Needs sense of attitude plus action added[edit]

This article needs a substantial re-write. I will make an attempt but not right now. Until then, I want to flag up it's main omission. Gestus is not merely about the physical behaviour of the performer. In relation to the narrativizing of stage action involved in the epic approach, Gestus also carries the sense of making visible attitude.

This is a complex subject and involves many shades of meaning and use in Brecht's work.

There also needs to be an explanation of the making visible of social causality that Gestus involves--the sense that we are allowed to 'peer to the bottom of the stream' in a surface/depth historical materialist sense.

If anyone else cares to develop any of these suggestions before I have time to, that'd be great.

DionysosProteus 14:45, 15 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'd added some of these senses, but more to do later. DionysosProteus 01:39, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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More from Müller[edit]

"The plot is a model, not a chronicle. For presenting attitudes, not meanings. Each action cites other, identical, similar actions from history, insofar as they were are are undertaken according to the [...] model." (Müller 1977, 177)

This notion of Gestus as citation (in the rhetorical sense) resonates both with Deleuze's use of Gestus in his second Cinema book and with that used by Judith Butler in her performativity theories.

DionysosProteus 03:06, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]