate change, I take recent efforts to develop a program of a multispecies, environmental justice as indicative of this impulse. At stake here is what Derrida characterises as an ambivalent logic of ‘fraternisation’ whose operation in theories of more-than-human politics I trace with reference to the Schmittian concept of the political. Driving the investigation from the beginning, however, is a more speculative question of what happens to the very idea of democracy when the place of ‘people’ is doubly decentred in this way. In what sense, moreover, could a deconstruction along these lines be engaged and still keep the old name of democracy? (shrink)

The form of an action has a strong influence on the interaction between humans. According to their mood, people may perform the same gesture in different ways, such as gently or rudely. These aspects of social communication are named vitality forms by Daniel Stern, represent a mean to establish a direct and immediate connection with others. Indeed, the expression of different vitality forms enables us to communicate our affective states and at the same time the perception of these vitality forms (...) enables people around us to understand how we feel in that moment. In the last years of research, different fMRI studies have been carried out to investigate the neural correlates of vitality forms recognition and execution. Moreover, recent psychophysics studies conducted from our research group have demonstrated the presence of an affective contagion effect, during which vitality forms expressed by an agent affect the action perception and the motor response of the receiver. This means that vitality forms expressed by others can influence our mood positively or negatively, modulating as consequence our behavior. Note that vitality forms pervade our lives in a continuous manner and thus they are not expressed and perceived only during social interactions. For example, when we observe an artistic representation at the theatre, the dynamic postures of dancers, together with an alternation of acceleration and deceleration in their movements, communicate to us different affective states. Also when we are in a museum in front of a painting, lines, colors and shapes used by the artist can elicit in us different sensations and modify our attitude. In this view, with the aim to extend the concept of vitality forms from neuroscience and psychology to other disciplines of study, we dedicate part of this review to discuss how art, in all its forms, can be considered a pure expression of vitality forms. (shrink)