General information
Code: N6-0050
Period: 1.6.2016 - 31.5.2018
Range on year: 1.06 FTE | 2016
Project leader at FDV: izr.prof.dr. Mirt Komel
Research activity: Humanities
Abstract
The project proposes an innovative philosophical approach in researching the link between touch and language in the field of haptic studies. The epistemology of the proposed project understands touch as a philosophical problem that underlines all research in contemporary haptic studies, and, complementarly, our mundane understanding of touching.
Touch was, in the history of philosophy, conceptually employed either as a mere bodily sense, a sense among other senses (Aristoteles, Hume), or as a metaphor for grasping an abstract metaphyisical knowledge (Plato, Descartes). However, there is at least one exception to the rule, namely Hegel, whose concept of Begriff allows a dialectical understanding of touch as both, concept and touching. The proposed philosophical innovation starts from this Hegelian conception of touch that If touch is a concept then the very theoretical activity of conception implies touching.
As the preliminary research for this project proposal shows, most if not all approaches in the developing haptic studies, that is, the humanities and social sciences of touch (especially anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies), deal with touch mainly in the first sense (touch as an empirical, bodily, sensorial experience) or at best through a phenomenological perspective (Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas). While considering various sociocultural aspects that structure the way we are touching (Classen, Paterson, Harvey, Dent) these aproaches, however, never surpass or reflect on their philosophical points of origins, and neither they incorporate various other philosophical currents.
Since language is already considered as one of the socio-cultural aspects of touching in haptic studies our project proposal proposes to research in detail this specific link between touch and language through a lingustic analysis, more precisly, through Lacanian theoretical psychoanalysis (especially Dolar’s philosophy of the voice and touch in the millieu of Ljubljana’s Lacanian school) on the one hand, and through the Derridaian linguistic turn in philosophy on the other (especially the philosophy of Jean-Luc Nancy who dedicated his best works to touch and body).
The novelty of the project proposal lies in its questioning touch not only in its determination throught language (“how does language structure touching?”) but also in questioning language through touch (“how does touch structure language”). In this sense the purpose of the project is:
1. Research contemporary linguistic philosophies of touch, especially psychoanalysis and phenomenology;
2. Research the link between touch and language in the field of haptic studies;
3. Research the methodological possibilities of a new theory of touch based on lingustic philosophy.
If the research proceedings will prove fruitfull this project proposal will be the springboard for
the re-application for the ERC grant where a new theory of touch will be developed as the
groundbreaking result of the applied project.
Research Organisation
http://www.sicris.si/public/jqm/prj.aspx?lang=eng&opt=2&subopt=403&hits=1&id=10074&search_term=N6-0050
Researchers
http://www.sicris.si/public/jqm/prj.aspx?lang=eng&opt=2&subopt=402&hits=1&id=10074&search_term=N6-0050
Citations for bibliographic records
http://www.sicris.si/public/jqm/prj.aspx?lang=eng&opt=2&subopt=400&hits=1&id=10074&search_term=N6-0050
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