LIFE ON THE THRESHOLD OF THE BODY

The aim of this PhD thesis is defining the human gesture not from the point of view of single meanings but in the attempt to describe the category of gesture itself and in its relation with the human condition. The first part of the research designs a definition of gesture as the movement that opens the body beyond itself, toward external objects (as the actions or the language): identify in the form of a tension, gesture can be described as such only before achieving the object it was tending to. In the second part, an analysis of the medieval monastic rules and Renaissance painting allows to qualify a change of direction: more than being an expression of the body interrupted before the object, gesture presents itself as the response to a calling from the object, a going toward the world that gets caught into the materiality of the same body. In this opening of the body toward the world and withdrawing from the being always in action, the gestures discloses a sphere of possibilities in between, a threshold able to put into question the same opposition between the subject and the objects.