Original scientific paper

https://doi.org/10.15176/vol53no104

Gesturing Toward Utopia: Toward a Theory of Exemplarity

Dorothy Noyes

Abstract

Summarizing a 2015 SIEF panel, the paper seeks to synthesize folkloristic and ethnological resources for developing a theory of exemplarity as a special case of tradition, not marginal but central to Western discourses of power, progress, and the self. The exemplar is a particular individual whose act or conduct is claimed, through gesture, in a subsequent performance. Following the papers from the panel, I review the gestural core of exemplarity, the problem of uptake, ideologies of exemplarity, and exemplarity in the social field, all through the constitutive tension in the concept between the model and the representative.

Keywords

exemplarity; gesture; performance; political symbolism; individual; attention economy

Hrčak ID:

162050

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/162050

Publication date:

20.7.2016.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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