Touching at depth: The potential of feeling and connection

Emotion, Space and Society 7 (2013) 45e53

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Touching at depth: The potential of feeling and connection Diana Adis Tahhan School of Social Sciences and International Studies, The University of New South Wales, Sydney NSW 2052, Australia

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history: Received 11 November 2010 Received in revised form 15 March 2012 Accepted 15 March 2012

The senses are often talked of as bodily senses. Although more recently there has been valuable work on the cross-over of the senses, it is still common for our understanding of the senses to be located in the finite body: the body that hears, smells, sees, tastes and touches. There is a defined subjectivity and identity logic here which ontologically impacts on how we feel, particularly in the context of touch. For example, if it is my body that touches, it must be my body that feels. Or, if my body touches another, that body feels my touch and vice versa. Emphasis is on intersubjectivity and separate bodies/senses rather than on feeling, connection and emotion. This paper explores affective and embodied meanings of touch. It moves beyond common assumptions underlying most literature on touch, assumptions which regard touch as physical and visible. Touch cannot be viewed primarily as a bodily sense for it then emanates from a finite body, a body which is separate, subjective and contained. This type of touch (or body) stifles the potential for feeling and connection. When touch is viewed as ‘flesh’ or ‘mi’, however, we become aware of a non-finite logic of the world which helps us reassess touch. There is a sensuous and embodied connection in flesh that is at the ‘heart’ of this type of touch. This paper develops the notion of a ‘touching at depth’ which helps us move beyond the senses in a bodily (and therefore finite) capacity and explore an encompassing space and relationship in touch that brings out the potential of feeling, connection and emotion. Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Touch Body Flesh Feeling Senses Heart

1. Introduction The senses, in particular, the sense of touch, are often assumed in popular discourse as a ‘bodily’ sense. Although touch is sometimes conceived as affective and metaphorical (i.e. I was deeply touched by an experience), it is usually grounded in discourses of physicality and visibility (i.e. I touch your hand with mine). It seems that describing touch vis-à-vis physical terms such as tactile communication, bodily contact and physical contact enables us to understand tangible and concrete experiences of touch. Affective forms of touch, on the other hand, are linked to emotions or feelings. The emotional sense of touch is less extensively researched than the physical (Detamore, 2010; Dixon and Straughan, 2010; Paterson, 2007), presumably because it is harder to conceptualize and move beyond this priority on the physical. Often described in terms of the heart or mind, being touched or affected by an experience seems more intangible and less locatable than the physical sense of touch, particularly because it brings up the question of feelings. Specific works devoted to ‘touch’ or ‘touching’ tend to take for granted the very meaning of touch, and more often then not,

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perpetuate assumptions about physical and visible forms of touch (Josipovici, 1996; Montagu, 1986).1 A fundamental issue here is that such meanings of touch restrict our understanding to the finite, located matter: the physical body. And touch which emanates from a finite body often presumes subjectivity (my body, your body, that body) and tells us very little about the actual lived experience of touch. Such contained notions limit our understanding of the emotional sense of touch and the potential for feeling and connection.2 This type of touch is rational, known, social, passive or active action, contained within a framework of the body that is separate and split from anything else. This paper argues that touch

1 See theorists such as Detamore (2010), Paterson (2007), Povinelli (2006), and Tuan (1993) who recognize this distinction. 2 For example, when Montagu speaks of touch, he speaks of subjects, objects and bodies: “bodily contact with the other.provides the essential source of comfort, security, warmth” (1986, 95). However, he does not explore the ways in which such feelings of comfort, security or warmth become possible through touch in the first place. Josipovici (1996), moves beyond Montagu’s analysis and speaks of the “essential relationship” in touch. He talks of space, time, distance, proximity and presence, leaning towards an understanding of embodiment, but he too still limits touch to the boundaries of bodies, subjects and objects. Such contained explanations of touch pose conceptual problems for understandings of feeling and connection.

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which emanates from the finite body reduces the potential for feeling and connection; physical touch or touch from the ‘body’ also makes it harder to appreciate the nuanced and manifold meanings of touch. Although emotional forms of touch, for example, suggest we need to attend to the importance of affect and feelings, existing conceptual frameworks are limited to approach these different forms of touch.3 This paper explores touch within the context of feeling and connection.4 Touch is not viewed within its traditional finite sense of emanating from the body or physicality, nor is touch viewed as a purely affective, ‘interior’ experience of a purely ‘emotional’ kind. Rather, this paper adopts a relational understanding of touch which relies on a more complexly embodied and sensuous experience of touch, and helps us explore the relations between the emotional and physical sense of touch. This relational understanding is described in this paper as a touching at depth.5 When people connect with other people, objects and their environment, they feel a wholeness, a potential, a connection that isn’t located, and isn’t finite. Touching at depth is this relational quality which relies on the ontological change from Cartesian body to wholeness. In other words, touching at depth relates to the moment of ‘real’ intimacy, love or meeting between people. Touching at depth is not locatable in a particular body part or particular sense e there are no separate subjects, bodies or parts coming towards the other with purpose and motive; rather, this form of touch has intimate manifestations (is not only physical or from the ‘body’) and finds meaning through an embodied felt relation and deep sense of connection e there is an openness to who the person actually is, and a renunciation of prior self to the feeling and person (that is, the positionally defined body of the ‘touching’ person and the person ‘being-touched’ can no longer be felt). Touching at depth, as an analytical tool, aims to move beyond conventional forms of touch, and to provide a language for intimate forms of touch and feeling. Firstly, however, it is necessary to provide some account of the methodological approach employed in this article as well as the theoretical implications of touching at depth.

