Touching matters: Embodiments of intimacy

Touch is, I propose, a foundational, “intercorporeal” form of intimacy. Such intercorporeal intimacy precedes developmentally and undergirds permanently the “intersubjective” intimacy that is possible between adult subjects. For, it is in the affective intimacy of touching and being touched that we first realize (i.e., make real, actualize) both a coexistence or participation with other bodies, and an organization and differentiation of ourselves as embodied beings. Section 1 lays out phenomena of interpersonal (and interanimal) relations that require thinking touch as much more than either the exploration of a physical surface by an embodied subject or a conventional form of communication: I note the powerful existential effects of being or not being touched. In Section 2, I recall philosopher Maurice MerleauPonty’s account of embodiment, focusing on features that provide resources for understanding touch. I argue that touching must be understood as potentially transformative of the toucher, that “being touched” can equally be transformative, and that touching and being touched are inherently intertwined. This intertwining and transformative power is what makes touch an intercorporeal form of intimacy and accounts for its ability to inaugurate and enliven, at the affective level, our sense of self as differentiated from and in relation to others. 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. We are, in some sense of the word, constantly touching and being touched. My feet on the floor, my hands on the keyboard, my back against the chair, the breeze on my cheek, this soft old cotton shirt against my skin. For the most part, these contacts are selfeffacing, effecting the background upon which my daily projects take place. I am caught up in the ideas I am trying to articulate, and in the wandering memories or worries that weave themselves in and out of my attempt to write this paper; I do not typically notice the hardness of the chair or the coldness of the breeze until I have sat here too long and the thoughts I’ve been struggling with no longer hold their own against the growing discomforts. Even when I am purposefully touching something, exploring its texture, the touching itself is effaced by the wondrous softness or sliminess of the thing touched. It is perhaps because it is both ubiquitous and often self-effacing that touch has not traditionally received the kind of philosophical attention that it surely deserves.1 For it is indeed deserving: imagine what it would be to live without a sense of touch. A lack of sight or hearing is hard enough for a sighted or hearing person to conceive; but often enough we do try to imagine it, and sometimes we can effect a temporary shutting down of all sight or hearing. A lack of touch, however, seems almost unimaginable. Could there still be a world for me? Could there still be a me? Is there perhaps something fundamental about touch, something transcendental, such that it is a condition of possibility of experience itself? In our understanding of interpersonal relations, too, touch typically is given no substantial role. In sex, perhaps, we think that touch is important. But otherwise, our emphasis tends to be on the ways in which two people can come to share a world of objects, values, and ideas, or, conversely, on the ways in which we can miss each other and fail to share our worlds. We remain concerned, in other words, with the meeting or non-meeting of minds. From this perspective, interpersonal touching, like a hand on a back, a hug or a kiss, can seem merely communicative conventions invented within the context of a project of “spiritual” closeness. And yet, if we take seriously philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s claims that we are embodied beings and that our experience of the world, * Tel.: þ1 416 979 5000x2700. E-mail address: [email protected]. 1 Starting in the 20th century, touch has become a more central topic of philosophical discussion. Sartre has a significant discussion of the caress (Sartre, 1953); touch figures prominently in Merleau-Ponty’s work (Merleau-Ponty, 1945/2012, and especially 1964/1968; Merleau-Ponty’s texts are cited with the French edition listed first and the English translation second.); and in Le Toucher, Jean-Luc Nancy, Derrida (1998) figures Nancy’s philosophical thought on the model of touch. Irigaray and Levinas also explore the relevance of touch, and in cognitive studies, an interest in Molyneux’s problem makes the relation between touch and other senses central. Nonetheless, there are interesting mentions and theories of touch throughout the history of philosophy and western thought. Mark Paterson weaves together many of these threads in his Senses of Touch (Paterson, 2007).