Privileging exploratory hands: prehension, apprehension, comprehension

Stuart, S.A.J. (2013) Privileging exploratory hands: prehension, apprehension, comprehension. In: Radman, Z. (ed.) The Hand, an Organ of the Mind: What the Manual Tells the Mental. MIT Press: Cambridge, MA, pp. 167-186. ISBN 9780262018845

Abstract

Through our hands we construct our world and through our construction of our world we construct ourselves. We reach with our hands and touch with our hands, and with this reaching and touching we come to understand how things feel and are. It is not an utterable knowledge, yet it is knowing the world in a dynamically-engaged affective, effective way. Through affective feedback our reaching and touching be- comes a prehensive grasping which leads, through the enkinaesthetic givenness of the agent with its world, to a situated and embodied knowing, and the rudiments of apprehension. With each fresh comprehension a new enkinaesthetic enquiry is engendered; with each enquiry we have afresh the anticipatory dynam- ics of reaching, touching and feeling, with the hand-to-object of world-investigation, the hand-to-body of auto-investigation and investigating the Other.

• Item Type: Book Sections
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Stuart, Dr Susan
• Authors: Stuart, S.A.J.
• College/School: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Humanities > Information Studies
• Publisher: MIT Press
• ISBN: 9780262018845
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2013 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced with the permission of the publisher