Phenomenology of Touch

A tout instant, quoi que nous fassions, nous sommes environnés par des corps qui réduisent l’espace et opposent de la résistance. Que sont ces corps qui saturent notre quotidien et avec lesquels il nous faut constamment négocier l’espace ? Plus radicalement, pourquoi y a-t-il des corps ? Je soutiens dans cet ouvrage que la psychologie et la physique ne disposent plus des moyens de répondre à cette question. La désubstantialisation du réel amorcée par la révolution quantique sape les fondements de l’explication objectiviste de la perception privilégiée par la première, et elle évide de sa portée ontologique le discours de la seconde.
Expliquer pourquoi la réalité se présente sous la forme d’un agencement de corps exige en premier lieu de comprendre le rôle que remplit l’anticipation du possible dans la perception. Dans le toucher comme dans la vision, poser l’existence d’un corps implique d’anticiper les contraintes que ce corps exerce sur notre champ de possibilités pratiques, accréditer de manière présomptive la disponibilité ou l’indisponibilité de certaines possibilités d’action. C’est donc uniquement parce que notre subjectivité donne sens à ce qui est en le référant à ce qui peut être que la réalité macroscopique à laquelle nous introduit la perception consiste en un monde solide.
Pour développer cette idée, l’ouvrage dresse une critique de la conception actualiste du phénomène de corps, qui subordonne celui-ci à l’expérience en acte d’une résistance, et il déconstruit l’approche physicaliste et objectiviste, qui prétend dériver les propriétés des corps que nous percevons des propriétés de structures physiques qui leur seraient antécédentes ontologiquement. Si la sémantique des corps présuppose l’épaisseur du temps humain et une perspective foncièrement pragmatique sur l’environnement, il n’est plus question d’assimiler sans autre forme de procès le corps à une « structure physique », quelle qu’en soit la teneur. Les corps sont un produit de l’activité constructrice de notre subjectivité, et seule une incursion profonde dans les mécanismes et principes qui régissent cette activité pourra permettre d’accéder à leur vérité.

This essay studies figurations of touch in British film-maker and activist Stuart Marshall’s work as a response to the suppression of life in common during the HIV / AIDS crisis. Unearthing Marshall’s less considered films on homosexuality, many of which
were produced for Channel 4 Television, the essay examines Marshall’s visual evocation of proximity and touch as a means of calling upon a political commonality.

Die Corona-Pandemie stürzt die Gesellschaften rund um den Globus in eine Krise. Das vorliegende Buch nutzt die Krise zur Erkenntnis und stellt eine einfache Frage: Was können wir aus der Coronakrise über moderne Gesellschaften lernen? Die Gesellschaft erscheint in einem neuen, durch die Coronakrise erhellten Licht. Wir erfahren nicht nur etwas über das Verhältnis von Staat, Individuum und Gesellschaft, sondern auch etwas darüber, in welchem Verhältnis Staat, Politik, Recht und Wirtschaft bzw. Wissenschaft zueinanderstehen.
Lindemann geht dabei immer wieder auf unser unmittelbares Erleben zurück. Sie fragt danach, wie die Strukturen der modernen Gesellschaft unser unmittelbares Zusammenleben bestimmen – wie wir einander ansehen, miteinander und gegeneinander handeln und einander berühren. Das Ergebnis ihrer Analyse ist zwiespältig: Die grundlegenden Strukturen unserer Gesellschaft werden sich nicht verändern, obwohl die Ordnung unserer alltäglichen Berührung sich verändern wird.
Zugleich zeigt sich in Zeiten von Corona, wie die moderne Gesellschaft immer wieder emanzipatorische Hoffnungen nährt, dass z.B. auch tiefverwurzelte rassistische Strukturen verändert werden können. Die Krise scheint das Ethos der Menschenrechte nicht zu beschädigen. Eher rücken soziale Ungleichheit und strukturelle Gewalt ins Licht der öffentlichen Aufmerksamkeit. Davon zeugt nicht zuletzt die Black Lives Matter Bewegung.

This article explores how the felt sense of touch, as engaged through the enabling constraints of the Argentine tango duet, can facilitate an experience of kinaesthetic listening in the spaces emerging between the dancer's inside and outside worlds. The author's habitual perception of giving and receiving touch as a tango dancer is destabilized by framing a series of somatic experiences in settings where customary tango conditions and assumptions do not apply. This involves experimenting with methods and tools of inquiry borrowed from contact and contemporary dance improvisation. The article argues that, when practiced as a form of kinaesthetic listening, tango is conducive to a process of sensing and feeling together. In this process, it becomes possible to be touched both physically and affectively by the movement impulses negotiated between the partners. This possibility unsettles the reductive idea of one's body as a separate entity preceding the encounter.