3 For example, emotions are often located within some notion of the interior of the human being, and such notions are often associated with reflection and memory (see Davidson et al., 2005). Dixon and Straughan (2010: 453) note that in more recent years, geographers have begun to look at emotions more broadly in the context of self, other places, people, things, etc. 4 Elsewhere I have referred to this in the context of intimacy (Tahhan, 2008). This has been called love by Metcalfe and Game (2002) and meeting by Buber (1958) and is based on a logic where there are no separate subjects, bodies or objects but a relational meeting between whole and active beings. Manning calls similar forms of touch “tender” (2007, 12) while Levinas refers to an intimate caress which “aims at neither a person nor a thing. It loses itself in a being that dissipates.” (Levinas, 1969: 259). In other words, there is “nothing” actually being touched. There is no body of the subject or body of the object. 5 This research on touch originally developed from a Japanese cultural context, where physical forms of touch are uncommon and relationships usually rely on more indirect and subtle forms of communication (i.e. Lebra, 2004; Tahhan, 2007). Ethnographic research conducted in Japan revealed various ways of having meaningful relationships. Most participants commented on their nontactile forms of closeness with their loved ones. Often, these forms were grounded in greetings or daily rituals which highlighted care and love. However, what was so caring or loving about that particular context was not always clear. Although this paper does not draw on the specific cultural examples of Japanese relationships, it is important to note that the thoughts regarding touching at depth emerged from this cultural context and that some of the examples used in this paper are embedded with similar notions of touch. Most importantly, however, although touching at depth was inspired by this cultural context, it is not necessarily restricted to it. This paper reveals a wider applicability of touching at depth which is more universally significant and connects experiences and meanings of touch and intimacy.

1.1. Lived experiences and touching at depth This article is based on three personal accounts of intimacy which help to draw out this notion of touching at depth. Elsewhere I have explored touching at depth in a Japanese cultural context (Tahhan, 2007, 2008, 2010). However, to truly appreciate the nuances of the feelings and emotions and depth (which I was struggling to conceptualize at the time), I had to go back to the ‘real’ intimacies of the life in which I participate, that is, I had to connect with my own feelings, body and lived experience to be more “honest and more engaged” (See Richardson, 2000: 924) with my research. The three personal accounts are reflections recorded over the past decade as I have tried to develop this notion of touching at depth. These reflections are based on a sense of intimate participation that isn’t subjective (or clearly, objective). The whole methodological and conceptual point of touching at depth is that we are not engaged as selves, as ‘autos’, but as participants in relation. This becomes more meaningful when done phenomenologically (see Moustakas, 1994). The article deliberately draws on my own personal lived experience and perceptions in relation to three specific situations because of their ability to provide insight into the embodied and sensuous nature of touch. All three reflections draw on experiences of self-and-other, in order to draw out the theoretical implications of intimate relationships. The first reflection was written during pregnancy, when I became aware of different, more embodied ways of touching, while the second and third accounts are two memories from my childhood, both which evoked strong feelings of security and connection with my family. The tone and voice in the first reflection is different to the other two reflections, and asks us to engage with the text in different ways. This was not deliberate nor was it conscious at the time. The first reflection is written in first person and present tense. The fact that I was actually pregnant at the time meant that I felt present to and in “open dialogue” (Welch, 2001: 68) with the text as I wrote it. The other two reflections, on the other hand, were recorded several years after the ‘rituals’ had ceased, and use more of a distanced voice. This seems to require a different sort of attention, not just because of the way they were written (where I was neither subjective nor objective) but because they are based on an intimate sense of participation that is not quite so obviously ‘touch’ (i.e. sound of laughter, being in the same space). I needed to engage with and feel the text and “create spaces in and around.[these reflections] from which new things [could] continue to erupt” (Brearley, 2001: 29). From there, the meaning of touch could also develop. Before we attend to the empirical materials that will inform our understandings of touching at depth, it is necessary to unpack the phenomenological meanings of touch which are the foundation of this paper, meanings which draw on European as well as Eastern concepts of embodiment, and which are not necessarily bounded by cultural contexts. 1.2. Theoretical implications of touching at depth This article seeks to describe the feelings and connections possible between people vis-à-vis touching at depth. In intimate encounters, there is a depth between people which is characterized by a non-Euclidean space where the quality of the feeling is undefined (whole). This notion of wholeness is a distinguishable state from ‘totality’. Totality is definable and bounded; on the other hand, this feeling of wholeness is derived from different experiences of state and being, where whole cannot be defined: it is open and connective. This feeling moves touch from the container of the finite, subject-object’s body to a fleshy relation that incorporates more than just body. Therefore, the potential of feeling and

