Problems of a Semiology of Theatrical Gesture

In the semiology of gesture, as elsewhere, the first step is the hardest; but this first step is decisive for the methodology which is used for what follows.' In this way, the semiology of theater, despite its declared protestations and intentions, always retreats from the delicate question of the gesture and of its link (or the absence of such) to speech. One isolates and describes correctly the different stage systems, but one does not comment on their hierarchy, their intersemiotic relation and the production of the global signified which results from their confrontation. This retreat from the obstacle of gesture only re-establishes the traditional concept of the gesture and of the mise-en-scene as a secondary and superfluous expression of the text. Thus, gesture remains at the level of pure incarnation of the word, with all the uselessness, logocentricity, i.e., theology, of this exteriorization. However, this movement of retreat of the semiologist does, one has to admit, have some justification: nothing is easier for the critic or for the spectator than to refer to the text; nothing is more difficult, on the other hand, than to capture the slightest gesture of the actor, or to characterize a type of gesturality! Once gesture becomes the object of a descriptive discourse, it loses all specificity; reduced to the level of a text, it does not give any account of its volume, of its signifying force, of its place in the global stage message. It becomes like any other kind of text, where the gesturality has lost all of its own qualities. Finally, as we shall see, verbal language describes gesture according to its own principles of segmentation, indicating and *Translated by Elena Biller-Lappin. I am very grateful to Michel Bernard for his attentive reading of the manuscript of the present paper. This article appears in Language of the Stage: Essays in the Semiotics of Theatre by the author which will be published in July by Performing Arts Journal Publications, New York. 'We are speaking here of semiology and not of semiotics, as do Greimas and his followers. Semiotics aspires to work out a theoretical meta-language which does not make use of discourse, while semiology recognizes the fact that its system uses the natural languages as an instrument of paraphrase. In this difference of vocabulary lies the entire range of problems connected with gesturality: should it be described and noted independently of language? Should a mediating language be taken into account

Epistemology · Gesture · Hierarchy · Incarnation · Linguistics · Nothing · Semiology · Computer Science · Historical and Literary Analyses · Historical and Literary Studies · Philosophy · Psychology · Visual Culture and Art Theory

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