Emotion, Space and Society 7 (2013) 45e53

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Emotion, Space and Society

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/emospa

Touching at depth: The potential of feeling and connection

Diana Adis Tahhan
School of Social Sciences and International Studies, The University of New South Wales, Sydney NSW 2052, Australia

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The senses are often talked of as bodily senses. Although more recently there has been valuable work on
Received 11 November 2010 the cross-over of the senses, it is still common for our understanding of the senses to be located in the
Received in revised form finite body: the body that hears, smells, sees, tastes and touches. There is a defined subjectivity and
15 March 2012
identity logic here which ontologically impacts on how we feel, particularly in the context of touch. For
Accepted 15 March 2012
example, if it is my body that touches, it must be my body that feels. Or, if my body touches another, that
body feels my touch and vice versa. Emphasis is on intersubjectivity and separate bodies/senses rather
Keywords:
than on feeling, connection and emotion. This paper explores affective and embodied meanings of touch. It
Touch
Body
moves beyond common assumptions underlying most literature on touch, assumptions which regard
Flesh touch as physical and visible. Touch cannot be viewed primarily as a bodily sense for it then emanates
Feeling from a finite body, a body which is separate, subjective and contained. This type of touch (or body) stifles
Senses the potential for feeling and connection. When touch is viewed as ‘flesh’ or ‘mi’, however, we become
Heart aware of a non-finite logic of the world which helps us reassess touch. There is a sensuous and embodied
connection in flesh that is at the ‘heart’ of this type of touch. This paper develops the notion of a ‘touching
at depth’ which helps us move beyond the senses in a bodily (and therefore finite) capacity and explore
an encompassing space and relationship in touch that brings out the potential of feeling, connection and
emotion.
Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction perpetuate assumptions about physical and visible forms of touch

The senses, in particular, the sense of touch, are often assumed
in popular discourse as a ‘bodily’ sense. Although touch is some-
times conceived as affective and metaphorical (i.e. I was deeply
touched by an experience), it is usually grounded in discourses of
physicality and visibility (i.e. I touch your hand with mine). It seems
that describing touch vis-à-vis physical terms such as tactile
communication, bodily contact and physical contact enables us to
understand tangible and concrete experiences of touch. Affective
forms of touch, on the other hand, are linked to emotions or feel-
ings. The emotional sense of touch is less extensively researched
than the physical (Detamore, 2010; Dixon and Straughan, 2010;
Paterson, 2007), presumably because it is harder to conceptualize
and move beyond this priority on the physical. Often described in
terms of the heart or mind, being touched or affected by an expe-
rience seems more intangible and less locatable than the physical
sense of touch, particularly because it brings up the question of
feelings.
Specific works devoted to ‘touch’ or ‘touching’ tend to take for
granted the very meaning of touch, and more often then not,
E-mail address: diana.adistahhan@gmail.com.
(Josipovici, 1996; Montagu, 1986).1 A fundamental issue here is that
such meanings of touch restrict our understanding to the finite,
located matter: the physical body. And touch which emanates from
a finite body often presumes subjectivity (my body, your body, that
body) and tells us very little about the actual lived experience of
touch. Such contained notions limit our understanding of the
emotional sense of touch and the potential for feeling and
connection.2 This type of touch is rational, known, social, passive or
active action, contained within a framework of the body that is
separate and split from anything else. This paper argues that touch
1
See theorists such as Detamore (2010), Paterson (2007), Povinelli (2006), and
Tuan (1993) who recognize this distinction.
2
For example, when Montagu speaks of touch, he speaks of subjects, objects and
bodies: “bodily contact with the other.provides the essential source of comfort,
security, warmth” (1986, 95). However, he does not explore the ways in which such
feelings of comfort, security or warmth become possible through touch in the first
place. Josipovici (1996), moves beyond Montagu’s analysis and speaks of the
“essential relationship” in touch. He talks of space, time, distance, proximity and
presence, leaning towards an understanding of embodiment, but he too still limits
touch to the boundaries of bodies, subjects and objects. Such contained explana-
tions of touch pose conceptual problems for understandings of feeling and
connection.