In this article, I propose that there are fundamental limitations to current scientific mainstream methods of writing about therapeutic processes that in fact hinder our ability to both write about our therapeutic process and to learn from other clinicians’ and researchers’ writings.
In my view, these limitations may partially be compensated for by allowing creative writing, poetry and other forms of art to be the major part of a case study, where the objective measures must be integrated into the subjective frame of writing. Creative writing conveys its truth by acknowledging the intense subjective complexity originating from sensations and emotions accompanying the actual objective memory. Therefore, describing only the client and therapist’s narrative itself or material that is only observable by external senses, heavily compromises the quality of the therapeutic process.

Partnerwork is an essential part of most dance styles yet while the majority of dancers agree on its general importance and benefits, there is no clear consensus on the use and value of some of its key elements.

The aim of this study was to analyze the role and importance of touch, visual contact, and weight bearing/giving, within dance partnerships and propose ideas and actions for the development of these elements in dance. The styles discussed consisted of classical ballet, ballroom dancing, Argentine Tango, contemporary, and contact improvisation.

The data collection was conducted by means of an extensive literature review, class observations, questionnaire, and qualitative interviews with dancers and teachers. Thematic analysis was used to categorize and organize the answers to the questionnaire and interviews linking them to the observations made in the classroom.

The results revealed many perceptions and methods in partnering suggesting that: dancers generally regard touch and weight bearing/giving as important factors in partnering and use them in various ways within their respective domains; the value of visual contact use differs greatly between dance styles. Either physical or psychological benefits of the discussed elements are emphasized depending on the style; and either separate exercises or specific focus during choreography are used as tools to improve the quality of these elements in partnerwork.

Much of the information gathered goes beyond what the literature presents on the topic and points to the fact that a lot of practical knowledge exists in the dance world regarding partnering but is not organized or shared in a consistent and systematic manner. The dissemination of that knowledge in combination with further research into the physiological and psychological aspects of partnering skills should enhance the overall understanding of the topic across dance disciplines and enrich dance literature and training methods.

The premise of this chapter is the correspondence between ontology and linguistics, such as was argued by Trendelenburg and Benveniste. Its basic thesis is that Aristotle’s ontology is a haptic ontology which was significantly upgraded by the phenomenological work of Franz Brentano. The first part of the chapter is dedicated to Aristotle’s account of the sense of touch in De Anima, where it seems that touch has a certain privilege among all senses insofar as all senses operate by way of touching (affecting, moving). The second part focuses on the account of movement and change in Physics, and especially to Aristotle’s efforts to explain them without having to introduce void. In the third part, the chapter enters the domain of Aristotle’s ontology proper and discusses its abhorrence of the void as the claim that all being is continuous. The fourth and final part of the chapter discusses the work of Franz Brentano and focuses on his introduction of the concept of plerosis, through which he attempted to explain non-continuous boundaries of a continuum (points, lines, or planes) as belonging to the continuum itself and even exhibiting the properties of the continuum. The chapter concludes by arguing that the Brentanian version of the ontology of touch is useful for the project of haptolinguistics.

In this paper I come to the more general issues of a sensuous archaeology through the sense of touch - the haptic sense. Using data from the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük, Turkey,  I stress that the sense of touch involves far more than just fingers and skin, far more than the obvious haptic sensations, such as surface, form, pressure, pain, temperature, and texture. It involves the full-body sensations of balance and the sense of movement in any part of the body. I anchor my investigation of touch and movement in the past in the archaeological data using existing methodologies such as contact trace analysis and human kinetics. I argue that the concept of taskscapes enables us to think about the temporality, events, and rhythms of the body's haptic responses, which themselves are essential elements of understanding social practice. I suggest that another anchor to investigating sensory responses in the past is the process by which practices that started as new and unfamiliar experiences became familiar and ‘enactive knowledge’. I end with an exploration of the potential of digital technologies to transform the sharing of archaeological interpretations of past multisensorial experience that include the sense of touch.
https://www.ruthtringham.com/project/sense-of-touch-2013/

This thesis investigates the effect of touch on learning in the museum. A gap in understanding about the learning outcomes of tactile interaction provided the stimulus. The study uses observational and interview data gathered in both a highly tactile museum environment and one which was predominantly visual.

The results indicate that touch has important implications for learning about the form and function of objects. Touch is also seen to encourage a sense of informal interaction, which breaks with traditional museum rules, in effect making visitors ‘at home’ in the museum. This implies that increasing opportunities for touch may be a way for museums to promote inclusion and benefit learning.

... Number 3. The Forgetting of touch. Author: Paterson, Mark 1. Source ... Related content: In this: publication; By this: publisher; In this Subject: Literature , Philosophy , Social Science (General); By this author: Paterson, Mark. You are signed ...