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connection in touching at depth cannot be viewed via touch as a ‘bodily’ sense. Instead, touch and the senses need to be viewed as ‘flesh’ (Merleau-Ponty, 1968) or ‘mi’ (Ichikawa, 1993), terms which help us become aware of a non-finite logic of the world. Conventional approaches to bodies, senses and emotions often still, implicitly, rely on a finite logic of the world, a binary opposition between body and mind, because they continue to think of the body and senses and emotions as the possessions of a subject.6 The body, for example, is often still assumed to have object-like attributes of a boundary, an inside distinct from an outside, a physicality. The limitations of this approach have been demonstrated by feminist and phenomenological theorists, among others, who work against the Cartesian grain (Butler, 1997; Detamore, 2010; Dixon and Straughan, 2010; Ichikawa, 1993; Merleau-Ponty, 1968; Paterson, 2007; Povinelli, 2006; Tuan, 1993). It is the phenomenological accounts of embodiment by Merleau-Ponty and Ichikawa, however, which are used in this article to develop a non-Cartesian ontology that allows for a deeper understanding of touch. Merleau-Ponty’s notion of flesh, and Ichikawa’s notion of mi, both break through these assumptions and help find a way to talk about touch that is not necessarily bounded, not necessarily defined (finite), not necessarily associated with a subject. These conceptual tools not only help us reassess touch, but also provide a language to understand an encompassing space and relationship in touch that brings out the potential of feeling and connection, which includes, but is not limited to, body, emotion and senses. This article is primarily conceptual, drawing out the phenomenological implications of touch. Understanding touch as a ‘bodily sense’ upholds the Cartesian disjuncture of physical and non-physical. Understanding touch as ‘flesh’ or ‘mi’, however, helps us to explore the potential of the lived body and to suspend mind-body dichotomies. Two theorists who are particularly relevant here are Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Hiroshi Ichikawa. Through their concepts of the lived body, flesh (Merleau-Ponty, 1968) and mi (Ichikawa, 1993), these theorists offer useful ways in which we can approach the embodied nature of touch and its intimate and sensuous manifestations. Connected corporeality through relational space and embodied connections are the subject of their phenomenological analyses of flesh and mi. Firstly let us consider the work of Merleau-Ponty, whose concept of flesh, is particularly relevant here. For Merleau-Ponty (2002), the lived body is the seat of all human relation to the world. He talks of the lived body as flesh, which is made of the same flesh of the world. Flesh connects the body to the world and vice versa (Merleau-Ponty, 1968). But in flesh, it is not accurate to talk of the body, as a separate, contained entity. Through flesh, there is a relationship between subject and object, self and other. The body is both subject and object: because a sort of dehiscence opens my body in two, and because between my body looked at and my body looking, my body touched and my body touching, there is overlapping encroachment, so that we must say that the things pass into us as well as we into the things (Merleau-Ponty, 1968: 123). Flesh enables a tangible spatial connection between people. This connection is possible via a reciprocal and reversible relation of perceptibility: Every perception is “doubled perception” where the “percipient ‘other side’ of bodily flesh (seeing, touching, tasting) is deeply embedded in or meshed with the density of its perceptibility (visibility, tangibility, tastability)” (Cataldi, 1993: 64).

6

Cf Shilling (1993) and Turner (1997).

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Flesh finds meaning in “real contact” (Cataldi, 1993). In such contact, you cannot tell who is who or specifically who is seeing whom or touching whom. When this “overlapping encroachment” connects us, we are connected through flesh (because we are part of the flesh of the world). Furthermore, “we are one body by virtue of our relations with others” (Oliver, 1997: 131). Indeed the bodies of people might be the vehicle through which touch occurs, but it is flesh that connects and makes feelings of closeness and connection possible.7 Ichikawa’s concept mi helps to extend this understanding of flesh, touch, connection and feeling. Similar to the concept, flesh, the understanding of mi helps us move beyond the fixed idea of the body as finite and physical to a state of ecological connectedness. The etymology of the Chinese character mi refers to the “body”. However, similar to flesh, mi is not located in the contained or finite body or “enclosed in the skin” (Ozawa-de Silva, 2002: 8). In fact, Ichikawa’s exploration of mi provides us with multi-layered meanings which include an infinite space that is all-encompassing and connecting: mi reveals an ontology that includes the body, heart, mind, self, whole existence, including objects and that which is attached to mi (i.e. garments or belongings of the body). These are not separate entities, but, similar to flesh, rely on a reciprocal reversible relation where, “I am both the subject that is doing the touching as well as the object that is being touched” (Ozawa-de Silva, 2002: 6). Although the emic explanation of mi is grounded in a Japanese linguistic and cultural context, its applicability is much broader. Such an embodied understanding of relationships and all-encompassing space helps us open up our analysis of feeling and connection, where we become implicated and different through our participation in the world and touch.8 In conversation with Merleau-Ponty and Ichikawa, we are better able to explore the embodied and sensuous connections in touching at depth. There is potential to mistake this depth as constructing a Cartesian dualism which perpetuates the notion of both an ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ to subjectivity as well as a ‘depth’ and ‘surface’ to touch. However, when we address touch as flesh or mi we are opened to an ontology of space, depth and connection which is non-finite and encompassing. This depth is not empty or void, nor is it an intangible space which cannot be felt. Rather, there is a filled space where we move beyond intersubjectivity and surfaces and become a part of a different space where we are present and feel close and connected (though not necessarily in physically proximal forms). Touching at depth enables us to explore the potential of lived experiences of touch where touch is not an isolated sense. There is a depth to intimate, embodied forms of touch here which relies on a relational understanding of sensorium. That is, touch interacts

7 Paterson (2007) brings forward the relation between touch and affective experience. He recognizes the importance of thinking about “touch and tactility outside individual skin and between bodies, [and] bodies understood to share energies at both a local and cosmological level” (2007: 148). He develops the notion of “feeling-with”, a notion that enables the “ambiguity of touching as physical and affective, as literal and metaphorical, reaching across space from the toucher to the touched, grasping and drawing them into proximity” (2007, 171) and a “felt phenomenology..a suitable method for describing encounters with touching as both individual cutaneous sensation, interpersonal affect, and other metaphorical aspects (proximity, feeling-with)” (2007, 150). He considers touching and being touched by others through the useful example of reiki, the subtle energy healing where practitioners transfer healing energy (ki) through the palms. 8 As Ichikawa says, we become a different mi in relation with other people, “hito no mi ni naru” (Ichikawa, 1993: 91).

