This thesis examines what “literary gestures” in modernism are and can be. It concentrates on texts written by four authors: Henri Michaux, Franz Kafka, Nathalie Sarraute and Lars Norén. The focus lies primarily on the ways in which literature tries to gesture, a complex and problematic practice. The analysis of how gestures are used in different ways in the works of these writers, also interrogates the possibility that the various use of gesture in their texts could point towards a more widespread tendency in literary modernism.

The inquiry is carried out against the backdrop of a historical shift in how gestures emerge and are represented in the arts at the turn of the last century. In literature, depicted gestures seem to lose their connection to convention, and become more alien to common definitions of gestures. Literary modernism can be described as a turn from meaning to form, sometimes as a consequence of a crisis of language. On a wider scale, this crisis relates to how language turns into the object as much as the medium of literature. These circumstances compel literature to reinvent itself and this thesis proposes that literary gestures is one way. 

There are no literal gestures – mute, bodily movements – in literature. Literary gesture is a contradiction in terms. This makes the endeavors of Michaux, Kafka, Sarraute and Norén interesting. In their texts, gestures are at work on three assumed levels: as a theme, as a form and as something suggesting a proximity to the body. They all wrote in different genres and worked in different media. In this account, the organization of this diverse material, written in three different languages, is essential to expose the breadth and the ambiguity of what literary gestures in modernism are and can be.  

The theoretical framework of the thesis consists of three parts: Giorgio Agamben’s definition of gesture, theories of performativity and Theodor W. Adorno’s critical theories on modern art. In the analytical chapters, these theories are put to work, in order to articulate the relation between gesture and language as a complex problem. The first chapter centers on Michaux’s Mouvements (1951), a book combining a long poem and ink-drawings. Michaux’s dream of a new language – before words and closer to the body – and his continuous conflict with words, expose a dilemma of literary gestures. The second chapter focuses on Kafka’s prose, in which this dilemma is already emphasized. Bodies and their movements amass in Kafka’s writings. But rather than promise a solution to the crisis of language, they cause the reading subject to confront its own shortcomings. The third chapter centers on Sarraute’s prose. It states, via the concept of infancy, that Sarraute’s gestures are related to speech. Sarraute’s literary gestures are both visible and audible, and they work as a means to break through the surface of common speech. The fourth chapter deals with plays and poems among the vast writings of Norén. The gestures of Norén’s work function as an impulse to force literature beyond words. The analysis shows that this impulse does not stem from the intentional writing subject, but rather comes from the texts’ way of relating to reality. In conclusion, the question of what literary gestures in modernism are and can be, is re-stated, discussed and answered.