tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post8672523214586963022..comments2024-03-10T20:46:19.274-04:00Comments on In the Middle: Touching OnCord J. Whitakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06224143153295429986noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-50332729049956860272007-03-12T21:27:00.000-04:002007-03-12T21:27:00.000-04:00Thanks Holly, JJC, Karl. Derrida is actually very ...Thanks Holly, JJC, Karl. Derrida is actually very critical of Deleuzian haptics in this book. One of the strategies of his critique of haptocentricity is to show how Deleuze, Merleau Ponty, Levinas, Nancy and everyone else actually falls back on metaphysics. The project of On Touching is to put the whole language of touch in the Franco-German phenomenological tradition out of service.Michael O'Rourkehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03110210128389911666noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-53845000143587624222007-03-12T09:23:00.000-04:002007-03-12T09:23:00.000-04:00I am convinced there needs to be a medieval flesh ...<I>I am convinced there needs to be a medieval flesh project, focused on the multiple possibilities of (the) flesh</I><BR/><BR/>My goodness, I'd be all over that, if invited! <BR/><BR/>Haven't read (yet) the Derrida, MO'R, but sounds marvelous. Another approach, one that might join together the sensual and violent approaches, might be done through the few stories I know of devotees taking bites out of the preserved corpses of their favorite saints. From Herman Pleij's <I>Dreaming of Cockaigne</I>:<BR/><BR/>"Joos can Ghistele...on his way from Ghent to the Holy Land in 1481, was dismayed to find that a bit of flesh was missing from the arm of the centuries-old corpse [of Jan van Montfoort]. Upon inquiry it appeared that a descendent had taken a bite out of it, after being denied a relic of his hallowed forefather" (123)Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-56088222868567839672007-03-12T08:14:00.000-04:002007-03-12T08:14:00.000-04:00I don't know the answer to your Derrida question, ...I don't know the answer to your Derrida question, Michael, but I suspect it is no.<BR/><BR/>Your post and Holly's comment remind me of a book I read quite a while back on “haptic visuality”: Laura U. Marks, <EM>The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses</EM>. The book's project is to explore how toucj might work in a visual register to convey what has otherwise been lost to history.Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-53055046641124106292007-03-11T11:44:00.000-04:002007-03-11T11:44:00.000-04:00Apologies in advance for the sketchiness of what I...Apologies in advance for the sketchiness of what I’m about to say (spring break’s really busy for me):<BR/><BR/>Cary Howie’s new book will focus on this potential of touching, mainly in continental writings (*Claustrophilia: The Erotics of Enclosure in Medieval Literature,* Palgrave, forthcoming in May). Based on conversations with Cary and others, I am convinced there needs to be a medieval flesh project, focused on the multiple possibilities of (the) flesh (Karl’s work, posted on this blog, suggests an alternative to the sensual dimensions). I would think that such a project should not just look for the traditiional emphasis on rupture, shock, or displacement in touching (as CD’s passage, above, admirably exemplifies), but also, as M. O’Rourke’s posts have pointed to (and the Nancy/Derrida connection prommotes), the possibilities for conjunction, admixture, and incorporation that touching allows. This is scary stuff, to be sure, but in thinking about the “sullying” potential of (the) flesh, I think we might brush up against a new way of thinking about (the) flesh outside its partitive history.<BR/><BR/>Gotta go—I’ll be back to reading next week,<BR/><BR/>HAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com