Rajini’s Finger, Indexicality, and the Metapragmatics of Presence Constantine V. Nakassis, University of Chicago ABSTRACT This article explores the ways in which Tamil film stars, so-called mass heroes such as the “Superstar” Rajinikanth, are presenced in theatrical events of their onscreen revela- tion and apperception. Drawing on film analysis, ethnographic accounts of theatrical re- ception, and metadiscourse by filmgoers and industry personnel, I focus on Rajini’s onscreen pointing gestures in highly charged moments of presencing. As I argue, these data provoke reflection on indexicality—defined by Charles Sanders Peirce as a semiotic ground based on “real connection” or “existential relation,” such as copresence, contigu- ity, or causality—for at issue with Rajini’s fingers is precisely the question of his auratic being and presence. Instead of analyzing performative acts of presencing through appeal to the analytic of indexicality, then, what if we interrogate those ethnographic particular- ities of existence and presence that constitute the ground for indexical relations and ef- fects as such? Such an inquiry would refuse to leave indexicality as a self-evident, pregiven analytic, but instead pose it as an open ethnographic question. Opening up the question of existence and presence, as I show, allows us to unearth other semiotic “grounds” of indexicality and representation beyond those that we all too often take for granted. Contact Constantine V. Nakassis at Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago, 1126 E. 59th Street, Chicago, IL 60637 (
[email protected]). An earlier version of this article was presented in the panel “Parsing the Body” at the AAA annual meet- ing, Washington, DC, December 4, 2014, organized by Mary Bucholtz and Kira Hall; an expanded draft was discussed at the workshop “Semiotics of the Image” (University of Chicago, October 14–15, 2016) with Chris- topher Ball, Lily Chumley, Keith Murphy, and Justin Richland.