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with other senses to create meaningful relationships.9 In fact, as we will see below, touching at depth seems to draw on other ‘senses’, even those not framed in the traditional domain of the ‘five’ senses.10 The depth ascribed to this type of embodied, sensuous touch reveals significant spatial and tactile relations11 vis-à-vis rituals, memories, feelings and connections where discourses of the ‘heart’ (kokoro)12 also become important. The following example of pregnancy is the article’s first reflective account, and its analysis of conscious and felt forms of touch might help to illuminate the potential for feeling and connection in touch. 2. Case 1: felt flutters and connections in pregnancy The first day I lay there and felt a flutter, I was caught by surprise. Then ever since, the movements have gotten stronger. These movements cannot just be described as an ‘inside’ touch, for they evoke flutters and feelings of warmth throughout my body. As the movements have got stronger, I am now aware of the power of the conscious and more ‘outside’ knowing touch. I place my hand on my belly to reaffirm the strength of the movement. But that sometimes takes away from that special feeling, as I consciously try to confirm the ‘inside’ movements from the ‘outside’. Feeling the movements from the outside might suggest that this is real touch because I can affirm the tangible felt sensation of the movement. However, there is a consciousness associated with this touch and I try to control the movement e it does not encompass me; I try to encompass it. When the movement is felt from within, I am not being touched by the movement in a purely metaphorical sense. Yes, I feel touched, but I am embodied by a touch which is not just mine. When I place my hand on my belly and I feel the movements from within e there is a dialogue between my hand, the baby and the skin and spaces between us. And this is an all-encompassing ‘felt’ sensation that moves me. And when my partner places his hand on my belly, the feeling includes him; when he places his lips on my belly and

9 Literature on the senses has also opened up our understanding of the meanings of touch (Classen, 2005; Feld, 1990; Geurts, 2005; Howes, 2003). Research on touch no longer necessarily constitutes an independent domain of experience but interacts with other sensory domains, often in different combinations and hierarchies (Classen, 2005; Howes, 2003). Feld (1990) and Geurts (2005) also add important dimensions to describing the priority and relations of the senses, particularly touch. For example, Feld explores how sounds actively communicate and embody deeply felt sentiments, while Geurts explores feeling and consciousness in terms of the senses. Heller-Roazan’s (2009) recent archaeology of sensation, traces the sense of touch, from Socrates to Aristotle to the Cartesians. He identifies various philosophers and their understanding of touch, feeling and the “common sense”. His work provides an interesting survey of how conceptions of touch and the senses have evolved. 10 Guerts’ ethnographic analysis of Anlo-Ewe perspectives of sensory order is particularly relevant here. She explores how the five-senses model does not necessarily correspond to all cultural contexts. She suggests that for the Anlo-Ewes, there is a “more generalized feeling in the body that includes both internal senses. and external senses, as well as other perceptual, emotional, and intuitive dimensions of experience” (2005, 166). Similarly, Heller-Roazan discusses several theorists who explore and theorise this general feeling. 11 Such relations, when viewed within the context of human geography, “emphasise the interplay between the haptic, the visual, the aural and the olfactory e in short, with synaesthesia e in providing the precognitive and cognitive means through which the body apprehends and negotiates place and time” (Dixon and Straughan, 2010: 452). 12 I am aware that the term, heart, is ambiguous but it’s the Japanese meaning of the term, kokoro (heart) to which I refer, and which further develops our understanding of embodiment. Kokoro (heart) cannot just be viewed in its physiological capacity; rather kokoro is the ‘the seat of feeling and thought’ (Kondo, 1990, 105). This emphasis on feeling and thought is fundamental to our understanding of touch and connection as it helps take us away from popular discussions of feeling that are located in the ‘body’.

speaks, the sounds may reverberate through to the baby and the baby may respond. This responsiveness is touch; this inclusion is touch; this all-encompassing felt experience is touch.

2.1. Touch as me and not-me: conscious versus felt forms of touch The above description of my pregnancy was written in its early stages, when I first began to feel our baby move. It made me begin to consider the experience of touch from ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ my body.13 Firstly, there was a consciousness ascribed to the physical movements of ‘the baby’. I was consciously trying to feel the movements of the baby, and anticipate the next movement. However, there is a tension in the language here (and above) which I had not been aware of in my initial writings about my pregnancy, and which became more obvious as time went by and the feelings and connections with the baby deepened. When I was consciously attempting to feel the movement, I was already following the Cartesian disjuncture of physical and non-physical, where touch was located in the finite body or ‘me’. This involved a consciousness about our separate bodies and movements and about where my body was placed in this experience. In such a consciousness, touch is experienced as ‘me’, ‘mine’ or from ‘my body’. There are no real possibilities for feeling or connection here as the relationship is stifled by subjectivity, separate and contained bodies and identity.14 Touch came from ‘inside-me’,15 a part of me that I thought could be controlled or mastered when I affirmed the movements from the outside. But the movements cannot be defined in Euclidean terms, of minutes, hours and dimensions of time.16 I didn’t know when the baby would move next, nor did I know for how long the baby would move. Such a consciousness forces the movement and my response into uncongenial and inaccurate terms where touch is finite, calculated and knowing; it takes away from any feelings of warmth and wholeness which may have preceded that actual consciousness. Secondly, the movements become meaningful when there is no expectation or awareness of subjectivity. Of course there is awareness of these movements but there is renunciation associated here where there is no baby, mother or father as separate entities. Rather, there is a feeling that extends to and includes us all, a feeling of ecological connectedness and mutual implication. This is an example of a more embodied form of touch which includes a feeling and connection extending to and including me, my partner, our baby, our hands, and “the skin and spaces between us”. The feeling is uncalculated and unconscious; there is a yielding to the movements of the baby which is gratuitous. That is, there is an

