If one delves deep into the course of human history, it would be understandable that the forms of human communication have been developed and transformed over the ages. While verbal communication has come to become the widely accepted and used form of communication among people of the society, kinesics or body language holds a place of paramount importance when it comes to communicating as well. Often it has been seen that the nonverbal form of communication are used for subversive actions by people so as to register strong protest. Now, it needs to be noted that such body language work as symbolic representation of subversion in a number of situations, and thus strengthen the communication method by supplementing the spoken or written language. The subversion that is expressed via the human body has the potential of gaining mass acceptance as a symbolic gesture, thereby enhancing the impetus of the effect as a language. However, contextual knowledge is very important in ascribing meaning to the body signs used for propagating an idea or communicating an emotion. Moreover, these body signs have the scope of achieving universality of meaning and expression, and one does not require the supplementation of verbal communication once the gestures of the human body with the ascribed meaning are accepted as a symbol in the community.
Thus, one should reckon that subversion via the human body has the potential to not get thwarted by cultural and communal barriers. It is the appeal of the gesticulation of the human body that makes such communication widely accepted and popularized. It would not be an exaggeration to opine that gestures of the body are more powerful than verbal or written language. This is due to the fact that gestures provide visual stimuli that are easy to interpret. Also, the concise form of communication can hog the attention of people from across the communities. Anusha Kedhar’s article, “Hands Up Don’t Shoot”, is a vehement expression of the power of such subversive acts expression through the human body. The gesture of putting one’s hands up has become one of the most popular protestation gestures in the United States. This gesture was adapted first to protest the killing of Michael Brown by police in Ferguson, Missouri. It needs to be understood that the human body’s gesture communicates the true essence of the collective anger that has been simmering due to the injustice meted out to the victim. The gesture got popularized and spread across communities and cultures as it was seen to be embodied by black men and women in Ferguson, black Harvard law students, the Tibetan monks from the country of India, youngsters in Moscow, school children in Missouri as well as a church congregation in the city of New York were embodying this protesting gesture. (Kedhar 1) All of this can be interpreted as the bodily act of showing solidarity of the victim of the police shooting. On a larger scale, this symbolic gesture has come to become the universal sign of subversion against the state’s oppressive measures all around the globe. Thus, one can very well understand how a locally contextualized gesture went on to gain a larger meaning and became the embodiment of a universal idea.
Again, one can take into context the text, Between the World and Me, penned by Ta-Nehisi Coates that delves into the discrimination meted out to the black community in America and delves into the various modes of protestations by the black people using non-violent methods. Here, the author explicates his personal experience of being the victim of racism. He traces back to the past years American history to portray a societal picture of the inter-racial dynamics between the blacks and the whites of the country. The book documents the societal oppression meted out to the black community as the author portrays how the black people are clubbed or shot by the police. (Coates 4-10) The author discusses how enough oppression has been carried out, and there is an immediate need for change. Thus, one can understand how important it is to unite against the state oppression so as to establish an ambiance of equality and justice. In this context, the omnipotent place of subversive body gestures works to spread the word across the society. One can relate the explication of Coates with the protestation gesture discussed by Khedar in her article. The “hands up” gesture is simply the echo of the repressed voices of the people who have been oppressed and tortured over a span of time. The power of such gestures to portray the simmering anger of communities, thus, cannot be undermined or overlooked. In the age of globalization and omniscience of the media, such gesticulations spread across the world and become universal symbols.
The idea of subversion against the oppressive forces has also been voiced vehemently in the seminal work, The Wretched of the Earth, by Frantz Fanon. This book provides a scrutiny of the immense hardships faced by the native people of Africa and shows how they tried to register their protests against the oppressive colonial overlords through their bodies. (Fanon 25-40) Thus, one can again relate the idea of subversion as expressed by the famous author, Fanon, in the “hands up” symbol that has got popularized. It needs to be comprehended that racism and inter-communal tension has for long thwarted the holistic development of the world. The black community has always been subjugated in every possible way by the hegemonic influence of the dominant community. As such, the injustice is now being opposed in this innovate manner by the blacks. Discrimination and social injustice being an universal issue, the idea is further found to be appealing to people from other cultures who universalize the gesture to ascribe it a larger meaning. As such, it would be correct to say that the “hands up” gesture with all the interpolations like standing up, kneeling down and so on in various cultures has come to become an popular modern day icon of subversion. It exposes the nefarious nature of power hierarchy in society. It also critiques the injustices and the subordination of a community by the hegemonic forces. It gives the much need ‘voice’ to the oppressed and hogs the attention of the world’s population toward the societal issues that might other get ignored or remain unnoticed in the larger perspective.
Thus, the human body can be deemed to be the most powerful form of communication that has found new meaning in the subversive acts. The systematic violence carried out on the weak or dominated people of the world has come to be challenged in a nonviolent yet vehement manner. Gestures like the “hands up” one have power to unite people going beyond the barriers of intercultural communication of geographical differences. The sheer immediacy of such a reaction on the part of the protesters makes the gesture highly contextual in the modern world accentuating its relevance to be spread all over by the media. So, it would be right to say that the “hand up” gesture has marked the beginning of a new era of subversion against oppressions using the human body in the most powerful and expressive manner.
Works Cited
Coates, Ta-Nehisi. Between the World and Me. New York City: Spiegel & Grau, 2015.
Print.
Fanon, Franz. The Wretched of the Earth. New York City: Grove Press, 1961. Print.
Kedhar, Anusha. “Hands Up Don’t Shoot” The Feminist Wire. The Feminist Wire,
6 October 2014. Web. 31 March 2016.
