"On Touching"

Punctum. International Journal of Semiotics, 2017

During the last decades, touch has become the epicenter of serious critical attention and of various creative practices. Within this context, this paper revisits Peter Greenaway's film The Pillow Book that explores calligraphic practices on human skin and Wim Delvoye's artistic project Art Farm that consisted in the tattooing of pigs and their transforming into objects of art. Both of these works are articulated through writing taking place on the skin and consequently contact between humans or between humans and animals is established. Furthermore, a sense of uniqueness of the written body is developed, and the possibility of intimacy is renegotiated through writing on the palimpsest skin. The paper focuses on touch as a process of sharing (both in the sense of dividing and partaking of) and of the creation of intimacy. It aims to answer questions such as the following: what does it mean to touch someone through writing or through tattooing the skin? Under which conditions can one talk about intimacy? Who is receiving, hosting or excluding whom during, and through, the act of touching? What difference does it make to touch a human's or an animal's skin? When does touching come to an end and what are the consequences of un-touching? In a nutshell, this paper seeks to understand the multiple dynamics of touching as an act of separating, of coming together, and of creating a common space and an in-between.

Leib -Leiblichkeit - Embodiment Pädagogische Perspektiven auf eine Phänomenologie des Leibes, 2019

In this chapter, I posit the erotic and the body in close relation to the universality of touch, in an attempt to show their proximity in formative experience. To do this, I work through an essay by Ignacio Martín-Baró called “La Psicología de la Caricia” [the psychology of a caress] (1970). As Martín-Baró compellingly shows, there is a subtle dialectic through which touch and the human being shape each other. In discussing the phenomenality of this dialectic in touch, I draw both from the phenomenological tradition represented in the lineage of Husserl, Heidegger, and Marion, as well as from psychoanalytic theory. Methodologically, the study is organized in three moments of phenomenological reductions, operationalizing a “trinitarian lens” (Rocha 2015). The chapter then offers a discussion on the Freudian perspective on the drives, as lending an understanding of the phenomenality of touch by positing Eros as “the ultimate cause of all activity,” particularly including educational activity.

A. Purves (ed.) Touch and the Ancient Senses (London and New York), 2018

ung.si

This study analyses the concept and phenomenon of touch. It begins by demonstrating that touch is problematic for a "Science of Touch" and for human beings as well. In this context, the notion of embodiment is re-thought in order to open the discursive space for a study of touch that takes into consideration all the difficulties implied in it. The study identifies in the phenomenon of touch an element that makes the self-identity of a science of touch and of embodiment impossible. This element is the concept of self-difference.

Research in Phenomenology, 2021

This essay explores Aristotle's discovery of touch as the most universal and philosophical of the senses. It analyses his central insight in the De Anima that tactile flesh is a "medium not an organ," unpacking both its metaphysical and ethical implications. The essay concludes with a discussion of how contemporary phenomenology-from Husserl to Merleau-Ponty and Irigaray-re-describes Aristotle's seminal intuition regarding the model of "double reversible sensation."

Human beings regularly interact with complex surroundings where a well-intentioned touch is an essential component, albeit often neglected. Touch can be discriminative because it acquires information on shapes and textures, and thus helps in inferring and identifying materials and objects (McGlone et al., 2014). On the other hand, touch comprises an affective element in which the tactile experiences denote unpleasant or pleasant perception (McGlone et al., 2014). Furthermore, affiliation and social cognition are linked to touch on the basis that interpersonal touch promotes sexual, collaborative, and affiliative demeanour. In the same vein, tactile social interactions are advantageous to the physical and mental well-being of an individual. It is exactly this aspect of touch that has been used in somatics, the field that studies the body (soma in Greek) as perceived from within, as perceived through its own senses (Rosenberg, 2008). Somatics also referes to using this exact property of a body “observing” itself and simultaneously “acting upon” itself to gain a better, more voluntary control of motor-sensor bodily movement. Practices like yoga, the Alexander method and contact improvisation (CI) are being utilised, and these practises also pertain to the field of dance (Olsen, 2014). In the following text, we intend to discuss the positive potential and outcomes of affective touch. For this purpose some key elements and concepts are examined, and then specific contexts and settings where positive touch can and should be implemented are referenced.

This essay builds an argument that leads towards an understanding of the paradox of touch. When the immediacy of a tactile sensation and—its logical contrary—the mediated or metaphorical connotations of a ‘touching’ experience, are juxtaposed, we arrive at a paradox, which I expose in relation to the aesthetic encounter. I do this by examining my experiences of the works and process of Cuban performance artist Ana Mendieta, and Ståhl Stenslie’s employment of haptic technologies. Engaging with these very different artists enables me to open a multi-dimensional discussion about touch. To elaborate this discussion, I draw together several key ideas: the haptic sense in the aesthetic experience, haptics, empathy, aura and synaesthesia. Juxtaposing these ideas, and applying them to my chosen artists, demonstrates the value of considering the paradox of touch. It does so because my expansion of this theme reveals how touch signifies our mimetic capacity—as humans—to empathise, to be affected, to react and repeat. A key consequence of the paradox of touch is its facility to redistribute binary logic, whereby two opposing or contradictory notions can be realigned to co-exist and, potentially, cooperate. I argue that this ethical transition evolves from the haptic aesthetic experience. Thus my original intent to juxtapose Mendieta and Stenslie develops into a larger conversation about the role that touch has to play in this aesthetic experience. My application of the paradox of touch then begins to demonstrate how we co-exist in the world, with other people.

Aristotle’s treatment of tactility is at odds with the hierarchical order of psyche’s faculties. Touching is the commonest and lowest power; it is possessed by all sentient beings; thinking is, on the contrary, the highest faculty that distinguishes human beings. Yet, while Aristotle maintains against some of his predecessors that to think is not to sense, he nevertheless posits a causal link between practical intelligence and tactility and even describes noetic activity as a certain kind of touch. This essay elucidates Aristotle’s analysis of the sense of touch in De anima and argues that tactility provides a paradigm for sensitivity in general and in particular for the reflexivity of sensation whereby the senses disclose not only what they are sensing but also that they are sensing. This feature, it is argued, has epistemological and ontological consequences. The sense of touch testifies to the physical presence of material beings and provides an empirical verification of substance’s essential feature, namely, self-reference.