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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Thomson, Rosemarie Garland. Staring : how we look / Rosemarie Garland-Thomson. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–19–532679–6; 978–0–19–532680–2 (pbk.) 1. Gaze. I. Title. B846.T46 2009 302.5’4—dc22 2008034410 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper CONTENTS PART I About Staring 1 Why Do We Stare? PART II What Is Staring? 2 A Physical Response 3 A Cultural History 4 A Social Relationship 5 Knowledge Gathering PART III Don’t Stare 6 Regulating Our Looks PART IV Starers and Starees 7 Looking Away, Staring Back PART V Scenes of Staring 8 Faces 9 Hands 10 Breasts 11 Bodies 9 Hands I’m a sock in the eye with gnarled fist. —Cheryl Marie Wade, “I Am Not One of The” (1988) HANDEDNESS Hands make us human, or so we are told. Our opposable thumbs, the pre- hensile utility, agile fingers, exquisite sensitivity, sleek hairlessness, and pro- tective nails distinguish our hands. We grasp tools, partners, enemies, and food with more accuracy and grace than our hoofed, pawed, or finned fellow creatures. Uprightness frees our hands, providing us with the evolutionary advantage denied to our knuckle-walking cousins. Poised for action at the ends of generous and flexible arms, our hands are implements of our wills. Civilization sprung from the marriage of our capable hands to our prodi- gious brains (Wilson 1998). The devoted teamwork between brain and hand outstrip the utility of our legs. In this technological age, hands ensure our survival the way that legs did for hunters, gatherers, and farmers. We do not need to flee on legs from predators and toward food; we need to manipulate keyboards, cell phones, pens, and paper to survive. Hands do things. Aristotle called hands “the instrument of instruments” (Zandy 2004, xi). As such, hands are witnesses to human endeavor and de- sire. We look to the physiology of hands for meaning. Anatomists, for exam- ple, named fingers for their utility. In medieval Latin, the index finger was “Demonstratorius,” the digit for demonstrating or pointing. The middle or third finger was “Impudicus” or “Obscenus,” the digit for assigning derision or blame. The fourth or ring finger was “Goldfinger” in Anglo-Saxon and “medicus” in Latin, possibly because doctors wore gold rings on their fourth 119 120 SCENES OF STARING fingers. Finally, in medieval Latin our little finger was the “Auricularis,” the digit for extracting ear wax (Napier 1980, 37–38). Hands appear to help us conceptualize our world. Available items are on hand, handy, or in hand. Remarks can be made offhand. Disordered things are out of hand. Powerful people have the upper hand. Unscrupulous people are underhanded. Used things are secondhand. A disingenuous complement is left-handed. Guilty people are caught red handed. Awkward people are all thumbs. Ineffectual people sit on their hands. Human labor itself is signified by the hand. Work- ers are “hands.” Fate is “the hand of God.” The universe is “God’s handiwork.” Hands do the work of humanity, but they also serve us as visual emblems. SPEAKING HANDS Hands doing their jobs commonly do not draw stares. The expressive work of hands, in contrast, demands scrupulous watching. We talk with our hands as much as with our mouths. Our faces may be the command centers of communication, but our hands speak a more common language. Hands are our harbingers, announcing us and our intentions to the eyes of oth- ers. Pointing is a visible grammar. Babies point before they speak. An open, extended hand is a congenial greeting, a clenched fist a hostile warning. Thumbs up or down signal assent or decline. A handshake seals agreements. A raised right hand swears oaths; over the heart, the same hand pledges al- legiance. Wringing our hands expresses worry or confusion. Ancient Greeks prayed by turning their palms upward toward heaven. Christians pray with their palms together. On the street, the upturned palm pleads for coins; the extended thumb requests a lift. We clap our hands together or soundlessly wag them above our heads to signal approval or appreciation. Sign language and classical rhetoric involve a complex syntax of meaning-laden gestures. An extended middle finger expresses scorn. The raised pinkie speaks femi- ninity just as the firm handshake confirms masculinity. Fathers give their daughter’s hands to husbands to gesture transfer of ownership. Differences in hand comportment are observable social distinctions, as well. Northern Europeans, for