BUTLER, Alice; OSBORNE, Nell; WHITE, Hilary (eds.)
Gestures. A body of work

A cross-disciplinary collection of feminist approaches to “gesture” that considers the term’s complex registers across embodied, aesthetic and political scenes. Attending to gestural movements, languages, feelings and communications, the book argues that gestures can unsettle gendered, sexed and racialised relations, norms and affects. Contributors activate the lens of gesture to offer innovative readings of art and literary works from the 1960s onwards and in transnational contexts. Experiments in art writing and autotheory reflect on the entanglement of the body, gesture and feminist practice. The book proposes that gesture be rethought as a mode of feminist practice that includes art, writing, performance and theory. Mixing disciplines, forms, genres and voices, these contributions and the book's gestural structure offer a bold intervention into the conventions of critical writing. [publishers’ note]

Contents include: a foreword by Anne Boyer; an essay on “the ungraspable work of Renee Gladman” by Hilary White; an “essay-caress” on “Francesca Woodman’s autoerotic attentions” by Alice Butler; a text by Luke Roberts on the work of Pati Hill; another one by Giulia Damiani on Le Nemesiache; Hatty Nestor on “Ana Mendieta’s affective afterlife”; Joey Frances on Bhanu Kapil’s Ban en Banlieue; and more texts by Joanna Walsh, Daniela Cascella, Nia Davies, Daisy Lafarge, Naomi Pearce, Azadeh Fatehrad, Nisha Ramayya and Nat Raha, Erin Manning and Jade de Montserrat, Lauren Berlant and Kathleen Stewart, and more…

Published by Manchester University Press, 2026
Essays / Feminism / Art Criticism / Art Theory / Art History