Mots. Les langages du politique, n°110/2016

A non-discursive element of language, expression and communication, the gesture can be defined as a "movement of the body… aiming to express something" (Le Petit Robert). The type of political gesture examined in this dossier is neither one of political figures in studies on “non-verbal communication”, nor a coverbal gesture accompanying a speech, or even one which replaces a verbal message in an interaction; referred to as “symbolic” or “quasi-linguistic” because it is intelligible without speech.
Instead gestures which are themselves “activist” – in their usage, their variations, their interpretations and the remarks they elicit – are the object of this dossier, as opposed to individual movements, fleeting, isolated, of particular political actors; even if the latter gestures have taken on a “symbolic” signification.
According to the authors of the work Des gestes en histoire. Formes et significations des gestualités médicale, guerrière et politique (Ambroise-Rendu, D'Almeida and Edelman, 2006, p. 11), the types of non-verbal communication which most attract our attention here are those which they refer to as “gestiques”: “those gestures considered as a deliberate and organised means of expression, a type of language possessing its own grammar”. Conscious, intentional, conventional, demonstrative, learnt, demanded, revived, ritualised, performed individually or collectively, directed or in a form of theatricality, these gestures and postures enable political expression, define an identity or affirm an affiliation to a group or community. Serving as symbols, they constituent visible, ostentatious signs: rallying, engaging or recognising, conveying a cause, expressing an allegiance, calling for mobilisation, resisting or protesting.