This paper provides a synthesis of the literature concerning the duality of touch and talk between therapist and client in the psychotherapy setting. It discusses the ethical considerations, prohibitions, and attitudes about touch within the psychotherapeutic field. In addition, it looks at the client's perception of touch, types of touch, paradigms, rationales for the use of touch, religious and cultural considerations, the effects of touch, and research implications. Despite the reservations and lack of training around the use of touch in psychotherapy, there is a variety of literature to support its uses, benefits, effectiveness, and rationales, insomuch as there is a variety of literature about prohibitions, contraindications, and cautions of its use. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

Abstract
This study has its starting point in physical touch, and I interviewed three health workers; an osteopath, a nurse, and a midwife, about their sense of touch. The data collection method used is the qualitative research interview, with its main emphasis on Eugene Gendlin‟s Focusing (1981), to capture the informant‟s embodied sense of touch.
The Constant Comparative Method from Grounded Theory by Strauss and Corbin (1990) is employed to analyse the data, supplied by the descriptive phenomenological method as developed by Giorgi (2009), and inspired by Gendlin‟s Focusing (1968; 1970; 1981).
Two main themes and a core theme emerged from the data: 1) “Touch is everything” – The toucher and the touched, 2) “Touch is an art” – The space between and, 3) “It takes courage to be close” – Touch as a meeting between selves.
Philosophical theory and humanistic existential counselling psychology theories are at the base of the discussion. This includes Merleau-Ponty (1945), Gendlin (1962; 1996), Buber (1970/1996), Rogers (1961/2004) and Josselson (1996). Theories on body, space, and touch, also in counselling, are represented by Gendlin (1993; 1992), Montagu (1986), Hall (1966/1990), Hunter and Struve (1998), Tune (2001) among others.
The study shows that positive touch is important to the person, how touch is more than physical, that the body is more than a physiological machine, and how touch both happens within different types of space and creates a meeting between the selves that reside inside the bodies. It also shows how through providing certain empathic conditions; warmth, acceptance, listening and caring, a health worker or counsellor can ensure a good meeting that can potentially lead to a dialogical I-You meeting. This meeting, based on the empathic conditions provided by a counsellor who is also in tune with him or herself, may also lead to change in the both the counsellor‟s and the client‟s selves.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Eye and Mind [L’Œil et l’esprit, Paris: Gallimard, 1961] trans. by Carleton Dallery in The Primacy of Perception, ed. by James Edie (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 159-190. Revised translation by Michael Smith in The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader (1993), 121-149.

The article explores the significance of touch in human life and how its deprivation can affect physical, psychological, and spiritual maturation. The reflection is contextualised in the prohibition of touch in the Covid-19 times. The article offers some insights as to how to practice touch even as we maintain physical distancing in the pandemic times.

