## Irina Schulzki (2019). *‘The Underlying Gesture’: Towards the Notion of Gesture in Jean D’udine and Sergei Eisenstein*. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. > [!INFO] > Type:: [[&]] > Title:: ‘The Underlying Gesture’: Towards the Notion of Gesture in Jean D’udine and Sergei Eisenstein > Author(s): [[Irina Schulzki]] > Year:: 2019 > Tags:: > DOI:: > Citekey:: schulzki_underlying_2019 > ZoteroURI:: [Open in Zotero: ‘The Underlying Gesture’: Towards the Notion of Gesture in Jean D’udine and Sergei Eisenstein](zotero://select/items/@schulzki_underlying_2019) > ReviewedDate:: [[2023-03-14]] ## Citation ```latex [@schulzki_underlying_2019] ``` ## Related ```dataview TABLE file.aliases AS "Title" FROM [[@schulzki_underlying_2019]] and -"Plans" and -"resources" ``` ## Summary - ## Annotation “Giorgio Agamben describes a gestural catastrophe that befell the late 19th century European culture.” ([Schulzki, 2019, p. 102](zotero://select/library/items/UX5VCZE7)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/BAE8CYKH?page=1&annotation=RRYLSPQC)) “the proliferation of motor disorders registered in medical records” ([Schulzki, 2019, p. 102](zotero://select/library/items/UX5VCZE7)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/BAE8CYKH?page=1&annotation=9FU3892R)) ““An age that has lost its gestures is, for this reason, obsessed by them”,” ([Schulzki, 2019, p. 102](zotero://select/library/items/UX5VCZE7)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/BAE8CYKH?page=1&annotation=HZU6VTQ3)) “Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of eternal return, Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas, Marcel Proust’s novels, and, in particular, the emerging motion picture (Agamben 2000, 52f.).” ([Schulzki, 2019, p. 102](zotero://select/library/items/UX5VCZE7)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/BAE8CYKH?page=1&annotation=L4GTM9ZX)) “Agamben argues that from the outset cinema was predestined to become a means to register both the loss of – and the extraordinary fixation on – gestures.” ([Schulzki, 2019, p. 102](zotero://select/library/items/UX5VCZE7)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/BAE8CYKH?page=1&annotation=VNU5CITY)) “Polemicising against Gilles Deleuze, Agamben has claimed that “the element of cinema is gesture, and not image” (ibid., 54) and thus reintroduced the notion of gesture into the current theoretical discourse.” ([Schulzki, 2019, p. 103](zotero://select/library/items/UX5VCZE7)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/BAE8CYKH?page=2&annotation=R6EADXK4)) “[[Mikhail Iampolski]] (1991) has, for instance, observed how Lev Kuleshov’s theory of montage naturally evolved from his interest in corporeal expression and rhythm.” ([Schulzki, 2019, p. 103](zotero://select/library/items/UX5VCZE7)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/BAE8CYKH?page=2&annotation=JBXDY8RA)) “While montage expresses motion in a succession of frames, gesture does so through movement within a frame.” ([Schulzki, 2019, p. 103](zotero://select/library/items/UX5VCZE7)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/BAE8CYKH?page=2&annotation=NLGMEJGH)) “Thus, the faster montage is, the fewer gestures the film contains, or, as Tsivian puts it, “gesture lasts, while montage cuts” (ibid.).” ([Schulzki, 2019, p. 103](zotero://select/library/items/UX5VCZE7)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/BAE8CYKH?page=2&annotation=2XA6HPHR)) “Eisenstein’s meditations on gesture as an overarching aesthetic category remain rather marginal within the extensive scholarship on the filmmaker’s persistent interest in expressive movement and kinesthetic empathy.” ([Schulzki, 2019, p. 103](zotero://select/library/items/UX5VCZE7)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/BAE8CYKH?page=2&annotation=NF58I8JF)) “Eisenstein to conceptualise gesture as a key element of synaesthetic unity between the visual and the auditory.” ([Schulzki, 2019, p. 103](zotero://select/library/items/UX5VCZE7)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/BAE8CYKH?page=2&annotation=CCE7JBR3)) “on bodily movements in early Russian and Soviet cinema was inherited from the practices and theory of theatre, mainly from the acting style of François Delsarte and the method of eurhythmics of Émile JacqueDalcroze.” ([Schulzki, 2019, p. 104](zotero://select/library/items/UX5VCZE7)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/BAE8CYKH?page=3&annotation=YREXZTCZ)) “It was the original French edition of L’art et le geste that Eisenstein discovered” ([Schulzki, 2019, p. 