Discover

Critical Hand Gestures

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The Tiny Dialectic. ‘I’m making a very fine distinction’

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The Critical Whirl. ‘I’ve read too much Marx and I can’t get my words out’

 

 

 

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Picking Up Small Ideas.

The Backhand Slap.

The Backhand Slap.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Flexing Academic Muscle. ‘I’m testing out my research in front of a live audience.’

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The Shelf Sweep.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Italian Waiter. ‘I’ve been on holiday to the Mediterranean and I’m looser with my gestures.’

This is a Dialectic and I’m Going to Explain it.

 

 

 
#RepeatedMinuteAcademicGesturing is not a popular hashtag. I checked on Twitter and there are no results. And when there aren’t hashtags for something, it is hard to say that it really exists. If a tree falls and no one is there to Vine their reaction…

But how do you hashtag the wind? Or a gesture, the small movements of a teacher’s hands? It seemed impossible to digitally catalogue such a thing. That was until criticalhandgestures came along. Here, presented for the first time, is the internet’s only collection of gesticulation gifs. Artists Jasmine JohnsonAlice May Williams, and More Utopia have created a small but growing number of scholarly hand-gesture gifs that convey (over and over) the messages of: “I’m testing out my research in front of a live audience”, “I’m making a very fine distinction”, and “I’ve read too much Marx and I can’t get my words out”, among others. Each image is accompanied with a description of the gesture’s meaning, along with instructions on how to move your hands to convey the appropriate message. CriticalHandGestures is a fine contribution to the internet/human catalogue… *spreads out both arms with open palms, indicating item of vast importance* Check out their site here.

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