Haptic Experience in the Writings of Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot and Michel Serres (Modern French Identities)

Our sensory relationships with the social and biological world have altered appreciably as a result of recent developments in internet and other mobile communication technologies. We now look at a screen, we touch either the screen or a keyboard in response to what we see and, somehow, an element of our sensory presence is transmitted elsewhere. It is often claimed that this change in the way we perceive the world and each other is without precedent, and is solely the result of twenty-first-century life and technologies. This book argues otherwise. The author analyses the evolving portrayals of ‘haptic’ sensations - that is, sensations that are at once tactile and visual - in the theories and prose of the writer-philosophers Georges Bataille (1897-1962), Maurice Blanchot (1907-2003) and Michel Serres (1930-). In exploring haptic perception in the works of Bataille, Blanchot and Serres, the author examines haptic theories postulated by Aloïs Riegl, Laura U. Marks, Mark Paterson and Jean-Luc Nancy. Cover 1 Contents 7 Foreword 9 Introduction 11 Defining Haptic Perception: Aloïs Riegl 13 Laura U. Marks 21 Mark Paterson 27 Jean-Luc Nancy 33 Conclusion 39 Georges Bataille 41 Maurice Blanchot 43 Michel Serres 45 Bataille, Blanchot and Serres: Haptic Experience 48 Chapter 1: Bataille and the Haptic: Fleshy Transcendence 51 Perspectives 54 L’OEil pinéal 59 Hétérologie 64 L’Informe 67 Reconciling Bataille and the Haptic 69 Histoire de l’oeil 72 Marcelle and the Haptic Experience 72 A Social Encounter with the Haptic 76 A Sensory Prison 80 A Lingering Glance? 81 Coincidences of Sight and Touch 84 Madame Edwarda: Attraction, Reflection and the Haptic 86 Consummation, Limits and Sense 90 Tears, Trembling and Liquefied Limits 95 Le Bleu du ciel 100 Hands (and Tears) in the Basement 101 Hands Shaking, Bodies Moving, Minds Frozen 102 Haptic Rhythm and Optical Repulsion 104 Conclusion 109 Chapter 2: Blanchot, Haptic Sensation and a Visible Absence 115 Blanchot, Haptic Theories and Some Initial Difficulties 118 L’Image or Getting to Grips with the Intangible 123 A Fascinating (Haptic?) Time 127 A Third Dimension 131 Sight, Writing and a Recurrent Haptic Limit 133 Thomas l’obscur (première version) 139 A Swimming Sensation 140 Caving in to Haptic Perception 149 The Feminine Touch 155 Anne 156 Irène and the Cinema 162 Another Tide 170 La Folie du jour: Haptic Feelings of Madness 172 In Shadow: Le rapport du troisième genre 178 Récit vs. Hapticity? 181 L’Instant de ma mort: Erasing the Haptic’s Foothold 184 From Haptic Perception to Sensory Neutralisation 186 Conclusion 191 Chapter 3: Serres: Haptic Perception, Touching Knowledge 195 Information, Matters 198 The Material Traces of Time 204 A Virtually Haptic Turn 212 The Serresian Objet: Defining the Partial, the Quasi and the Virtual 216 The Interdisciplinary, the Virtual and the Haptic 225 Skin to Begin: Les Cinq Sens 232 Painted Ladies: Skin as a Virtually Haptic Surface 235 Speech, Haptic Perception and Remembering a Sting in the Tale 245 Le Tiers-Instruit: That Swimming Feeling (Again) 250 Fighting on Film and a Trip to the Theatre: La Guerre mondiale 258 Tackling Rugby or the Benefits of Watching a Play 265 On the Ball 267 An Ever More Virtual Skin 271 Conclusion 277 Conclusion 285 Mathematics, Chaos, Hapticity, Order 288 A Journey into Virtually Inscribed Skin and Actual Sensation 290 Bataille and Blanchot: Virtual Haptic Likenesses? 292 Hapticity and Gender, Life and Death 293 Hapticity as Exclusion or Inclusion 297 Seeing and Feeling the Difference? Theory, Prose and the Virtual 301 Some Final Words and No End of Haptic Feeling 302 Bibliography 305 Primary Texts 305 Secondary Texts 306 Index 311 Our sensory relationships with the social and biological world have altered appreciably as a result of recent developments in internet and other mobile communication technologies. We now look at a screen, we touch either the screen or a keyboard in response to what we see and, somehow, an element of our sensory presence is transmitted elsewhere. It is often claimed that this change in the way we perceive the world and each other is without precedent, and is solely the result of twenty-first-century life and technologies. This book argues otherwise. The author analyses the evolving portrayals of {u2018}haptic{u2019} sensations {u2013} that is, sensations that are at once tactile and visual {u2013} in the theories and prose of the writer-philosophers Georges Bataille (1897-1962), Maurice Blanchot (1907-2003) and Michel Serres (1930-). In exploring haptic perception in the works of Bataille, Blanchot and Serres, the author examines haptic theories postulated by Aloïs Riegl, Laura U. Marks, Mark Paterson and Jean-Luc Nancy. -- From publisher's website Our sensory relationships with the social and biological world have altered appreciably as a result of recent developments in internet and other mobile communication technologies. We now look at a screen, we touch either the screen or a keyboard in response to what we see and, somehow, an element of our sensory presence is transmitted elsewhere. It is often claimed that this change in the way we perceive the world and each other is without precedent, and is solely the result of twenty-first-century life and technologies. This book argues otherwise. The author analyses the evolving portrayals of 'haptic' sensations - that is, sensations that are at once tactile and visual - in the theories and prose of the writer-philosophers Georges Bataille (1897-1962), Maurice Blanchot (1907-2003) and Michel Serres (1930-). In exploring haptic perception in the works of Bataille, Blanchot and Serres, the author examines haptic theories postulated by Alois Riegl, Laura U. Marks, Mark Paterson and Jean-Luc Nancy. This book argues that changes in sensory relationships, often claimed to be symptoms of 21st-century technology, are not as recent as they may seem. The author analyses how 'haptic' sensory interactions (simultaneous manifestations of tactile and visual sensation) are portrayed in the work of Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot and Michel Serres.