104](zotero://select/library/items/UX5VCZE7)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/BAE8CYKH?page=3&annotation=J833WBS9)) “D’Udine believed in an “extraordinary unity” and an “intimate correspondence” of all sensible expressions known under the name of synaesthesia (d’Udine 1910, xxi).” ([Schulzki, 2019, p. 104](zotero://select/library/items/UX5VCZE7)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/BAE8CYKH?page=3&annotation=DZ2XF57P)) “All human senses, he argued, were born from a “plastic reflex” (ibid., 82).” ([Schulzki, 2019, p. 105](zotero://select/library/items/UX5VCZE7)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/BAE8CYKH?page=4&annotation=XUKFKIIA)) “D’Udine suggests touch to be a mediating sense which enables the other senses to intercommunicate and thereby generate synaesthetic perception (ibid., 91f.).” ([Schulzki, 2019, p. 105](zotero://select/library/items/UX5VCZE7)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/BAE8CYKH?page=4&annotation=YRLCDL9C)) “in short, to “vibrate”.” ([Schulzki, 2019, p. 105](zotero://select/library/items/UX5VCZE7)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/BAE8CYKH?page=4&annotation=75W42BAR)) “D’Udine discovers a motor basis in practically all arts: in poetry, architecture, painting.” ([Schulzki, 2019, p. 106](zotero://select/library/items/UX5VCZE7)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/BAE8CYKH?page=5&annotation=GZRB357G)) “Every work of art, he argues, is “a series of attitudes” and of “creative gestures” (ibid., 202).” ([Schulzki, 2019, p. 106](zotero://select/library/items/UX5VCZE7)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/BAE8CYKH?page=5&annotation=2DHZJXVY)) “There is no need to say that the certain ‘aesthetic Darwinism’ and the distinct monism of d’Udine’s approach fell entirely into the pattern of the utopian impulse of modernism.” ([Schulzki, 2019, p. 106](zotero://select/library/items/UX5VCZE7)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/BAE8CYKH?page=5&annotation=6HSS8V6K)) “Following d’Udine, he claims to find it in the “underlying gesture”.” ([Schulzki, 2019, p. 106](zotero://select/library/items/UX5VCZE7)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/BAE8CYKH?page=5&annotation=I7Q9HVLC)) “The notion of gesture is implicated throughout Eisenstein’s writings, in particular in his discussion of “movement”, “a single, unifying image”, “a plastic rhyme”, etc. (Eisenstein 1975, 82, 69, 258).” ([Schulzki, 2019, p. 106](zotero://select/library/items/UX5VCZE7)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/BAE8CYKH?page=5&annotation=T36XDH3P)) “This essay unfolds the thesis that gesture, language, music, and colour are commensurate “voices”, or development stages, of some unified “language” that co-exist in the form of “layers” in our logical and sensual apparatus (Eisenstein 2004, 165f.).” ([Schulzki, 2019, p. 106](zotero://select/library/items/UX5VCZE7)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/BAE8CYKH?page=5&annotation=XQLQQZER)) “Eisenstein considered the evolutionist assumption that language originates from corporeal movements as common and selfevident. I” ([Schulzki, 2019, p. 107](zotero://select/library/items/UX5VCZE7)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/BAE8CYKH?page=6&annotation=A7WCWDS7)) “The simplest audio-visual montage, he notes, is based on rhythm: “shots cut and edited together to the rhythm of the music on the parallel sound-track” (Eisenstein 1975, 83).” ([Schulzki, 2019, p. 107](zotero://select/library/items/UX5VCZE7)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/BAE8CYKH?page=6&annotation=6AL3X7QY)) “In the 1947 essay Melodiia i zhest [Melody and Gesture], he again stresses out that “it is necessary to catch a melody’s gesture; and melody is that primary ‘dance’ (...) melody altogether corresponds to drawing in general terms (...) that is one general movement holding together points that are scattered in the space” (ibid., 533f).” ([Schulzki, 2019, p. 108](zotero://select/library/items/UX5VCZE7)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/BAE8CYKH?page=7&annotation=7FESQKV8)) “Gesture is thus deployed as a figure of potentiality (“an embryo”) that is to be actualised into an “audiovisual image” (zvukozritel’nyi obraz, ibid., 175).” ([Schulzki, 2019, p. 110](zotero://select/library/items/UX5VCZE7)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/BAE8CYKH?page=9&annotation=U66HI8N4)) “There are two albeit single-root words for “image” in Russian: obraz and izobrazhenie.” ([Schulzki, 2019, p. 110](zotero://select/library/items/UX5VCZE7)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/BAE8CYKH?page=9&annotation=5ELKFL24)) “Whereas