Gestures of Concern (a Cultural Politics book)

Chris Ingraham shows that gestures of concern, such as sharing or liking a post on social media, are central to establishing the necessary conditions for larger social or political change because they help to build the affective communities that orient us to one another with an imaginable future in mind. "GESTURES OF CONCERN contends that gestures with seemingly imperceptible measurable impact-such as bringing a reusable bag to the grocery store, scrolling through a newsfeed, or expressing a political opinion through a sticker-generate an affective commonwealth in which "citizen-critics" are able to create spaces of resistance. These gestures alone are not the solution to environmental destruction or a route to political emancipation from extractive capitalism. Yet, as Chris Ingraham argues, they constitute the daily work of commonwealth building-the creation of a politically engaged community-that enables meaningful social change to take hold. Rather than mapping the material presence of rhetorical events, Ingraham is interested in those unanswerable and ambiguous events that are fundamental to the lives of citizens in the twenty-first century. He shows that gestures of concern are important, not because they create a new state of being in the world, but because they create a new manner of being in the world. The study is organized into three sections of paired chapters, and each pair works together to advance the theory of concerned gestures' affective significance across the book's speculative paths. Chapters 1 and 2 take up TED Talks and the Vandalina sticker campaign against femicide in Turkey to understand how gestures of concern matter to twenty-first century political life. Ingraham suggests that the ancient Greek rhetorical figure of the idiot, defined as the silent non-rhetor who still participates in the public sphere through a listening disposition, is a key figure in understanding the affective significance of gestures of concern in modern life. The next two chapters demonstrate that concerned gestures matter most in the everyday cultural field. Focusing on gestures like the Facebook French flag filter after the 2015 Paris attacks and the use of goodreads.com, Ingraham addresses how citizen artists and citizen critics interact with an algorithmic culture that has democratized creative and critical participation in public life. Finally, Ingraham turns to the production of affective commonwealths in gestures like pop-up libraries in the London borough of Brent and artistic representations of images captured by Google Street View. The book concludes with a short epilogue that reconfigures Auden's "poet in the city" as a concerned citizen-critic "poet in the Anthropocene." GESTURES OF CONCERN will be of interest to scholars of media and communication, cultural studies, and political theory"-- Provided by publisher In Gestures of Concern Chris Ingraham shows that while gestures such as sending a “Get Well” card may not be instrumentally effective, they do exert an intrinsically affective force on a field of social relations. From liking, sharing, posting, or swiping to watching a TED Talk or wearing an “I Voted” sticker, such gestures operate as much through affective registers as they do through overt symbolic action. Ingraham demonstrates that gestures of concern are central to establishing the necessary conditions for larger social or political change because they give the everyday aesthetic and rhetorical practices of public life the capacity to attain some socially legible momentum. Rather than supporting the notion that vociferous public communication is the best means for political and social change, Ingraham advances the idea that concerned gestures can help to build the affective communities that orient us to one another with an imaginable future in mind. Ultimately, he shows how acts that many may consider trivial or banal are integral to establishing those background conditions capable of fostering more inclusive social or political change.