instance, historically have considered vulgar the vigorous and abundant gesticulating of Southern Europeans (Bremmer and Roodenburg 1992). The handshake expresses greeting between equals, whereas a bow or curtsy indicates deference to social superiors (Roodenburg 1992, 152–89). Hands attract intense looking when they act as instruments of linguistic intercourse. The art of oratory extends the word from mouth to hand and bonds hand to eye. Our hand’s extended range of motion and malleable form enables subtle gestures requiring close reading, making hands the center of HANDS 121 visual interest in gesturing. A tradition of codifying gestural systems str- etches from early classical rhetoricians, such as Aristotle and Quintilian, through the contemporary disciplines of kinesics, which studies commu- nicative body movements, and to linguistics, which regards gesture as a form of language. Quintilian elaborated the theatrical gestures that speakers could use to secure their arguments. He describes wonder, or admiratio , as a manual gesture. The intricate bodily expression of wonder for Romans was a movement in which “the right hand turns slightly upwards and the fingers are brought in to the palm, one after the other, beginning with the little finger; the hand is then reopened and turned round by a reversal of this motion” (Graf 1992, 41). The more fundamental, if more subtle, bodily ex- pression of wonder, however, is staring. The wide-eyed, fixed baroque stare that is the hallmark of admiration or astonishment is enhanced in the rhe- torical tradition with Quintilian’s hand gesture that intensifies and clarifies the meaning of a stare that registers wonder. A more extravagant, and thus more stareable, gestural system of commu- nication are the sign languages used by Deaf communities. 1 Sign languages are distinct from the manual gesturing systems such as classical oratory because they do all the work of communication rather than augmenting speech. Best understood as the indigenous languages of Deaf peoples, sign languages have a complex syntax and semantics that extends beyond the simple one-on-one correspondence of rhetorical gestures. This nonvocal, unwritten, kinesic language was developed by and for the Deaf, who count themselves as a linguistic minority, something like Francophone Canadi- ans. 2 Staring is fundamental to Deaf cultures. In 1912, a Deaf man named George Veditz described his community as “the people of the eye” (Padden and Humphries 2005, 2). One listens to speakers; one stares at signers. This kind of visual listening can exceed the range of hearing communication, as when a Deaf person “overhears” a conversation across a room or chats with signers far out of auditory range. Because both lip-reading and manual gestures are integral to Deaf communication, Deaf people are starers. One Deaf signer reports, for example, that hands hold more visual interests than faces for her. She always stares at people’s hands, whether they are signing or not. She adds that she stares a great deal in general, certainly too much she thinks, at least by hearing standards. “I stare,” she says, “to ‘hear’ and understand better” (anonymous, 2006 interview). The lively flying hands of signers are a staring occasion for anyone within visual range. Hearing people often stare at signing because sign language seems novel to the unaccustomed eye. So Deaf signers are often starees. One Deaf woman explains, for example, that in cosmopolitan areas she seldom draws stares from hearing people except from fascinated children, who often come forward encouraged by parents to show her that they have learned to 122 SCENES OF STARING fingerspell their names in school, something she finds alternately cute and wearisome. On the other hand, in small towns with less linguistic diversity, she often gets more visual attention than she prefers. One way she man- ages intrusive stares is to wave and say “hello” loudly, a move that confuses hearing starers by introducing spoken language into what they assume is the total silence of Deaf people, many of whom speak with Deaf accents. A bolder move she uses is walking over and asking a starer what they are star- ing at. For her, this strategy of outing a starer deflects back onto them the unwanted attention (anonymous, 2006 interview). Another Deaf signer re- ports: “I’m leafing through a magazine while standing in line at the grocery store and suddenly I realize all eyes are on me because someone is telling me, even hollering at me, to go to a different register” (anonymous, 2006 interview).