Dokunma eyleminin varlığı sorgulanmaksızın, algıda dokunsal unsurların bilgi üretimine dâhil olduğu bir algı türü olarak haptik algı terimi, dokunsal ve görsel algıya eşit bir mesafede konumlanmaktadır. Haptik kavramı ile sanat nesnesinin bir arada ele alınabilirliğini malzeme algısı ve dokunsal algı/deneyim odağında fenomenolojik bir yaklaşım ile araştırma fikri, bu çalışmanın temelini oluşturmaktadır. Araştırma ve çalışmanın motivasyonu, dokunma duyusuna fenomenoloji ve moleküler biyofizik odaklı bir yaklaşım ile "haptik" teriminin çerçevesinin yeniden tanımlanması ile sanat nesnesi üzerine yeni bir okuma, eleştiri, yorumlama, deneyimleme yöntemini geliştireceğinin ve bu yaklaşımın sanat teorisi ve felsefesi bağlamında potansiyel barındırdığının düşünülmesidir. Bu bağlamda Merleau-Ponty'nin algı fenomenolojisi temelinden çıkışla sanat eserleriyle kurulan ilişki, etkileşim ve ilişkisellik üzerinden şekillenen bir sanat eseri eleştirisi/incelemesi yaklaşımının imkânını sorgulamak bu çalışmanın hedefi olarak belirlenmiştir. Göz hegemonyasının bir eleştirisi olarak anti-oküler yaklaşımın altında, duyulararası işbirliği ve eşitliği zemininde, görme ve dokunmanın birbirine içkin olarak ele alınması ve bu yaklaşımın literatür için henüz yeni sayılabilecek bir terim olan "haptik" çerçevesinde geliştirilmesinin 20. yüzyıla değin göz hegemonyasının neden olduğu boşluğu doldurması amaçlanmıştır. Sanat felsefesi çerçevesinde bir estetik teorisi geliştirmek amacıyla tanımlanan haptik sanat nesnesi eleştirisi ile farklı dönemlerden sanat eserleri ele alınmıştır. Bu bağlamda Jan van Eyck'in "Arnolfini'nin Portresi" ve Hans Holbein'in "Elçiler" tablosu, Edith Clifford Williams'ın "Marius de Zayas'ta Dokunma için Alçı", Meret Oppenheim'ın "Kürk Kaplı Çay Fincanı" ve Louise Bourgeois'nın "Çift" serisi haptik eleştiri perspektifinden yola çıkılarak ayrıntılı bir şekilde çözümlenmiştir. Çağdaş sanat ortamında haptik stratejiler etkin bir rol oynamaktadır. Plastik sanatlar, sinema, yeni medya ve interaktif sanat, endüstriyel tasarım, robotik ve artırılmış gerçeklik bu konuda geniş bir olanaklar ve olgular yelpazesi sunmaktadır. /////// Without questioning the existence of the tactile action, the haptic perception term as a type of perception in which tactile elements are included in information production, is located at an equal distance from tactile and visual perception. The idea of researching the coexistence of the concept of haptics and the art object with a phenomenological approach in the focus of material perception and tactile perception/experience forms the basis of this study. The motivation of this research and study includes phenomenology and Molecular Biophysics-oriented approach on the sense of touch, with the framework of a redefinition of the term haptic of the art object would improve a new reading, criticism, interpretation, and experimentation, and that hosts potential method in the context of contemporary art theory and philosophy. In this context, the aim of this study was to question the possibility of a critique/review approach of a work of art shaped by the relationship, interaction and relatedness established by Merleau-Ponty with the works of art based on the phenomenology of perception. Under the anti-ocular approach as a critique of as eye hegemony, on the basis of inter-sensory cooperation and equality between vision and touch should be treated as immanent and this approach should be developed within the framework of "haptic", a new term for the literature. 20th century it was intended to fill the void caused by eye hegemony until the century. In order to develop an aesthetic theory within the framework of the philosophy of art, art works from different periods are discussed with the criticism of haptic art object. In this context, "The Arnolfini Portrait" by Jan van Eyck, "Ambassadors" by Hans Holbein, "Plâtre à Toucher chez Marius de Zayas" by Edith Clifford Williams, "Fur-Lined Teacup" by Meret Oppenheim, and "Couple" series by Louise Bourgeois are analyzed in detail from the perspective of haptic criticism. Haptic strategies play an active role in the contemporary art environment. Plastic arts, cinema, New Media and interactive art, industrial design, robotics and augmented reality offer a wide range of possibilities and phenomena in this regard.

As a performer of firstly acoustic and latterly electronic and electro-instrumental music, I constantly seek to improve my mode of interaction with the digital realm: that is, to achieve a high level of sensitivity and expression. This thesis illustrates reasons why making use of haptic interfaces—which offer physical feedback and resistance to the performer—may be viewed as an important approach in addressing the shortcomings of some the standard systems used to mediate the performer’s engagement with various sorts of digital musical information. By examining the links between sound and touch, and the performer-instrument relationship, various new compositional and performance strategies start to emerge. I explore these through a portfolio of original musical works, which span the continuum of composition and improvisation, largely based around performance paradigms for piano and live electronics. I implement new haptic technologies, using vibrotactile feedback and resistant interfaces, as well as exploring more metaphorical connections between sound and touch. I demonstrate the impact that the research brings to the creative musical outcomes, along with the implications that these techniques have on the wider field of live electronic musical performance.

In the summer of 2013 at the Tibetan Center in Poolesville, Maryland the great Lama YangThang Rinpoche gave instruction on the practice of the great compassion, or as he described the practice, as being the practice of Absolute Compassion. The instruction was to extend the light of awareness into the world and into the cosmos. Extending the light of awareness into the present moment of a person, extending the light of awareness into the past time of the person and extending the light of awareness into the future time of the person. This truly is the great practice of the great compassion and everyone can practice this extension of the light of awareness. This very proactive praxis brings forth the light within us and fills us with the light of the field of awareness. It is great to practice this vast practice. Of course it takes a boldness of intention and passion of heart. Extending the light of our innermost awareness into the present of those we love, and into the past of those we love, and then extending the light into their future of those we love is self-liberating. The light of awareness illuminates experience, metabolizes experience, opens us into un-bound awareness, undoes fixated-ness, and brings forth luminous intensity. The light of awareness is pure potentiality. The same practice can be used with those whom we hate or dislike or whom disgust us. This practice of extending the light of awareness deepens our own experience of becoming aware of awareness. As we practice extending the light of awareness, awareness itself completely opens up for us and deepens our experience in depth and breath. In time we begin to experience the true secret of this praxis. Timeless awareness begins to be experienced by us and sustained by us. Timeless awareness is the

This research investigates ‘body-sites’ as a situational context for designing and encountering wearable artefacts in relation to the phenomenological body.

