English

Gestures of Concern

x, 254 pages : 23 cm · "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 sign

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