1755-4586/$ e see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.emospa.2012.03.004
46 D.A. Tahhan / Emotion, Space and Society 7 (2013) 45e53
which emanates from the finite body reduces the potential for
feeling and connection; physical touch or touch from the ‘body’ also
makes it harder to appreciate the nuanced and manifold meanings
of touch. Although emotional forms of touch, for example, suggest
we need to attend to the importance of affect and feelings, existing
conceptual frameworks are limited to approach these different
forms of touch.3
This paper explores touch within the context of feeling and
connection.4 Touch is not viewed within its traditional finite sense
of emanating from the body or physicality, nor is touch viewed as
a purely affective, ‘interior’ experience of a purely ‘emotional’ kind.
Rather, this paper adopts a relational understanding of touch which
relies on a more complexly embodied and sensuous experience of
touch, and helps us explore the relations between the emotional
and physical sense of touch. This relational understanding is
described in this paper as a touching at depth.5 When people
connect with other people, objects and their environment, they feel
a wholeness, a potential, a connection that isn’t located, and isn’t
finite. Touching at depth is this relational quality which relies on the
ontological change from Cartesian body to wholeness. In other
words, touching at depth relates to the moment of ‘real’ intimacy,
love or meeting between people. Touching at depth is not locatable
in a particular body part or particular sense e there are no separate
subjects, bodies or parts coming towards the other with purpose
and motive; rather, this form of touch has intimate manifestations
(is not only physical or from the ‘body’) and finds meaning through
an embodied felt relation and deep sense of connection e there is
an openness to who the person actually is, and a renunciation of
prior self to the feeling and person (that is, the positionally defined
body of the ‘touching’ person and the person ‘being-touched’ can
no longer be felt).
Touching at depth, as an analytical tool, aims to move beyond
conventional forms of touch, and to provide a language for intimate
forms of touch and feeling. Firstly, however, it is necessary to
provide some account of the methodological approach employed in
this article as well as the theoretical implications of touching at
depth.
3
For example, emotions are often located within some notion of the interior of
the human being, and such notions are often associated with reflection and
memory (see Davidson et al., 2005). Dixon and Straughan (2010: 453) note that in
more recent years, geographers have begun to look at emotions more broadly in the
context of self, other places, people, things, etc.
4
Elsewhere I have referred to this in the context of intimacy (Tahhan, 2008). This
has been called love by Metcalfe and Game (2002) and meeting by Buber (1958)
and is based on a logic where there are no separate subjects, bodies or objects
but a relational meeting between whole and active beings. Manning calls similar
forms of touch “tender” (2007, 12) while Levinas refers to an intimate caress which
“aims at neither a person nor a thing. It loses itself in a being that dissipates.”
(Levinas, 1969: 259). In other words, there is “nothing” actually being touched.
There is no body of the subject or body of the object.
5
This research on touch originally developed from a Japanese cultural context,
where physical forms of touch are uncommon and relationships usually rely on
more indirect and subtle forms of communication (i.e. Lebra, 2004; Tahhan,
2007). Ethnographic research conducted in Japan revealed various ways of
having meaningful relationships. Most participants commented on their non-
tactile forms of closeness with their loved ones. Often, these forms were groun-
ded in greetings or daily rituals which highlighted care and love. However, what
was so caring or loving about that particular context was not always clear.
Although this paper does not draw on the specific cultural examples of Japanese
relationships, it is important to note that the thoughts regarding touching at depth
emerged from this cultural context and that some of the examples used in this
paper are embedded with similar notions of touch. Most importantly, however,
although touching at depth was inspired by this cultural context, it is not neces-
sarily restricted to it. This paper reveals a wider applicability of touching at depth
which is more universally significant and connects experiences and meanings of
touch and intimacy.
1.1. Lived experiences and touching at depth
This article is based on three personal accounts of intimacy
which help to draw out this notion of touching at depth. Elsewhere I
have explored touching at depth in a Japanese cultural context
(Tahhan, 2007, 2008, 2010). However, to truly appreciate the
nuances of the feelings and emotions and depth (which I was
struggling to conceptualize at the time), I had to go back to the ‘real’
intimacies of the life in which I participate, that is, I had to connect
with my own feelings, body and lived experience to be more
“honest and more engaged” (See Richardson, 2000: 924) with my
research. The three personal accounts are reflections recorded over
the past decade as I have tried to develop this notion of touching at
depth. These reflections are based on a sense of intimate partici-
pation that isn’t subjective (or clearly, objective). The whole
methodological and conceptual point of touching at depth is that we
are not engaged as selves, as ‘autos’, but as participants in relation.
This becomes more meaningful when done phenomenologically
(see Moustakas, 1994).