As a body-site, skin is a probable location for experiences and practices of dress, including adornment with wearable artefacts such as clothing, jewellery, and cosmetics. This research builds a deeper understanding of the potential for wearable artefacts to engage with corporeal and conceptual qualities of skin as a body-site, thereby opening up avenues to create alternative modes of dress.

The body-site is studied through projects that investigate the transformative qualities of skin as it shifts between lived (Leib), object (Körper), and speculative states of being. This gives rise to the conceptual framework of 'a skin that wears'. Produced out of the relationships between skin and dress, 'a skin that wears' is revealed through the projects to be a complex network of intermingling functions: skin is a sensitive and perceptive integument, a physical organ that envelops the human form, and a structure invested with personal and social meaning that can be enhanced through relationships with dress.

Over the course of the research, embodied processes including writing, drawing, and making develop as ways to identify and describe qualities of the body-site and a skin that wears. Through embodied processes, projects reveal that temporal forms of dress can emphasise small details of the body-site by drawing attention to subtle and ephemeral states of skin. It is shown that wearable artefacts can become integrated into body image, act as a medium for imagining alternative states of being, and can visually symbolise social ideas and values. This suggests that dressing skin holds the potential to transform embodied and culturally constituted experiences and understandings of the body. Furthermore, design processes refined through the projects are shown to amplify subjective awareness of the body-site. This reveals opportunities for developing wearable artefacts that could be experienced, attached, and imbued with meaning by interacting with particular qualities of skin.

This PhD forms a precedent ‘skin-based’ model for design practice. It situates the body-site as the locus of an investigation conceptualised through the layered anatomical structure of human skin. In the research this is illustrated through projects that integrate a research topology, which draws together ideas and processes from across different disciplines (such as literature and art), as well as an overlaid research topography that generates knowledge through iterative making and cumulative action.  ‘Skin-based’ inquiry becomes a way to analyse and speculate on alternative ways that skin and wearable artefacts can interact and be given meaning.

Introduction
Part One: Seeing.
(Bruegel Allegory 1)

1. The Metaphysical Chiasm
2. The Existential Chiasm
3. The Aesthetically Chiasm

Part Two: Hearing.
(Bruegel Allegory 2)
4. Figures of Silence: Prelude
5. Language beyond Difference and Otherness: Interlude
6. The Interrupted Self: Postlude

Part Three: Touching.
(Bruegel Allegory 3)
7. Touch Me, Touch Me Not
8. The Sabbath of Experience.

Notes,
Bibliography,
Index

Virtual Touch
The central focus of this thesis is the use and experience of touch in artistic, multimodal and computer-based environments. It presents how it feels to touch and be touched in such environments. Further it gives an overview of the role of vibrotactile stimulation and corporeal interaction in interactive art, showing how touch can be used to construct meaningful experiences.
Touch is approached through practice based research in the arts. Specifically it looks at how bodysuits can function as a two-way tactile display, conveying vibrotactile feedback to the body and interfacing the human to the computer through touch. Haptic stimuli in general and vibrotactile stimuli in particular, can have the effect of making the virtual appear more real. A central contribution of the thesis is the explanation of how touch can be content in itself and form so called haptic storytelling.
Theoretically touch is investigated through a phenomenological approach on how the world of our experience is constituted for us. A phenomenology of touch allow us to understand the interplay between subjective, felt embodiment and the psychophysically contextualized work of art
New in this thesis and approach are the combinations of the various theories on and about touch, but in particular the application of this to works of art where touch appears as a genuine artistic medium. This contributes to the definition of new practices of inquiry and knowledge making.

Ståle Stenslie (1965) is a media artist, researcher and curator in the field of experimental art and interface technologies. He has exhibited and lectured at major international events like ISEA, DEAF, Ars Electronica and SIGGRAPH. He represented Norway at the 5th Istanbul biennial and won the Grand Prize of the Norwegian Council for Cultural Affairs.  Between 2001 and 2005 he was a professor in New Media at the Academy of Media Arts, Cologne, Germany. From 2005 till 2007 he was the founding dean of the Faculty of Visual Arts, Oslo National Academy of the Arts.



ISBN 82-547-0232-2
ISSN 1502-217x

Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO) PhD thesis 44 (www.aho.no)

***Oxford University Press has repeatedly increased the price of this book, and it is now far too expensive. If you would like a copy, please email me (matthew.ratcliffe@york.ac.uk) and I'll send you a PDF of the final page proofs instead. These are almost identical to the published version. So they can be used for citing page numbers and for quotations. I can send the final published versions of all my other books, but I haven't managed to get hold of this one.***