13 Others have written about the boundaries in pregnant bodies. See Draper (2003), Longhurst (2001), Schmiedl and Lupton (2001) for research in the context of pregnancy and embodiment, abjection and social gaze. 14 Buber distinguishes between two relational orientations, one of identity (totality), and one of relationality (wholeness). He calls these I-It and I-Thou relations. His argument is that our lives take place in both these states which rely on each other. We do not, cannot, make I-Thou states occur; they happen, they befall us. I-It states, on the other hand, are based on objectification, control and separation of people, where I strive to know It finitely by making It into an object. This attempt to exhaust It into what the I ‘knows’ ends up alienating both I and It, turning them into separated contained and identified entities. When I experienced touch from ‘my body’, I was in a separate, contained body from the baby (It). There are no boundaries in I-Thou relations, no entities. The ‘whole’ itself cannot be defined (Metcalfe and Game, 2004). 15 Heller-Roazan (2009) traces philosophers’ understanding of the senses of touch, and how some juxtapose internal touch with external sensation (i.e. Leibniz). Hubner in the other hand, incorporates another “power of perception”.to feel a thing “often encountered by the tactile power” (2009, 239). 16 The use of Euclidean geometric concepts objectifies lived experience (Buttimer, 1976). She notes instead, the importance of the relation of body and mind, and of person and world.

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acceptance of a movement and feeling which is not-mine and notbaby; this feeling exists in the spaces and connections between us. There is an all-encompassing warmth which reverberates through us, an awareness of a difference between us, and a renunciation where I give my-self up to the movements, the flutters and the feelings.17 These feelings are tangible (felt) but not locatable. For Merleau-Ponty, this would occur through the flesh of the world, and for Ichikawa, connecting us to one another through mi. The flesh of my world includes the flesh of our baby’s world. Just as the flesh ontology incorporates the experience of others, the space that holds us becomes inclusive and fleshy through the movements of the baby. The space shifts between us and this is a movement that moves us and shifts us ontologically. That is, there is a shift from my body to my child’s body to a sense of undefined awareness in flesh. This awareness occurs through an “overlapping encroachment”, when “things pass into us as well as we into the things”, when I am both touched and touching (Merleau-Ponty, 1968: 123). The space that holds us in this awareness reflects a hidden dimension in the depth of flesh that will never be wholly perceived or articulated: who is touching who becomes less clear as we become relaxed in the depths of touch (the flutters, movements, connections and feelings between us). Similar to the flesh ontology, the understanding of the depth and space of mi helps us move beyond touch as finite and physical and conscious to an emotional connectedness that includes much more. Just as we become implicated in flesh, We become different and connected through our relation and lived experience in mi (Ichikawa, 1993). In other words, when the movements occur, an all-encompassing warmth reverberates and there are feelings of wholeness and connection. There is no attempt to control-the-unfolding occurrence. There is at once a sense of stillness and a sense of life unfolding (without any one having to make it happen). The warmth and sense of connection softens the borders and blurs the boundaries between our bodies (and subjectivity) so that we are implicated and become affected via touch. The feelings of warmth and connection experienced in the depths of touch can be further understood and developed in the context of a relational understanding of sensorium, where touch interacts with, for example, sight and sound to help people feel connected. The following reflection highlights sensuous experiences of touch and how rituals and shared experiences can deepen the potential for feeling and connection. Consider the following example:

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3.1. Sensuous qualities of touch

They used to sit together and watch 80s and 90s American TV comedies like Full House and Empty Nest altogether, the five of them: the mother, father, two daughters and one son. It was a family ritual, something they all looked forward to. Of course the content was amusing but almost 20 years later, they cannot remember weekly episodes. What they can remember is that, in those days, they wouldn’t see their father much during the week as he worked, and he was also quite serious back then. But there they would sit, altogether, sharing in this comic relief. They wouldn’t necessarily discuss the content of the show. That wasn’t really important. But they loved hearing their father laugh, a crazy laugh which was infectious, and which made them all smile and laugh.

This example presents us with the sensuous qualities of touch. Although this reflection is based on a real personal experience, my initial recounting of this event felt non-emotive and not at all connected with what I was writing. This is reflected in the use of third person. The memory is unclear, but I remember there was always a nice feeling of warmth associated with this ritual. As I began to unpack the reflection I became aware of more sensuous feelings of touch which made the actual memory more meaningful, and helped to explain the connection between us, ‘this family’. As with the next reflection, I maintain a distanced voice: whether this experience or these feelings are my own is not important; these feelings and memories have the capacity to develop a universal potential for feeling, connection and emotion vis-à-vis touching at depth. In this reflection, it is not the actual TV show or the particular episode the family watched together which is significant; the feelings of closeness aroused in this setting are much more significant. This closeness is not necessarily grounded in physically proximal forms where the family sits (in close proximity) with one another in the same space, watches the same TV show, and shares in the ‘same’ experience. Of course on one level, the family seemed to enjoy the ritualistic nature of the show-watching, where the television is a medium for their interaction. However, there is a sensuous quality to this experience which connects the family at a deeper level, one where sight and sound connect them in the depths of touch. That is, the medium of the TV provided a sonorous experience and all-encompassing warmth where the father would laugh an “infectious laugh” and this sound carried throughout and within them, connecting them in a touching at depth. Furthermore, the sensuous experience of vision (watching the TV) contributes to the filled space between the family.18 Before further unpacking the sensuous nature of this experience, however, it is necessary to explore how the experience might be intimate in the first place. Firstly, the father and his laugh are central to this experience of touch. There is a tension in the language used which draws attention to the father’s relaxed presence. At one level, the father (as a separate subject and body), his moods and his laughter could dictate the rest of the family’s positioning in this space. That is, the family could comprise of separate bodies and subjects who are affected by the father’s power, where “his” laughter has the power to relax them, while his “serious moods” might have a different outcome. Yet, on another level, there seems to be a special quality to the laughter which connects them and the ritualistic nature of the TV watching. For the laughter to connect the family in this shared experience, it is no longer the father’s laughter (as a sound that comes out of a separate, contained subject and body), but rather a sound which reverberates throughout the whole family and is inclusive, arousing feelings of closeness. Touch simply happens through this connection, via the TV and the laughter, but this is not comprised of separate subjects or bodies (mother, father, and children). Instead, there is a new, mixed, inclusive body that emerges through relation. That is, there are no definable people, objects or sounds. There is an ‘everywhere-ness’ to this experience where everyone is in relation, implicated, touching and laughing. The relaxed tone of this experience, therefore, is not locatable in the father but in the relationship that emerges between the family. Secondly, Ichikawa provides us with a way to interpret how such an experience can manifest feelings of connection via an object. For Ichikawa, mi includes an all-encompassing space whereby that

17 This would be an I-Thou relation in Buber’s terms where we are not separate subjects but a meeting occurs between us as whole and active beings (Buber, 1958).

