The Minor Gesture (Thought in the Act) - Softcover

Manning, Erin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0822361213 ISBN 13: 9780822361213

Publisher: Duke University Press Books, 2016

In this wide-ranging and probing book Erin Manning extends her previous inquiries into the politics of movement to the concept of the minor gesture. The minor gesture, although it may pass almost unperceived, transforms the field of relations. More than a chance variation, less than a volition, it requires rethinking common assumptions about human agency and political action. To embrace the minor gesture's power to fashion relations, its capacity to open new modes of experience and manners of expression, is to challenge the ways in which the neurotypical image of the human devalues alternative ways of being moved by and moving through the world—in particular what Manning terms "autistic perception." Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari's schizoanalysis and Whitehead's speculative pragmatism, Manning's far-reaching analyses range from fashion to depression to the writings of autistics, in each case affirming the neurodiversity of the minor and the alternative politics it gestures toward. 

Review:

"Manning emphasizes a kind of affect that brings to the fore a feeling of being a part of a larger environment, something relational, something that helps people to see themselves as part of something bigger."--Karen Simecek"Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory" (09/08/2017)

"The Minor Gesture is a fascinating and intellectually challenging book that successfully problematises common-sense (neurotypical) understandings of perception, action and embodiment. In doing so it politicises mundane everyday experience and calls for sustained critique of normatively framed lifeworlds."-- (01/05/2018)

"A wide-ranging and carefully argued book. . . . Now that we know just how much mental activity escapes our conscious awareness and defies standard and dialectical accounts of knowledge, reason, and agency, efforts like Manning's to better understand neurodiversity and to mobilize that understanding for research-creation and political activism alike are invaluable."-- (08/08/2017)

About the Author:

Erin Manning is University Research Chair in Relational Art and Philosophy in the Faculty of Fine Arts at Concordia University. She is the author of several books, including Always More Than One: Individuation's Dance, also published by Duke University Press. 

• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0822361213
• ISBN 13: 9780822361213
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288