Feelings of Being is a philosophical study of the nature, role and variety of existential feelings in psychiatric illness and in everyday life. There has been a great deal of recent interdisciplinary discussion of emotional feelings. However, many of the feelings that people express do not appear on standard inventories of emotions. For example, people sometimes talk of feelings of unreality, heightened existence, surreality, familiarity, unfamiliarity, estrangement, strangeness, isolation, emptiness, belonging, being at home in the world, being at one with things, significance, insignificance, and the list goes on. Ratcliffe proposes that such feelings form a distinctive group in virtue of three characteristics: they are bodily feelings, they constitute ways of relating to the world as a whole, and they are responsible for our sense of reality. He refers to them as ‘existential’ because they comprise a changeable sense of being part of a world. Existential feelings have not been systematically explored until now, despite the important role that they play in our lives and the devastating effects that disturbances of existential feeling can have in psychiatric illness. Hence Feelings of Being, in offering a detailed phenomenological analysis of existential feelings, is the first book of its kind. The book explains how something can be a bodily feeling and, at the same time, a sense of reality and belonging. It then explores the role of anomalous feeling in psychiatric illness, showing how a phenomenological account of existential feeling can help us to understand experiential changes that occur in a range of conditions, including depression, circumscribed delusions, depersonalisation and schizophrenia. It also addresses the contribution made by existential feelings to religious experience and to philosophical thought.

By closely examining Derrida’s reading of Husserl’s phenomenology of touch in "Ideas II", this essay will discredit the view about deconstruction’s supposed critique of phenomenology, and will argue, following Derrida, that the relation between the two philosophers is rather more intricate. The first section will focus on the phenomenological experience of the lived body [Leib] and its reliance on an axiomatic network of concepts (immediacy, self-evidence, etc.). The primordiality and irreducubility of these phenomenological values is attested by a series of other Husserlian motifs such as the epochē, the reduction and the delimitation of a sphere of transcendental ownness. The second section will explore the instrumentality of touch, and more specifically, of the immediate and auto-affective act of manual touching, in the constitution of the lived body. Derrida’s response to "Ideas II" in "On Touching–Jean-Luc Nancy" revolves around Husserl’s rigorous distinction of touch from sight. While glossing "On Touching" in the final section, I will identify a certain “inter” qua originary spacing toward which Husserl’s treatment of touch obliquely gestures, and which Derrida conceptualizes in terms of an essential possibility of visible exteriority. I will explain how this aporetic “inter” undercuts the alleged immediacy and pre-eminence of touch over against sight, and also why it constitutes the condition of both possibility and impossibility for the lived body.

In our unprecedented times, the body as a phenomenon has issued its own cri de cœur for the fragility and vulnerability of life. No longer is the body a topos for thought within the confines of the academy only; not least, our pandemic age has created a fissure, impressing itself with a force of an opening in a continuous line from nature to politics, the religious, and onto our very own bodies. Therefore, what is calling is a body not only exceeding thought or escaping its confines, but also a body which presents an impossibility or even a monstrous gravity for thought: an unthinkable body that might open alternative ways to articulate its relation to religion, politics, and understanding. How are we to make sense of our bodies in this uncertainty? How are we to ‘think’ about the body when the body seems itself to be ‘unthinkable’?

Prof. Dr. Rebekka Klein and Dr. Calvin Ullrich will pursue a new research project and conference series on this topic in the years 2022 and 2023. Drawing together experts in the fields of philosophy, theology, and psychoanalytic theory, the research project will debate contemporary notions of the body with a focus on their material, affective, and alien nature.

Part I of this project will include contributions from the following:

Richard Kearney
Lisa Blackman
Donovan Schaefer
Rachel Aumiller
Philipp Stoellger
Gregor Etzelmüller
Selin Gerlek

It is not easy to understand the nature of the guru and understanding the nature of the guru can be bewildering. There is often bewilderment about the guru. One source of the bewilderment is that people think that the guru is an individual person and for most people the understanding that the guru is not a person has been foreclosed. The guru is not a person. And when people see and believe the guru is a person, such a belief will create illusions about the person whom they think is the guru, and their own relationship with the person whom they see as the guru will fall into various forms of the psychology of transference. Moreover, the true and pervasive nature of the guru will be concealed and the power of the guru limited and anthropomorphized, and politicized. To use Heideggerian language the ontic dimension will become the focus and the ontological dimension becomes foreclosed. In fact, the guru is not an entity, the guru is not a thing, and the guru is not even a being. The guru is the field of Being. The guru is the field of Being's manifestation of understanding, manifestation of protection and manifestation of self-revelation. The guru is the radiance of primordial awareness. The contemporary master of Kashmir Shavism, Swami Muktananda would teach, using the language of theology, " the guru is the grace bestowing power of God. " He would also say " The guru is your own innermost awareness and you must get beyond your mind to experience the guru as your own awareness. " Vehicle-ness It is also equally true that a person can be vehicle of the guru. Even you and I can be a vehicle for the guru. The light of the guru can manifest and shine forth through you and me, and through everyone. The power of the guru does not manifest only through institutional religious teachers as some would like you to think, but most often this manifestation is through