18 As Cataldi notes, “these felt perceptions are all skin deep. And distinguishable. And have affective tones to them” (Cataldi, 1993: 133).

3. Case 2: sensuous and sonorous touch via laughter

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which is attached to mi (mi wo tsuketeiru mono; Ichikawa, 1993: 81) becomes a part of or implicated in mi. In many cases, that which is ‘attached’ to mi is an object. The television in this setting is the object which becomes a part of their lived experience, connecting the family and blurring the boundaries of their bodies and subjectivity. Extending beyond the object, Ichikawa also provides us with an understanding as to how we are connected to and embedded in the world via mi. Similar to Bourdieu’s (1977) notion of habitus, Ichikawa’s relational equation describes mi in the context of the universe. For Ichikawa, this sense of being ‘in’ the world is possible through locating mi in terms of a relational equation of mi-house-village-city-universe. This relational existence explains how we are connected to and embedded in the world, that we “correspond mutually” into a kind of “nested structure” (Ichikawa, 1993: 161).19 Similarly, this helps us reassess the TV setting where the family obviously feels connected and close, yet we don’t necessarily know how. Through mi and the family’s sense of being in the world together, the object (TV) might gradually lose its importance as feelings of connection become manifest in different ways. That is, even in instances where they may not be watching the TV or the father is at work or in a “serious” mood, they may still feel close or touching for they have been connected through such shared experiences and rituals. And these make non-television or non-comedy settings meaningful, precisely because of the “reminders” of the family’s touching experience via the TV and the laughter.20 Bachelard (1994: xix) who talks of “intimate space”, also offers insight into such past experiences and how they can “awaken new depths” of feelings within us. There is an all-encompassing quality to this experience where the warmth and closeness is felt between the family though not necessarily in physically locatable ways. But this doesn’t mean that they weren’t touching, or that years later, they cannot still feel close because of such shared experiences. There is a link to wholeness: a “sonority of being” where the sound of laughter and feelings of warmth reverberate through the relationships, connecting the family even years later when they are not watching the TV comedies together anymore.21 Similarly, the family watching TV may “experience resonances, sentimental repercussions, reminders of [our] past” (1994: xix) when they hear the sound of laughter. The laughter might bear the “essence of the notion of home” even when they no longer watch the TV altogether. This feeling of belonging is related to what Capra et al. (1992: 14) call “I am home” and what Ichikawa (1993: 161) calls “atto mu”k (at home). There is a sense of rightness to this experience ho where there is no locatable object or person providing the family with feelings of contentment and belonging. Instead, there is a state

19 Similarly, Buttimer suggests that people are surrounded by centric layers of lived space from room to home, neighbourhood, city, region and nation, where a feeling may be so strong or one may have a “natural place” which is considered to be the “zero point of his personal reference system”(1976: 284). See also Dixon and Straughan (2010: 450) and how a person’s everyday interaction with particular environments allows for an emotive ‘sense of place’ to emerge”. 20 See Buttimer (1976) whose reference to noncognitive, bodily and emotionally based perceptions of space are particularly relevant here whereby the family may feel connected even when they are not in the same room or watching TV. 21 Bachelard explores this “mutual deepening” and intimate space in the context of imaginative powers and simple images associated with felicitous space (i.e. the house). Bachelard describes being itself, archetypically, and how all “really inhabited space bears the essence of the notion of home” (1994: 5). In such a space, there is a “synthesis of immemorial and recollected” (Bachelard, 1994: 5), experienced even outside the home. Bachelard notes that “these dwelling-places of the past remain in us for all time” (Bachelard, 1994: 6). There is a feeling of harmony and peace which call to mind images of the house and nest (Ehrmann, 1966: 577).

of connectedness with the “cosmos as a whole” and a relational existence with people and objects (Capra et al., 1992: 14). That is, many years later, the memory evokes strong feelings of contentment and connection with the (my) family. It is important that we also explore “the potential for crosssensory activation” (Howes, 2006: 6) in this case. We have touched on the sound of laughter eliciting feelings of warmth and closeness, and how the TV becomes the medium for feeling close. However, the sight associated with ‘watching the TV’ is what enables the potential space for connection between the family in the first place. It is therefore necessary to pay attention to the ways in which sight and vision might also contribute to feelings of warmth and connection.22 There is a mutual understanding and filled space between them where feelings of closeness and intimacy are diffused through a “dialogic way of looking” (Metcalfe and Game, 2004: 358). This dialogue does not involve the family as separate members watching the object (TV) but extends to and includes the spaces between them. That is, the family watches the TV (or one another) with a tender or soft eye: sight becomes a manifestation of intimacy here because they are a part of one another and share the same flesh. There is a reversible relationship which necessarily comes with a soft eye or tender gaze. This sight does not rely on active participation of ‘each’ family member; rather their presence changes one another and the experience. There is a mutual implication of their lives, their TV watching ritual and the spaces between them. An understanding of the cross-over of the senses in a non-finite sense opens up the potential to discuss feeling and touching at depth in a broader, encompassing way. This family touches in a nonlocatable sensuous way (i.e. the sound of laughter elicits feelings of warmth and closeness), however, which sense enables touch is actually unclear as there is a more profound feeling of a filled space which diffuses feelings of closeness through a cross-over of vision, sound and touch (that is, the soft sight associated with watching the TV enables the intimate space for connection in the first place). There is a quality to these experiences which evokes feelings such as comfort, security and closeness. And yet, such a quality cannot be tidily summed up as a result of auditory, visual or tactile sensations. Such ‘profound feelings’ require further attention. These feelings draw on different notions of time, space and relationships, opening up an ontology of connection, closeness and warmth that requires a sensuous and embodied understanding of the world, one which is not necessarily located in a particular sense or body. Theoretical recognition of this touching at depth allows attention to be given to fleshy experiences of intimacy that are not necessarily linked to physical feeling or closeness in a Euclidean sense or a Cartesian separation of body and mind.23 Intimacy and relational tact are the direct connection of flesh or mi. We have seen this in the reflection of my pregnancy and the family’s TV ritual. We will now move to the final reflection which presents us with a felt connection between mother and child, a connection which draws on Japanese discourses of the ‘heart’.