The article deliberately draws on my own personal lived expe-
rience and perceptions in relation to three specific situations
because of their ability to provide insight into the embodied and
sensuous nature of touch. All three reflections draw on experiences
of self-and-other, in order to draw out the theoretical implications
of intimate relationships. The first reflection was written during
pregnancy, when I became aware of different, more embodied ways
of touching, while the second and third accounts are two memories
from my childhood, both which evoked strong feelings of security
and connection with my family. The tone and voice in the first
reflection is different to the other two reflections, and asks us to
engage with the text in different ways. This was not deliberate nor
was it conscious at the time. The first reflection is written in first
person and present tense. The fact that I was actually pregnant at
the time meant that I felt present to and in “open dialogue” (Welch,
2001: 68) with the text as I wrote it. The other two reflections, on
the other hand, were recorded several years after the ‘rituals’ had
ceased, and use more of a distanced voice. This seems to require
a different sort of attention, not just because of the way they were
written (where I was neither subjective nor objective) but because
they are based on an intimate sense of participation that is not quite
so obviously ‘touch’ (i.e. sound of laughter, being in the same
space). I needed to engage with and feel the text and “create spaces
in and around.[these reflections] from which new things [could]
continue to erupt” (Brearley, 2001: 29). From there, the meaning of
touch could also develop.
Before we attend to the empirical materials that will inform our
understandings of touching at depth, it is necessary to unpack the
phenomenological meanings of touch which are the foundation of
this paper, meanings which draw on European as well as Eastern
concepts of embodiment, and which are not necessarily bounded
by cultural contexts.
1.2. Theoretical implications of touching at depth
This article seeks to describe the feelings and connections
possible between people vis-à-vis touching at depth. In intimate
encounters, there is a depth between people which is characterized
by a non-Euclidean space where the quality of the feeling is
undefined (whole). This notion of wholeness is a distinguishable
state from ‘totality’. Totality is definable and bounded; on the other
hand, this feeling of wholeness is derived from different experi-
ences of state and being, where whole cannot be defined: it is open
and connective. This feeling moves touch from the container of the
finite, subject-object’s body to a fleshy relation that incorporates
more than just body. Therefore, the potential of feeling and
 D.A. Tahhan / Emotion, Space and Society 7 (2013) 45e53
connection in touching at depth cannot be viewed via touch as
a ‘bodily’ sense. Instead, touch and the senses need to be viewed as
‘flesh’ (Merleau-Ponty, 1968) or ‘mi’ (Ichikawa, 1993), terms which
help us become aware of a non-finite logic of the world.
Conventional approaches to bodies, senses and emotions often
still, implicitly, rely on a finite logic of the world, a binary opposi-
tion between body and mind, because they continue to think of the
body and senses and emotions as the possessions of a subject.6 The
body, for example, is often still assumed to have object-like attri-
butes of a boundary, an inside distinct from an outside, a physi-
cality. The limitations of this approach have been demonstrated by
feminist and phenomenological theorists, among others, who work
against the Cartesian grain (Butler, 1997; Detamore, 2010; Dixon
and Straughan, 2010; Ichikawa, 1993; Merleau-Ponty, 1968; Pater-
son, 2007; Povinelli, 2006; Tuan, 1993). It is the phenomenological
accounts of embodiment by Merleau-Ponty and Ichikawa, however,
which are used in this article to develop a non-Cartesian ontology
that allows for a deeper understanding of touch. Merleau-Ponty’s
notion of flesh, and Ichikawa’s notion of mi, both break through
these assumptions and help find a way to talk about touch that is
not necessarily bounded, not necessarily defined (finite), not
necessarily associated with a subject. These conceptual tools not
only help us reassess touch, but also provide a language to under-
stand an encompassing space and relationship in touch that brings
out the potential of feeling and connection, which includes, but is
not limited to, body, emotion and senses. This article is primarily
conceptual, drawing out the phenomenological implications of
touch.
Understanding touch as a ‘bodily sense’ upholds the Cartesian
disjuncture of physical and non-physical. Understanding touch as
‘flesh’ or ‘mi’, however, helps us to explore the potential of the lived
body and to suspend mind-body dichotomies. Two theorists who
are particularly relevant here are Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Hir-
oshi Ichikawa. Through their concepts of the lived body, flesh
(Merleau-Ponty, 1968) and mi (Ichikawa, 1993), these theorists offer
useful ways in which we can approach the embodied nature of
touch and its intimate and sensuous manifestations. Connected
corporeality through relational space and embodied connections
are the subject of their phenomenological analyses of flesh and mi.
Firstly let us consider the work of Merleau-Ponty, whose concept of
flesh, is particularly relevant here.
For Merleau-Ponty (2002), the lived body is the seat of all
human relation to the world. He talks of the lived body as flesh,
which is made of the same flesh of the world. Flesh connects the
body to the world and vice versa (Merleau-Ponty, 1968). But in