Man, even though he may sometimes dream of being a pure spirit free from all material constraints, actually exists as a body in a world which is itself essentially constructed as a spatialized system of bodies; and in this constructed world features such as resistance, impenetrability, inertia, weight and forces are not accidents or exceptions but the rule.
The reflexions presented in this work aim at elucidating on a phenomenological level the relation that man entertains with the tangible aspects of his environment, and the function that this relation plays in the construction of the different sectors of his existence. The first of the sectors is perception: the opening on an ambient world that is pregnant with organisation and meaning. On the one hand, we shall take into account and conceptualize the way in which the tangibility of the world (the testing experience that the individual can have of resistance of his environment in the frame of a direct bodily relation with that environment, but more generally the understanding that the individual possesses of the very possibility of such a relation) participates in setting up the rationality by which man renders his world intelligible. On the other hand, we shall identify the structures of “subjectivity” (to speak the language of psychology, the structures of cognition) which make possible the specific way in which man constructs his experience and understanding of tangible resistance – whether this resistance is perceived in the context of an actual bodily engagement, or whether it is envisaged “indirectly” in the guise of a “simple” possibility.
We shall show here, on the basis of phenomenological analyses as well as elements coming from empirical psychology (experimental psychology as well as neuropsychology), that the relation that man has with the resistance of his ambient world depends on an opening towards the possible; and that the organisation of the ambient world in the form of a space which can contain material structures, or structures capable of opposing a resistance to the body, depends on a rationality which consists of making phenomena intelligible by interpreting them with reference to those capacities for action and for passion which the body confers on us, to the power that the body provides us with and the constraints to which it submits us.
Thus, even though the realm of material things – tangible objects, bodies – functions as an archetype of “presence” and of “being” (indeed, what is more “real” than a body?), in the last resort it gains its phenomenal character from the fact that it crystallizes for the person who perceives it a stream of virtual possibilities; hence, the here-and-now presence of the “tangible world” is in an essential way indebted to the realm of that which is not actually realized.

so clearly shows in his dissertation, between the 8 th and 14 th centuries there were illuminating phenomenological distinctions that were considered essential to understand the great perfection practice of awareness, becoming aware of awareness. These distinctions were primarily made by the Nyingma masters of meditation. The most basic distinction is between the mind of dualistic experience (sems) and the primordial awareness of naturalistic non-dualistic experience or primordial knowingness (ye shes) or (semde). This ye shes is non dualistic knowingness. Unfortunately, many Buddhist texts describe dualism as deluded and non-dualism as non-deluded. This language of delusion is highly prejudiced and is nihilistic in tone and devalues the oneness of the two truths (conventional and absolute reality). They devalue the indivisibility of appearance and awareness and moreover, challenge the validity of the foundational human experience of oneness and difference or duality within non duality. This negative use of language unhappily challenges the divinity of appearance and invalidates the human experience of the Nirmanakaya dimension which is ordinary life. The differentiation and distinction of mind from awareness prevents the bewildering confusion of mind and awareness resulting in the negation of either the experience of non-duality or the experience of duality. Much of the understanding about the difference between mind and awareness was presented in the unfolding of the seventeen Atiyoga tantras that brought forth the heart essence tradition (sying thig). These teachings and instructions are part of the instructional teachings of Dzogchen. These teachings are instructional in the forms of skillful means or praxis for bringing the experience of awareness of awareness into completion. This completion is experiencing the fullness of experience of personal awareness within the vast infinite and multidimensional field of awareness. The essential method is to experience directly and completely primordial knowingness as well as the manifestations of this primordial knowingness such as mind, innermost subjectivity and external phenomenal appearance. Mind, subjectivity and all appearance are the manifestation of primordial knowingness itself. Primordial awareness is the primordial and abiding pervasive condition. Our experience of non-conceptual knowingness or non-conceptual perception opens us to the direct understanding and direct non-conceptual experience that everything and anything is the manifestation of primordial or ground awareness. Primordial awareness is radiance openness or radiant emptiness. Primordial awareness is not simply emptiness alone but the oneness of openness and radiance spaciousness as light. The incompleteness of emptiness alone is recognized by the 14 th century Nyingma master Longchenpa. Awareness is the union of spaciousness and radiance.

"Manus neglecta": Has There Been a Denigration of Touch in Western Epistemology? What kind of Discernment is Possible through the Tactile Sense? How to relate the Art of Textual Interpretation (Hermeneutics) to the kind of Corporeal Explorations that precede it?

"Confessions of a Frigid Man: A Philosopher’s Journey into the Hidden Layers of Men’s Sexuality" is the translation of a Japanese 2005 bestseller, "Kanjinai Otoko." Soon after the publication, this book stirred controversy over the nature of male sexuality, male “frigidity,” and its connection to the “Lolita complex.” Today, this work is considered a classic in Japanese men’s studies.