22 The sensuous experience of vision relies on the sense of touch (Merleau-Ponty, 1964; Montagu, 1986; Ong, 1991; Vasseleu, 1998). For Montagu, eye contact can be “a form of touching at a distance” (Montagu, 1986: 24). For Merleau-Ponty, visible ‘belongs’ to tactile qualities (1968: 134). For Ong, “the tactile senses combine with sight to register depth and distance when these are presented in the visual field” (1991: 25). 23 Others have explored a generalized feeling in the body which includes internal and external senses as well as emotional dimensions of experience (cf Geurts, 2005; Heller-Roazan, 2009). For example, Heller-Roazan traces references to these, i.e. “a general feeling”, “coenaesthesis” (common feeling) and so on.

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Consider the following example: 4. Case 3: eyelashes and a mother’s lap She always had long eyelashes. The pediatrician had informed her mother that this would be a problem for her, particularly at a young age as she would play outdoors and the dust would settle on her lids. She was always losing an eyelash in her eye and was unable to get it out. Often, after her shower, the discomfort would become unbearable, so much so that she would climb on her mother’s lap to get the lash out. Her mother would open her eye, find the lash, rub her lid and the daughter would feel much better. Over the years, the problem became less, but sometimes she felt like she needed the comfort of her mother’s lap. She would sometimes feign an eyelash in her eye, to lie across her mother’s lap and feel her gentle touch on her lid.

4.1. Heartfelt touch Similar to the family TV ritual, I wrote this reflection as an adult in a distanced tone. The memory was unclear, but there were positive and warm feelings associated with this ritual. There seems to be a touching, emotive quality to this experience, one which moves beyond the eyelash, and helps us further explore the relations between the emotional and physical sense of touch, particularly via the notion of ‘heart’. Elsewhere I have defined a similar quality to touch as a meeting between bodies (Tahhan, 2008). Manning (2007) defines touch in a similar way, calling it “tender”. She cites Derrida and Dufourmantelle (2000: 111) who describes tender in the following way: to offer, or give, what can be given without rendering, that is to say without exchange, or without waiting for an other to render (Manning, 2007: 12). Similarly, intimate experiences of touch which draw on an emotional sense (that which affects us) are an encounter between whole people, not separate subjects or objects or ‘bodies’. There is no expectation of “exchange” or “waiting for an other to render”. Just as there are no borders in love (Metcalfe and Game, 2002) and I-Thou relations (Buber, 1958), there are no borders in touch which comes from the ‘heart’; there is also no merging. In Heartfelt Touch (see Case 3), the child seems to seek a certain form of contact with her mother to achieve a certain state. What might have begun from a physical manifestation of pain or discomfort (i.e. a lost eyelash) eventually becomes a way for her to feel close with her mother and experience the earlier more familiar forms of touch in later encounters (i.e. comfort, security).24 What is illuminating here is that although the child consciously sought this form of contact (with the aim and expectation) to remove the eyelash, the feelings of warmth which follow suggest that the child and mother are not separate and located selves, subjects or bodies coming together to achieve a certain state, but rather, are taken out of their selfconsciousness because of the very eyelash. That is, the very existence of the eyelash allows conscious and knowing ways of seeking closeness to be put aside; there is a renunciation between mother and child which has a special quality in its very “offering”.25

24 This may be mistaken as Freud’s primitive ‘oceanic’ feeling of infantile merger, where there is no distinction between oneself and one’s mother (and instead there is a merging in a symbiotic and undifferentiated union). 25 There are no separate bodies in this offering (Manning, 2007).

