“Touch is not peripheral to human existence, it is essential to it... touch is the meaning of being human” (38). When touching stops, its “as if the skin of the other had in fact been torn off.”
-Dworkin, Intercourse.
Tactile communication reveals something particularly essential about the other; something that the visual, verbal, and olfactive cannot hope to achieve; and it is something indispensable for sexual interaction.The significance of coitus is in the truths revealed through the seemingly simple act of organ interaction.
If an infant is not touched in an incubator, it will die.
Holding hands, high fives, hand shaking, hugs and kisses, these social norms are not just mere formalities; they are products of something far deeper to the idea of humanity. The nature of human being would be unrecognizable without touch.
So what can we say about the solitary arts of reading and writing?
Something which the electronic universe has certainly expanded on.
A loss of humanity or a sign of something post-human?
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ReplyDeleteaaah! i removed this by accident.. the question was about repulsion towards body fluids...
ReplyDeleteim not sure how to reply, not because it is irrelevant.
body fluid is an intermediary between touch, but it is similar in many ways, like, for example, the degree that people are open to its exchange.
what i find interesting is people's repulsion to their own body fluid...