Gestures: A body of work

by Alice Butler (editor), Nell Osborne (editor), Hilary White (editor)

A body of work is a cross-disciplinary collection of feminist approaches to ‘gesture’ that considers the term’s complex registers across embodied, aesthetic and political scenes. Attending to gestural movements, languages, feelings and communications, the book argues that gestures can unsettle gendered, sexed and racialised relations, norms and affects. Contributors activate the lens of gesture to offer innovative readings of art and literary works from the 1960s onwards and in transnational contexts. Experiments in art writing and autotheory reflect on the entanglement of the body, gesture and feminist practice. The book proposes that gesture be rethought as a mode of feminist practice that includes art, writing, performance and theory. Mixing disciplines, forms, genres and voices, these contributions and the book’s gestural structure offer a bold intervention into the conventions of critical writing.

352 pages, Hardcover

Published January 28, 2025