The Tongue's Break Dance

Theory, Poetry, and the Critical Body

Bibliographic Data

ID2276944
AuthorsZali Gurevitch (Hebrew University of Jerusalem, corresponding author)
Year1999
Volume40
Issue3
Pages525-540
Publication date1999-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSociological Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0038-0253 • E-ISSN: 1533-8525
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1533-8525.1999.tb01732.x
OpenAlexW1896865040
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited18

In the present essay the participation of the body as tongue in the ritual of speech and conversation is depicted in terms of performance. To reveal the intricate relations between body and language, moments of impediment in the flow of speech are explored as events that inform the tongue's performance and make it a kind of break dance, a dance whose breaks and silences are not merely deficiencies in the machine of talk but are part of the information it carries, that is, they are indicative of the inherent participation of the body—its resistance and silence—in language, as well as in the inscription of language in the body. This is developed as a poetics of break, which combines ethnography, critical theory, and the actual (poetic) production of writing

Aesthetics · Art · Body language · Conversation · Dance · Linguistics · Literature · Poetics · Poetry · Silence · Sociology · Philosophy · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism · Rhetoric and Communication Studies · Theatre and Performance Studies

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