Gestures of Concern

“Chris Ingraham is a lively and engaging writer. While crafting beautiful prose he exhibits remarkable patience with trivial—often ephemeral—objects. Thus, he gives us ample opportunity to appreciate their public relevance and the role they play in helping to constitute public life in the internet age. And all of this he draws under the aegis of ‘gestures of concern’—a gem of a concept that makes a significant contribution to rhetoric, political theory, and public sphere theory.” - Ted Striphas, author of The Late Age of Print: Everyday Book Culture from Consumerism to Control

“Laying out precisely why gestures of concern are significant and reminding us that there are never any empty gestures, Chris Ingraham offers a timely response to a certain reductive political discourse that sees meaning only in terms of representation. This book is a real pleasure to read.” - Jenny Rice, author of Distant Publics: Development Rhetoric and the Subject of Crisis

“This argument will be of interest to scholars of contemporary society, particularly its digital encounters, and the book’s focus on the nonsymbolic will have implications for the study of communication, media, and rhetoric.” - Matthew Halm, Critical Studies in Media Communication

“Ingraham’s wide-ranging engagement with rhetoric, artistic production, political engagement, and participatory culture makes his book of interest to those readers attracted to an interdisciplinary approach to cultural studies.” - Nicole Dib, Lateral

“[The] unfinished, uncertain, future-oriented dimension of the gesture is one of the key ideas in [Gestures of Concern], and it will help scholars in a number of fields push beyond critical practices that are too certain of themselves.” - Jim Brown, Rhetoric Society Quarterly

“Ingraham’s book is a timely investigation. In a period in which we are inundated by information and noise, he hopes to turn our attention to the quieter participatory acts ordinary people perform.... This work is an insightful look at the power of our concern.” - Ashleigh Angus, Continuum

"Ingraham’s work demands our attention as rhetorical and communication scholars and provides valuable resources for the examination of rhetorical sites outside the extraverted performances of the typical rhetor." - Thomas A. Discenna, International Journal of Communication

“Ingraham’s book brilliantly models a rhetorical approach to affect that weaves a nonhermeneutical method into critical cultural studies.” - Catherine Chaput, Rhetoric Review