The touch of language: Jean Luc Nancy's contingent reading

Syrotinski, M. (2013) The touch of language: Jean Luc Nancy's contingent reading. Senses and Society, 8(1), pp. 85-95. (doi: 10.2752/174589313X13500466751047)

Full text not currently available from Enlighten.

Abstract

This article takes two instances of circumstantial or “contingent“ encounters - Jean-Luc Nancy's reading of Michel Leiris and Jacques Derrida's reading of Jean-Luc Nancy, and the points of contact between these encounters - in order to foreground the primacy of touch in Nancy's thought, and to delineate more precisely the haptic quality of his own poetic practice of reading and writing. While his encounter with Leiris produces a text that, in an apparently narcissistic gesture, sees “eye to eye“ with Leiris's playful language and his endless reworking of autobiographical subjectivity, the manner in which Nancy's thought touches upon Derrida's requires a rethinking of the specularity of this narcissism, and is more akin to what both Derrida and Nancy would call a deconstruction of the sense of touch itself.

Item Type:Articles
Status:Published
Refereed:Yes
Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID:Syrotinski, Professor Michael
Authors: Syrotinski, M.
College/School:College of Arts & Humanities > School of Modern Languages and Cultures > French
Journal Name:Senses and Society
Publisher:Berg Publishers
ISSN:1745-8927
ISSN (Online):1745-8935

University Staff: Request a correction | Enlighten Editors: Update this record