The most striking feature of this book is that it was written from the author’s first-person perspective. The author is a professor who teaches philosophy and ethics at a university in Japan, and in this book he talks about his own sexual fetishism, his feeling of emptiness after ejaculation, and his huge obsession with young girls and their developing female bodies. He undertakes a philosophical investigation of how and why sexuality took such a form within a person who had grown up as a “normal,” heterosexual man.

This may be the first case in which a philosopher delves deep into his own sexuality and poses an ambitious hypothesis about the formation of male “frigid” sexuality, which might actually be shared by many “normal” men in our society in a hidden way. Reading this book, female readers will come to know, for the first time, some hidden aspects of male sexuality which men have skillfully submerged in a deep layer of their psyches.

Table of Contents

Foreword to English Readers
Preface
Chapter 1: As Long as There’s a Miniskirt I Don’t Need a Flesh and Blood Woman!?
Chapter 2: Men Who Avert Their Eyes from “Male Frigidity”
Chapter 3: Why am I Attracted to School Uniforms?
Chapter 4: Delving into the Psychology of Men with “Lolita Complexes”
Chapter 5: Moving Beyond Being a “Frigid Man”
Epilogue: Further Thoughts on a Frigid Man – Year 2013

* You can read a newspaper article on this book entitled "Professor examines Lolita complex by first looking at his own experience" in Japan Times, May 5, 2017.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/05/05/national/social-issues/professor-examines-lolita-complex-first-looking-experience/#.WQ7-Xvnyipo

From "Preface"

"In this book I am going to write about the idea that men may not feel much sexual pleasure or satisfaction, and that it is because of this lack of feeling that they become absorbed in sexual fantasies involving things like miniskirts, uniforms, “lolicon” [a Japanese term for “Lolita complex”], and rape. In order to support this assertion I will speak extensively about myself. I intend to consider this issue not in terms of a general theory of male sexuality but rather from the point of view of my own specific case.

But I hope male readers read this text as if it were written just for them. I hope female readers read it with a sense of urgency, imagining that the man they are with may be subject to some of the same psychological workings it describes. I have resolved to speak with complete frankness; I intend to explore this unknown world without any fear or reservation. ....."

Recent philosophy of mind has seen an increase of interest in theories of intentionality in offering a functional account of mental states. The standard intentionalist view holds that mental states can be exhaustively accounted for in terms of their representational contents. An alternative view proposed by Tim Crane, called impure intentionalism, specifies mental states in terms of intentional content, mode, and object. This view is also suggested to hold for states of sensory awareness. This paper primarily develops an alternative to the impure intentionalist account of states of sensory awareness. On the basis of Husserl's phenomenological work, I argue that a focus on intentionality at the level of sensory awareness is phenomenologically implausible. The final part offers an alternative functional account of sensory awareness based on what Husserl called 'immanent association'.

POETIC ADDRESS AND INTIMATE READING: THE OFFERED HAND by William Waters. Originally in _Literary Imagination_ 2.2 (2000);  reprinted in abridged form (approximately this version) in _Poetry and Dialogism: Hearing Over_, ed. Mara Scanlon & Chad Engbers. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

McLuhan’s media theory begins with the distinction
between a writing and an oral culture that is grounded, in
our opinion, in a metaphorical touch. The idea of a touch
as immediacy and proximity seems to become the leading
metaphor of the communication in electric age.
However, following Derrida’s critique of the
metaphysics of presence, thus of a close and immediate
communication, and his analyses on the figure of touch,
we will show a distance at work in the tactile domain,
namely the spectral activity of the virtual touch in every
contact and every communication.

Il testo che segue raccoglie alcune riflessioni né sistematiche né esaustive. La parte centrale del testo è un discorso pubblico tenuto a Pistoia qualche anno fa. Ho deciso di rendere pubbliche queste riflessioni – nonostante siano una primissima bozza – perché ai temi accennati in queste pagine ho fatto riferimento nel capitolo È possibile una teologia del genere? del libro Sguardi sul genere (Mimesis 2017, a cura di P. Rigliano); in quella sede adombravo la necessità di sviluppare una fenomenologia che potesse rendere conto dei diversi desideri sessuali. Nelle pagine che seguono sviluppo in forma embrionale quell’idea.

Touch is essential to normal human development. It communicates a wide variety of things depending on the culture and the context. Through touch the boundary between subject and object become blurred and empathy can be cultivated. In the context of martial arts, touch can paradoxically lower levels of aggression, particularly in a traditional setting. This paper explores how touch is managed in martial arts and the embodied experiences that it can cultivate. Positivistic methodologies have revealed some of the benefits of martial arts on both physical and mental health, and studies take a quantitative and culturally sensitive approach are revealing other dimensions of bodily experience.