Politics of Touch: Sense, Movement, Sovereignty

by Erin Manning

Political philosophy has long been bound by traditional thinking about the body and the senses. Through an engagement with the state-centered vocabulary of this discipline, Politics of Touch explores the ways in which sensing bodies continually run up against existing political structures. In this groundbreaking work, Erin Manning reconsiders how new politics can arise that challenge the national body politic.

In Politics of Touch, Manning develops a new way to conceive the role of the senses, and of touch in particular. Exploring concepts of violence, gender, sexuality, security, democracy, and identity, she traces the ways in which touch informs and reforms the body. Specifically considering tango-a tactile, rhythmic, and improvisational dance- she foregrounds movement as the sensing body's intervention into the political. With a fresh vision and an original theoretical basis, Manning shows the ontogenetic potential of the body, and in doing so, redefines our understanding of the sense of touch in philosophical and political terms.  

Erin Manning is assistant professor of fine arts at Concordia University and the author of Ephemeral Territories (Minnesota, 2003).

Genres: Philosophy, Cultural Studies

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Erin Manning holds a University Research Chair in the Faculty of Fine Arts at Concordia University (Montreal, Canada). She is also the director of the Sense Lab (www.senselab.ca), a laboratory that explores the intersections between art practice and philosophy through the matrix of the sensing body in movement. In her art practice she works between painting, dance, fabric and sculpture (http://www.erinmovement.com). Her current project entitled Folds to Infinity is an experimental fabric collection composed of cuts that connect in an infinity of ways, folding in to create clothing and out to create environmental architectures. The next phase of this project will explore the resonance between electromagnetic fields and movement through the activation of the existent magnets in Folds to Infinity. Her writing addresses the senses, philosophy and politics, articulating the relation between experience, thought and politics in a transdisciplinary framework moving between dance and new technology, the political and micropolitics of sensation, performance art, and the current convergence of cinema, animation and new media.

Reviews

[Guilherme Smee · Rating 4 out of 5]

O sentido háptico, do toque, muitas vezes é deixado de lado nos estudos dos sentidos humanos, enquanto os demais são valorizados. Políticas do Toque é uma publicação acadêmica que traz o toque para o centro das atenções. O livro de Erin Manning tem em determinadas partes conceitos confusos que são distantes demais da objetividade, principalmente quando usa Deleuze e Guattari, que prefiro não mexer nesse vespeiro. Mas gostei demais quando ela estabelece a diferença entre tato e toque, quando fala que tato é um sentido/sentimento que precisamos ter para saber quando tocar (em assuntos, em corpos, etc...). Ela também estabelece boas relações entre o toque e a violência, explicitando que todo toque é uma violência e toda violência prescinde um toque (mesmo que simbólico). Depois ainda traça as semelhanças e diferenças que o toque estabelece com o engendramento dos sexos, através da teoria de Judith Butler, principalmente em Corpos que Importam. Manning também destaca o tango com um primeiro passo para analisar a centralidade do toque na existência humana. Mas a minha parte preferida continua sendo a diferenciação entre tato e toque, que achei genial.