Chapter 5 Dual ontologies and new ecologies of knowledge: rethinking the politics and poetics of ‘touch’

Abstract

Thus far, we (consensual not colonial) have addressed a transcendent, metonymic sense of touch, curative of bodies and meanings, accepting Turner's hypothesis that ‘the contemporary problem of the body in society is a legacy of the Judaeo-Christian discourse of the body as flesh’ (Turner, 1997, p. 103). Then we outlined the detour of meaning, its extravagance. But there is a more immediate kind of touch. In terms of touch, we agree with Nancy and Hutchens – there is a peculiar reflexivity to touch:The sense of touch feels itself feeling itself. (Hutchens, 2005, p. 55, citing Nancy)It is by touching the other that the body is a body, absolutely separated and shared. (Nancy, 1993a, p. 205)

Citation

Stronach, I. and Smears, E. (2010), "Chapter 5 Dual ontologies and new ecologies of knowledge: rethinking the politics and poetics of ‘touch’", Hillyard, S. (Ed.) New Frontiers in Ethnography (Studies in Qualitative Methodology, Vol. 11), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 81-99. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1042-3192(2010)0000011008