The Law and the Senses series has now reached out to three of the five canonical senses with the publication of TOUCH, after SEE and TASTE. The series comes from the University of Westminster’s Law and Theory Lab.
Contributions in TOUCH consider many themes including brass rubbing, the layers of urban history and touch; a contract with nature unfolded via touch; desire, touch and a kind of vertical leap of consciousness that gazes on an object of knowledge in literary thought; brain stimulation within certain psychiatric regimes; and the illicit touch of books bound in human skin and narratives surrounding Auschwitz victims’ tattoos. Erin Manning’s consideration of synaesthesia and other ways of knowing develops the idea of ‘distantism’ at the heart of accounts of body-world separation.
In her introduction Caterina Nirta also reflects on why touch is the ‘essential’ sense according to Aristotle and others and the ‘tactful intrusions of the law and the untactful movement of touch’.
CONTENTS
- Introduction Caterina Nirta
- Touching and Not Touching: The Indirections of Desire Naomi Segal
- A Touching ‘Contract’ Jan Hogan
- Depression, Shock and Stimulation : Regimes of Touch in the Field of Psychiatry Moritz von Stetten
- Not at a Distance : On Touch, Synaesthesia and Other Ways of Knowing Erin Manning
- The Illicit Touch : Theorising Narratives of Abused Human Skin Nicole Nyffenegger
- Surface/Touch B.A. Zanditon
- Remains of a Fall Tolis Tatolas
- Index
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