Cinema or Dance? What Giorgio Agamben’s “Notes on Gesture” are Silent About, and What They (Don’t) Have to Say About Contemporary Film Theory

The article attempts to clarify the significance of Giorgio Agamben’s works on cinema for contemporary film theory. Agamben’s theory of gesture is the most popular among film historians, on the basis of which some researchers argue for a ‘gesture turn’ in the comprehension of cinema. Drawing on Agamben’s essay “Notes on Gesture”, the article questions the productivity of gesture theory for contemporary film studies and clarifies the reasons why the direct transfer of Agamben’s reflections on gesture to the context of film studies is problematic. For this purpose, the main points of the essay “Notes on Gesture” are explained in connection with the Italian philosopher’s ontological project, which allows us to point out that the extreme experience of language, rather than the theory of the image, is at the heart of the concept of gesture. The concept of gesture contains a number of aporias if gesture is understood as an element of cinema and is examined within the context of film theory. Contrary to Agamben’s intention, “Notes on Gesture” cannot be seen as a continuation, clarification and development of Gilles Deleuze’s works on cinema. At the same time, pointing out the problematic nature of this concept for film scholars does not prevent us from recognising a different potential in the theory of gesture, which is revealed through the figure of dance. In most of Agamben’s texts, the image of dance is predominantly metaphorical. In order to give dance a conceptual weight and, in particular, to show that a specific dialectic in the Agamben’s thought is elucidated through dance, it is necessary to relate the theory of gesture to the experience of dance. Gesture, understood not as an element of cinema but as a dance that holds together statics and dynamics and manifests the rhythmic nature of being, turns out to be the concept through which Agamben moves towards the concept of form-of-life, which is the subject of his later works and will become central in the last volumes of the “Homo Sacer” series.

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