A Touch-Up

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Touch is an interesting sense as far as I am confirmed, it is weirdly connected to a lot of negative things for me and this was definitely reaffirmed by Classen. I have felt funny enough that this seems to be one of the most negatively connected senses to religion, lots of pain and punishment is a direct result of touch especially in Western traditions like Christianity. An entire chapter of her book, The Deepest Sense : A Cultural History of Touch, is called Painful Times and focuses on a lot of what I have associated with my sense of touch, the deeply negative and painful connotations of the sense and how it may relate to history and religion. Though on page 49, she offers a simple sentence that forces me to think just a bit harder on the connection, “The roles of touching treatment, in turn, were myriad.”

This sentence made me reconsider some connotations due to indexing of the really healing properties of touch. Though it may not be inherently religious in its context, healing does have a place within faith and religious experience, a lot of it coming from touch. I may think of the many moments where I burnt myself working in a kitchen, or scratched up clearing thickets for landscaping but there is another side to this metaphorical coin and a really poignant place that it is found is in religion. There are good things about touch in all aspects of life such as a loving embrace but there are some really special cases within the religious context such as faith healing. In the Evangelical setting this can be seen as the ultimate form of healing, and though this may be scientifically up for debate, what is not for debate is the deep importance of this practice to its audience. The touch of a powerful individual can mean so much more than a single act of contact, its shapes one’s existence to what the outcome they want. This is an extreme case but it warrants me to think about the sense’s connective tissue as well as the fact that there is a good side to touch and it can really do a lot when one puts their mind to it.

Comments

  1. Brooke KramerMay 7, 2020 at 2:57 PM

    I was also particularly interested in that chapter on pain as well. When I think of touch, the first thing that I usually think of is comfort and closeness so it was interesting to see the contrast in the negative connotations of touch. I like how you wrote about how touch can shape someone's existence to their desired outcome. Since physical touch is something that I hold important, I agree that it can change someone's course based on how influential touch is to them.

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