izobrazhenie concerns immediate seeing – what we perceive with our senses (‘depiction’ or ‘representation’), obraz presupposes rather an intelligible generalisation of the visible, akin to the Old-Greek eikon, as Naum Kleiman rightly observes (ibid., 7f.).” ([Schulzki, 2019, p. 110](zotero://select/library/items/UX5VCZE7)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/BAE8CYKH?page=9&annotation=DSAXFP26)) “empirically invisible abstractions.” ([Schulzki, 2019, p. 110](zotero://select/library/items/UX5VCZE7)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/BAE8CYKH?page=9&annotation=SBK83X2Q)) “Those images are not a mere geometrical abstraction but something deeply connected with the main theme [of the art work]” (ibid., 179).” ([Schulzki, 2019, p. 110](zotero://select/library/items/UX5VCZE7)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/BAE8CYKH?page=9&annotation=5UUEW8TZ)) “Noteworthy is that gesture in Eisenstein not only connects noumena and phenomena but enacts ideas in a tangible way.” ([Schulzki, 2019, p. 110](zotero://select/library/items/UX5VCZE7)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/BAE8CYKH?page=9&annotation=PAUZDQTN)) “One might feel reminded of d’Udine’s understanding of art as the creation of a “double”, or a “substratum” (Udine 1910, 81).” ([Schulzki, 2019, p. 111](zotero://select/library/items/UX5VCZE7)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/BAE8CYKH?page=10&annotation=WCFHIBN7)) “In fact, the ‘extraction’ appears as a twofold process: at first, the artist traces the gesture from the world, and then the recipient does the same from the oeuvre.” ([Schulzki, 2019, p. 112](zotero://select/library/items/UX5VCZE7)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/BAE8CYKH?page=11&annotation=ST3QRAYY)) “Eisenstein writes: “There is an artist’s emotion. But there is also a flourish of his movement in the created image.” (2004, 173).” ([Schulzki, 2019, p. 112](zotero://select/library/items/UX5VCZE7)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/BAE8CYKH?page=11&annotation=D4WEDSDR)) “Such syncretic knowledge is visceral in nature and related to the area of muscular movements – to the tendons, as he mentions in another essay (Eisenstein 2002, 151).” ([Schulzki, 2019, p. 112](zotero://select/library/items/UX5VCZE7)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/BAE8CYKH?page=11&annotation=6P4FVMTQ)) “[[Mikhail Iampolski|Iampolski]] (1998, 226) sagaciously remarks: “Eisenstein arrives at a kind of pangraphism: the world, for all its diversity, is, under the phenomenal surface of things, governed by the semantically charged line.”” ([Schulzki, 2019, p. 112](zotero://select/library/items/UX5VCZE7)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/BAE8CYKH?page=11&annotation=9NXAB4BI)) “Gesture’s muteness challenges the discourse surrounding it and makes gesture to a perfectly ‘unspeakable’ figure of speech.” ([Schulzki, 2019, p. 112](zotero://select/library/items/UX5VCZE7)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/BAE8CYKH?page=11&annotation=239A28FI)) “we are always “at a loss in the language” (1999, 78) when we try to conceptualise gesture.” ([Schulzki, 2019, p. 112](zotero://select/library/items/UX5VCZE7)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/BAE8CYKH?page=11&annotation=KINNICFB)) ““The” ([Schulzki, 2019, p. 112](zotero://select/library/items/UX5VCZE7)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/BAE8CYKH?page=11&annotation=IUMVKT9E)) “image is to affect the mind and the emotions by its own verbal unspeakability” (Eisenstein 2004, 198).” ([Schulzki, 2019, p. 113](zotero://select/library/items/UX5VCZE7)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/BAE8CYKH?page=12&annotation=JKDMJJS5)) login and illogic, speakable and unspeakable “in which gesture appears as an ideal form-and-content amalgam.” ([Schulzki, 2019, p. 113](zotero://select/library/items/UX5VCZE7)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/BAE8CYKH?page=12&annotation=BRKYIZFP)) “One can argue that for both thinkers gesture meant a subtle passage from aesthetics into ethics and politics, as well as into the sphere of pure mediality: “The gesture is the exhibition of a mediality: it is the process of making a means visible as such” (Agamben 2000, 57; original emphasis).” ([Schulzki, 2019, p. 113](zotero://select/library/items/UX5VCZE7)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/BAE8CYKH?page=12&annotation=Z8GXPJNC)) ### Related ```dataview LIST FROM [[@schulzki_underlying_2019]] and -"Plans" and -"resources" ```