Document Type
Article
Abstract
This essay turns to Giorgio Agamben and Theodor Adorno to understand the antifascist politics of gestural loss. Adorno offers a historical materialist framework for grounding this loss in the rise and fall of the bourgeoisie while Agamben offers a political response to this crisis of the gesture. This essay focuses on one gesture in particular—tact— in order to illustrate a series of dialectical turns that lead from tactful tact to tactless tact to tactful tactlessness. While these versions all lead to dead ends—culminating in either the reification of the culture industry or the domination of the fascist agitator—Agamben offers a paradoxical alternative: tactless tactlessness as the absolute inoperativity of tact. This final gesture is exemplified in visual comedy and in particular the Marx Brothers’ work, which demonstrates its potentially antifascist possibilities.
Recommended Citation
Lewis, Tyson E.
(2024)
"The Antifascist Politics of Absolutely Inoperative Gestures: From Adorno to Agamben to the Marx Brothers,"
Criticism: Vol. 65:
Iss.
2, Article 4.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/criticism/vol65/iss2/4