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Touch is one of the most unconscious senses. Whenever you smell, taste, or see something, you usually have some sense of awareness or conscious interference with that process, but with touch, we do it all the time, every day, 24/7, and mainly subconsciously. We don't catch ourselves thinking about the things we are always touching, from the clothes touching our skin to the keyboard keys we hit with our fingers. We categorize touches by texture much like we do with taste and flavors, but unlike everything you put in your mouth, sometimes you don't think about how you're experiencing touch.
I also thought that the difference between "feminine" and "masculine" touch and the different associations Classen discusses in The Deepest Sense: A Cultural History of Touch was fascinating.
For example, within her section women's Touch in chapter four, Classen describes how touch is considered a lower sense and therefore associated with women who are the "lesser" gender. When Eve partook in the apple, she was doing so to satisfy her gustatory needs, not to seek greater knowledge. Now, a woman's touch is a man's weakness; as Classen wrote, "the mere fact of its being pleasurably touchable made it seem a peril." Although it is a concept that is meant to be somewhat misogynistic, I like the idea that a women's touch is so endangering to men that there needs not to be physical contact to affect them physically. Women need not even touch men to affect them, and as such, a women's touch is seen as a threat to "masculine dominance."
I found Classen's discussion of gender associations with touch really interesting as well! I really like the quote that you included that says "the mere fact of its being pleasurably touchable made it seem a peril." This reminded me of the "femme fatale" character trait.
ReplyDeleteI love this reflection. But - "When Eve partook in the apple, she was doing so to satisfy her gustatory needs, not to seek greater knowledge." You think so? I think tasting is one of the most important and powerful ways of knowing. Some of the great Muslim and Jewish mystics used "taste" as a term for a kind of knowing of God in both your mind and body, more than just cognitive knowing. It is an intimate knowing, since it requires actual internalization of the Other, just as our gustatory sense of of tasting food does. No wonder some people are so scared of it, and project their fear misogynistically. My own reading of the Garden of Eden story is that it equates tasting with important knowing, "they tasted the fruit [of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil] and they knew they were naked..." Also, as you may know, in Biblical Hebrew, the word "know" often refers to sex, - "knowing in the Biblical sense." That's also why the Song of Songs love to use taste and eating metaphors to refer to sexual relations. Our patriarchal culture seems to gender intimacy as female, and is quite ambivalent, if not terrified of it.
ReplyDeleteI like to think about the feminine v masculine touch as well, and beyond what you have already said it is also interesting to consider how we today process touch differently as women as well. How much of touch is autonomous? Do we have agency in touch and how does it affect our perceptions of it?
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