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There is a reciprocal relation here where the child receives the “gift of touch” (Manning, 2007: 10) because the mother offers it freely.26 This gift of touch is not located in a finite sense or body part but finds meaning in their relation and the spaces between them. That is, the feelings of warmth which emerged from this touch were not located purely in her mother’s ‘touch’ (or hand); rather, there were a combination of comforts which included her mother’s lap, her eyelash, the ritualistic nature of the scenario, the memories of comfort aroused in such a ritual, and, most significantly, the gift and the very offering which came from the ‘heart’. The word heart suggests a locatability in the body, but heart (as feeling) really signifies a presence of touching at depth, touch that is not locatable at all. There is a depth here that is not surfaced or layered in conceivable terms; there is a feeling that passes which is shared, mutual and inclusive. This feeling is best described as wholeness and incorporates a tug or warmth e a tangible feeling of connection, of belonging in the world.27 This is relevant to Ichikawa’s (1993: 161) relational equation (and feelings of being “at home”). There is a sense of rightness to this experience where there is no locatable object or person providing the child with feelings of contentment and belonging. Instead, there is a state of connectedness with the “cosmos as a whole” and a relational existence with people and objects (Capra et al., 1992: 14). Although the mother provides the child with feelings of security and comfort, this feeling also extends to and includes the ritualistic nature of the experience, the memories associated, and so on.28 This feeling of belonging (of “feeling-with” and “with-ness” of the world) helps us to question whether the eyelash was always there, whether the mother always eliminated the eyelash, or whether the feelings aroused in this setting, and the fact that it was done “from the heart” (Winnicott, 1981: 105) are what actually comforted the child.29 The term heart, and in particular, the notion of heartfelt touch, is commonly grounded in discourses of Japanese relationships (Tahhan, 2010; Lebra, 2004; Kondo, 1990). We have already seen that an understanding of European and Eastern discourses of embodiment helps us understand the potential for feeling and connection. Discourses of the ‘heart’ are also relevant here, specifically the term kokoro. The term kokoro refers to the ‘heart’ but it is not limited to its physical, biological function. Rather, the kokoro is the “seat of feeling and thought” (Kondo, 1990: 105). Literature on kokoro is often associated with the word ‘spirit’ or ki, just as the literature on mi draws on both heart and spirit in its very meaning. The meeting of kokoro evokes a different sense of time and space: kokoro is not truly here but also not truly there. There is a feeling of everywhere-ness in kokoro that fit in with Ichikawa’s mi as the whole existence and spirit of mi as all-encompassing. The spirit or ‘heart’ of mi becomes implicated by other mi and internalised and positioned accordingly. Although the word heart suggests a locatability in the physical body, heart (as related to spirit and mi) really signifies a presence of touching at depth, or heartfelt touch, that is not locatable at all. Instead, the sensuous experience in heartfelt touch incorporates

26 See Metcalfe and Game (2010) who explore the giving and receiving of a gift relation, one that is neither locatable nor sequential. 27 This is not a meeting of separate subjects or bodies but a new, mixed, inclusive body that happens through relation. There is a sort of infinitude where there are no definable people or objects or places. There is a kind of everywhere-ness where everyone is in relation, implicated and touching, yet there is also respect for the unique (but indefinable) difference that each participation makes to the whole. 28 Cf Manning’s reference to affect as the “with-ness of the movement of the world.[T]hat which grips me first in the moment of relation” (2007: xxi). It is also relevant to Paterson’s (2007) felt phenomenology as there is a sentiment of “feeling-with” between mother and child via cutaneous sensation, interpersonal affect and other metaphorical aspects of touch. 29 As Winnicott notes, “the proper care of an infant can only be done from the heart” (1981: 105; emphasis added).

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a felt and embraced connection in a meeting. There is a feeling that passes which is shared, mutual and inclusive. Implicated and “animate”, the feeling between hearts might incorporate a tug or a warmth that is indescribable, but a meeting so clear it is almost spoken.30 There is a link to wholeness: a “sonority of being” where the tones and feelings reverberate through the relationship, connecting the child and mother who “experience resonances, sentimental repercussions, reminders of [our] past” (Bachelard, 1994: xix). These reminders act as a way to maintain togetherness and “an enveloping warmth” (Bachelard, 1994: 7) that almost protects or cocoons the child when the eyelash no longer needs removing and the child no longer seeks the mother’s lap. The “original warmth” mu (at home) still resonates for the child, enabling the atto ho feeling to exist. Their hearts are still connected. I am not adding the ‘heart’ as an additional sixth sense, nor am I suggesting that mind-body dichotomies need to take into account a separate and contained understanding of the heart. Rather, feelings of closeness and connection require an understanding of heartfelt touch, as a manifestation of mi, a meeting between people that enables connecting and feeling close to someone through ways which are not necessarily always cutaneous, but are always affective. We have seen this in all three accounts, of the pregnancy, the ritual and memories evoked for the family watching the TV together, and the feelings of security and comfort which we felt between mother and child. There is a movement between people, a felt pull towards the other person but not as a separate subject or body. The pull happens in the relational space which is between and includes them. Just as the home is the “intimate space” which bears a mutual deepening for being (Bachelard, 1994), the heart is the “intimate space” which bears a mutual deepening between people in touch. Such a notion requires further attention, but this article has started to challenge familiar ways of thinking about touch, the senses and emotions via this notion of touching at depth. 5. Conclusion This article has explored the potential of feeling and connection in touch. It deliberately focused on three accounts of intimacy to lay the foundation of this conceptual device, touching at depth. It has shown that to understand touch as an affective and embodied experience, we need to move beyond subjectivity and beyond common assumptions about touch as physical and visible. Instead, we have seen that such forms of touch emanate from the finite body (separate, subjective and contained bodies) and this stifles the potential for feeling and connection. When touch is seen through a non-finite logic of the world, however, we become aware of an allencompassing space, depth and connection via the lived body which enables us to explore the potential for feeling and connection. This article has explored the lived body vis-à-vis the concepts flesh (Merleau-Ponty, 1968) and mi (Ichikawa, 1993). These not only help to dislocate mind-body dichotomies but have also begun to lay the foundations for understanding the relation between physical and emotional (affective) forms of touch. The concept, touching at depth, has also helped us further understand this relation. This depth is not located ‘inside’ or ‘outside’ the body or in a finite sense; rather touching at depth helps us move beyond the senses in a bodily (and therefore finite) capacity and explore an encompassing space and relationship in touch that brings out the potential for embodied and sensuous feeling and connection.

30 A popular phrase which emerged in my research on Japanese touch, intimacy and kokoro was: kokoro no ginsen ni fureru, which can directly be translated as, to touch one’s heartstrings.

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