The Mediation of Touch [Paperback]

The first communication between human beings, the one between the newborn and the mother, happens through touch. Strangely this first way of relating to each other  has barely been considered by our education and our culture, which have favoured sight to the detriment of touch. And yet touching and being touched means experiencing ourselves as living beings. For lack of such a touch, we do not perceive the limits nor the sensitive potential of our bodies. Then we remain immersed in a natural or a cultural universe, incapable of reaching our own individuation and of knowing our fundamental difference from the  other(s).

Desire, in particular sexuate desire, is a call for touching one another anew. But this touch  requires us to have gained our autonomy and to be able to open up to and  commune with the other as transcendent to ourselves while staying  in ourselves. This book unveils and explores how touch can act as a basic living mediation in love and,more generally, in our comprehensive individual and collective human becoming. It also considers how touch can contribute to founding  a culture respectful of difference instead of subjecting them to an ideal of sameness. We need touch as mediation to fulfil our humanity and to build a truly human thinking and world. 

Chapter 1: Introduction: Expelled  From  The  Nest.- Part I: Merged  With  The  World.- Chapter 2: Born Of Soma And Germ Cells.- Chapter 3: Space-Time Of The Living.- Chapter 4: The World Of Human Beings.- Part II: Domination Of Spirit Over Soul.- Chapter 5: The Burial Of Touch.- Chapter 6: Anesthesia Of Soul By Spirit.- Chapter 7: A History Cut Off From Germ Cells.- Part IIlƒ