I thought that the discussion of gesture on Wednesday was really provocative\u2014it contributed to a surprising (to me) line of thinking about self-consciousness that has been running these last few sessions. Flusser tells us that a gesture is \u201ca movement of the body or of a tool connected to the body for which there is no satisfactory causal explanation\u201d (2); the gesture is not just a reflex reaction, or a rote action, but a significant movement, one that requires interpretation. He goes on to argue that a gesture always has an aesthetic quality, and that it can be evaluated both morally and aesthetically. It might, that is, be morally honest (you really mean it) but not aesthetically honest (it is contrived, pretentious, etc.). The idea that all of our gestures are by definition aesthetic\u2014it\u2019s a little harrowing, but a little true, too; that the gesture is in a sense the smallest unit of art in the everyday, the first step into dance, or even into poetry. We might keep after the question, what is a gesture in language?<\/p>\n
Another recurring question had to do with intention; Sam H (who prodded us a few weeks ago to think about whether Siri\u2019s reading is a performance after all) asked whether a dance performed automatically, from sheer muscle memory, could count as a gesture in Flusser\u2019s sense. That question of where we as interpreters of poetry stand with respect to the problem of intention\u2014the poet\u2019s, the poem\u2019s, our own\u2014is a puzzle that has been refracted for us through various media now (especially photography, especially what de Duve would call the snapshot). Is intention projected into the poem by the maker? Is it abstracted from the poem by the reader? How can the two have to do with each other? Another question we might carry into Monday. Let us observe at the very least that a poem\u2014precisely because it can be said to mean so much\u2014<\/em>poses special problems for the concept.<\/p>\n We had a good discussion of Dickinson\u2019s \u201cI cannot dance upon my toes,\u201d and what kind of ballet knowledge it has (knowledge of? knowledge how?). The question of whether Dickinson can dance <\/em>seems, as Sam L suggested, to have something to do with whether and how we credit her verse with a kind of dance, with somehow enacting the motion it describes. We wondered about whether we dance in reading it, as a matter of the visual imagery it invokes or even the somatic sympathies it engenders (i.e., do you read of a pirouette with your back, your hips?). Terence Hayes\u2019 sonnet raised the strange question of how you \u201chold\u201d your face or even yourself as you dance. That strange self-estrangement\u2014holding yourself, carrying yourself?\u2014seemed to have something to do with the way dance promises to unite you with your body. What if it separates you instead? What a great ending though\u2014as though asking the reader to dance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I thought that the discussion of gesture on Wednesday was really provocative\u2014it contributed to a surprising (to me) line of thinking about self-consciousness that has been running these last few sessions. Flusser tells us that a gesture is \u201ca movement of the body or of a tool connected to the body for which there is … <\/p>\n