In everyday reasoning - just as in science and art - knowledge is acquired more by "doing" than with long analyses. What do we "do" when we discover something new? How can we define and explore the pattern of this reasoning, traditionally called "synthetic"? Following in the steps of classic pragmatists, especially C.S. Pierce, Giovanni Maddalena's Philosophy of Gesture revolutionizes the pattern of synthesis through the ideas of change and continuity and proposes "gesture" as a new tool for synthesis. Defining gesture as an action with a beginning and an end that carries on a meaning, Maddalena explains that it is a dense blending of all kinds of phenomena - feelings and vague ideas, actual actions, habits of actions - and of signs - icons, indexes, and symbols. When the blending of phenomena and signs is densest, the gesture is "complete," and its power of introducing something new in knowledge is at its highest level. Examples of complete gestures are religious liturgies, public and private rites, public and private actions that establish an identity, artistic performances, and hypothesizing experiments. A departure from a traditional Kantian framework for understanding the nature and function of reason, The Philosophy of Gesture proposes an approach that is more attuned with our ordinary way of reasoning and of apprehending new knowledge.

The book represents a historical overview of the way the topic of gesture and sign language has been treated in the 18th century French philosophy. The texts treated are grouped into several categories based on the view they present of deafness and gesture. While some of those texts obviously view deafness and sign language in negative terms, i.e. as deficiency, others present deafness essentially as difference, i.e. as a set of competences that might provide some insights into how spoken language works. One of the arguments of the book is that these two views of deafness and sign language still represent two dominant paradigms present in the current debates on the issue. The aim of the book, therefore, is not only to provide a historical overview but to trace what might be called a “history of the present”.

In this wide-ranging and probing book Erin Manning extends her previous inquiries into the politics of movement to the concept of the minor gesture. The minor gesture, although it may pass almost unperceived, transforms the field of relations. More than a chance variation, less than a volition, it requires rethinking common assumptions about human agency and political action. To embrace the minor gesture's power to fashion relations, its capacity to open new modes of experience and manners of expression, is to challenge the ways in which the neurotypical image of the human devalues alternative ways of being moved by and moving through the world—in particular what Manning terms "autistic perception." Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari's schizoanalysis and Whitehead's speculative pragmatism, Manning's far-reaching analyses range from fashion to depression to the writings of autistics, in each case affirming the neurodiversity of the minor and the alternative politics it gestures toward.

Combines in one volume "Technics and Language", in which anthropologist Leroi-Gourhan looks at prehistoric technology in relation to the development of cognitive and liguistic faculties, and "Memory and Rhythms", which addresses instinct and intelligence from a sociological viewpoint.

From a major mind of Buddhism today comes this unique philosophical work, which hearkens back to the classical verse-form, but in a modern voice that speaks directly to the twenty-first century reader and practitioner. Gesture of Awareness involves a fascinating philosophical exploration of time, space, and movement but at the same time is a manual for an embodied "practice of exploration." Genoud is very well known to the leading lights of Buddhism today. He and his work are continuingly praised for their invention and importance. Well-versed in French and continental philosophies, as well as Eastern thought, he has produced a work that will be welcomed as a Buddhist book and a noteworthy contribution to the larger philosophical community.

Derived from the Latin verb “gerere”-to carry, act, or do-“gesture” has accrued critical currency but has remained undertheorized. Migrations of Gesture addresses this absence and provides a complex theory on the value of gesture for understanding human sign production. Gestures migrate from body to body, from one medium to another, and between cultural contexts. Juxtaposing distinct approaches to gesture in order to explore the ways in which they at once shape and are influenced by culture, the contributors examine the works of writers Henri Michaux and Stphane Mallarm, photographers Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Frank, and filmmakers Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Martin Arnold, along with cultural practices such as gang walking, ballet, and classical Indian dance. The authors move deftly between an organic, phenomenal appreciation of human expression and a historicist, semiotic understanding of how the “human” is itself created through gestural routines. Contributors: Mark Franko, U of California, Santa Cruz; Ketu H. Katrak, U of California, Irvine; Akira Mizuta Lippit, U of Southern California; Susan A. Phillips, Pitzer College; Deidre Sklar; Lesley Stern, U of California, San Diego; Blake Stimson, U of California, Davis. Carrie Noland is associate professor of French literature and critical theory at the University of California, Irvine. Sally Ann Ness is professor of anthropology at University of California, Riverside.