This book puts a finger on the nerve of culture by delving into the social life of touch, our most elusive yet most vital sense. From the tortures of the Inquisition to the corporeal comforts of modernity, and from the tactile therapies of Asian medicine to the virtual tactility of cyberspace, The Book of Touch offers excursions into a sensory territory both foreign and familiar. How are masculine and feminine identities shaped by touch? What are the tactile experiences of the blind, or the autistic? How is touch developed differently across cultures? What are the boundaries of pain and pleasure? Is there a politics of touch? Bringing together classic writings and new work, this is an essential guide for anyone interested in the body, the senses and the experiential world.

About the author

Constance Classen is the author of Worlds of Sense: Exploring the Senses in History and Across Cultures, and The Color of Angels: Cosmology, Gender and the Aesthetic Imagination, among other works.

Contents

FINAL

"Fingerprints: Writing About Touch"
Constance Classen, Concordia University


I. Contact

Contact
Constance Classen, Concordia University

Tactile Communication
Ruth Finnegan, Open University

The Social Skin: Culture and Tactility
David Howes, Concordia University

Handling Children: To Touch or Not to Touch?
Anthony Synnott, Concordia University

The American Touch: Tactile Imagery in American
Religion and Politics'
David Chidester, University of Cape Town, South Africa

II. Pleasure

Pleasure
Constance Classen, Concordia University

The Pleasures of Touch
Yi Fu Tuan

Homely Pleasures: The Pursuit of Comfort in
the Eighteenth Century'
John E. Crowley, Dalhousie University, Canada

Bourgeois Love: Mabel Loomis Todd
Peter Gay

Desiring Touch in Sartre and Beavoir
Penelope Deutscher, Northwestern University, USA

III. Pain

Pain
Constance Classen, Concordia University

The Language of Pain in India
Judy Pugh, Michigan State University

The Tortures of the Inquisition and
the Invention of Modern Guilt
Ariel Glucklich, Georgetown University, USA

Sex, Pain and the Marquis de Sade
David B. Morris, University of Virginia

Primate Experiments: Harry Harlow and
the Technology of Love
Donna Harraway, University of California at Santa Cruz

V. Male Bonding

Male Bonding
Constance Classen, University of Concordia

The Men's House: Touching and Wrestling Among Mehinaku Men
Thomas Gregor, Vanderbilt University, USA

The Imperial Touch: Schooling Male Bodies in Colonial India
'Part I' - E.D. Tyndale-Biscoe, 'Part II' - Satadru Sen, Washington University, USA

Sexuality and the Drill: The Body Reconstructed in
the Military Academy
Klaus Theweleit, Freiburg University, Germany

The Dying Kiss: Intimacy and Gender in the Trenches
of World War I
Santanu Das, Cambridge University

IV. Women's Touch

Women's Touch
Constance Classen, Concordia University

Nu Shu: Female Writing in China
Wang Ping, Macalester College, USA

Sarak's Crisis: Childbirth and Weaning Among the Inuit
Jean Briggs, Memorial University of Newfoundland

Feminine Tactics: Designing Women in the Eighteenth Century
Constance Classen, Concordia University

Lacemaker and Laundress: Working Women in Early-Twentieth-Century Paris
Madeleine Henrey

VI. Control

Control
Constance Classen, Concordia University

On Medieval Manners
Norbert Elias

Touch in the Museum
Constance Classen, Concordia University

Bourgeois Perception: The Gaze and the Contaminating Touch
Peter Stallybrass, University of Pennsylvania and Allon White

In a Victorian Prison: Privations of the Flesh
Philip Priestly

VII. Uncommon Touch

Uncommon Touch
Constance Classen, Concordia University

Phantom Touch in "The Case of George Dedlow"
S. Weir Mitchell

Autistic Touch and the Squeeze Machine
Temple Grandin

Rainfall and the Blind Body
John Hull

Tactilism
F.T. Marinetti

Visceral Perception
Drew Leder, Layola College in Maryland, USA

VIII. Touch Therapies

Touch Therapies
Constance Classen, Concordia University

Magical Healing: The King's Touch
Keith Thomas

A Touch of Danger: The Bedside Manners of the Eighteenth-Century Physician
Roy Porter

Ayurvedic Medicine and the History of Massage
S.V. Govindan

Breathing Spaces: Quijong and Healing
Nancy Chen, University of California at Santa Cruz, USA

The Golden Age of Electrotherapy
Carolyn Thomas de la Pena, University of California at Davis, USA

VII. Tactile Technologies

Tactile Technologies
Constance Classen, Concordia University

Modernist Fictions of Speed
Sara Danius, Uppsala University, Sweden

"Make it Snuggle in the Palm": The Commodification of Touch
Roy Sheldon and Egmont Arens

Grasping the Image: How Photographs are Handled
Elizabeth Edwards, Pitt Rivers Museum Research Centre, University of Oxford

Digital Touch
Mark Paterson, University of the West of England

Spacemaking: Experiences of a Virtual Body
Susan Kozel, Simon Fraser University, Canada

No affiliation: no institution, retired or deceased