Gesturing Toward Utopia: Toward a Theory of Exemplarity

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.

Ključne riječi
exemplarity, gesture, performance, political symbolism, individual, attention economy