Christian Ferencz-Flatz, “Gesture as Original Abstraction. A Reflection on Bodily Sedimentation,” Continental Philosophy Review 2025.
This paper explores the ways in which gesture participates in our most basic everyday experiences of ideation and abstraction. It begins by engaging with contemporary research in gesture studies, which fruitfully draws on phenomenological resources to illuminate both the descriptive and genetic dimensions of the relationship between gesture and ideation. These findings, I argue, can and should be re-appropriated within a phenomenological reflection that considers their broader philosophical meaning and implications. Building on this research, the paper concludes by examining the consequences such findings entail for a phenomenological account by focusing especially on three points: (A) the relationship between abstraction and sedimentation; (B) the question of concretion and fulfillment; and (C) the relationship between theory and praxis.