flesh, it is not accurate to talk of the body, as a separate, contained
entity. Through flesh, there is a relationship between subject and
object, self and other. The body is both subject and object:
because a sort of dehiscence opens my body in two, and because
between my body looked at and my body looking, my body
touched and my body touching, there is overlapping encroach-
ment, so that we must say that the things pass into us as well as
we into the things (Merleau-Ponty, 1968: 123).
Flesh enables a tangible spatial connection between people. This
connection is possible via a reciprocal and reversible relation of
perceptibility:
Every perception is “doubled perception” where the “percipient
‘other side’ of bodily flesh (seeing, touching, tasting) is deeply
embedded in or meshed with the density of its perceptibility
(visibility, tangibility, tastability)” (Cataldi, 1993: 64).
6
Cf Shilling (1993) and Turner (1997).
47
Flesh finds meaning in “real contact” (Cataldi, 1993). In such
contact, you cannot tell who is who or specifically who is seeing
whom or touching whom. When this “overlapping encroachment”
connects us, we are connected through flesh (because we are part
of the flesh of the world). Furthermore, “we are one body by virtue
of our relations with others” (Oliver, 1997: 131). Indeed the bodies
of people might be the vehicle through which touch occurs, but it is
flesh that connects and makes feelings of closeness and connection
possible.7
Ichikawa’s concept mi helps to extend this understanding of
flesh, touch, connection and feeling. Similar to the concept, flesh,
the understanding of mi helps us move beyond the fixed idea of
the body as finite and physical to a state of ecological connect-
edness. The etymology of the Chinese character mi refers to the
“body”. However, similar to flesh, mi is not located in the con-
tained or finite body or “enclosed in the skin” (Ozawa-de Silva,
2002: 8). In fact, Ichikawa’s exploration of mi provides us with
multi-layered meanings which include an infinite space that is
all-encompassing and connecting: mi reveals an ontology that
includes the body, heart, mind, self, whole existence, including
objects and that which is attached to mi (i.e. garments or
belongings of the body). These are not separate entities, but,
similar to flesh, rely on a reciprocal reversible relation where, “I
am both the subject that is doing the touching as well as the
object that is being touched” (Ozawa-de Silva, 2002: 6). Although
the emic explanation of mi is grounded in a Japanese linguistic
and cultural context, its applicability is much broader. Such an
embodied understanding of relationships and all-encompassing
space helps us open up our analysis of feeling and connection,
where we become implicated and different through our partici-
pation in the world and touch.8
In conversation with Merleau-Ponty and Ichikawa, we are better
able to explore the embodied and sensuous connections in touching
at depth. There is potential to mistake this depth as constructing
a Cartesian dualism which perpetuates the notion of both an
‘inside’ and ‘outside’ to subjectivity as well as a ‘depth’ and ‘surface’
to touch. However, when we address touch as flesh or mi we are
opened to an ontology of space, depth and connection which is
non-finite and encompassing. This depth is not empty or void, nor is
it an intangible space which cannot be felt. Rather, there is a filled
space where we move beyond intersubjectivity and surfaces and
become a part of a different space where we are present and feel
close and connected (though not necessarily in physically proximal
forms).
Touching at depth enables us to explore the potential of lived
experiences of touch where touch is not an isolated sense. There is
a depth to intimate, embodied forms of touch here which relies on
a relational understanding of sensorium. That is, touch interacts
7
Paterson (2007) brings forward the relation between touch and affective
experience. He recognizes the importance of thinking about “touch and tactility
outside individual skin and between bodies, [and] bodies understood to share
energies at both a local and cosmological level” (2007: 148). He develops the
notion of “feeling-with”, a notion that enables the “ambiguity of touching as
physical and affective, as literal and metaphorical, reaching across space from the
toucher to the touched, grasping and drawing them into proximity” (2007, 171)
and a “felt phenomenology..a suitable method for describing encounters with
touching as both individual cutaneous sensation, interpersonal affect, and other
metaphorical aspects (proximity, feeling-with)” (2007, 150). He considers touching
and being touched by others through the useful example of reiki, the subtle
energy healing where practitioners transfer healing energy (ki) through the
palms.
8
As Ichikawa says, we become a different mi in relation with other people, “hito
no mi ni naru” (Ichikawa, 1993: 91).
48 D.A. Tahhan / Emotion, Space and Society 7 (2013) 45e53
with other senses to create meaningful relationships.9 In fact, as we
will see below, touching at depth seems to draw on other ‘senses’,
even those not framed in the traditional domain of the ‘five’
senses.10 The depth ascribed to this type of embodied, sensuous
touch reveals significant spatial and tactile relations11 vis-à-vis
rituals, memories, feelings and connections where discourses of the
‘heart’ (kokoro)12 also become important.
The following example of pregnancy is the article’s first reflec-
tive account, and its analysis of conscious and felt forms of touch
might help to illuminate the potential for feeling and connection in
touch.
2. Case 1: felt flutters and connections in pregnancy
The first day I lay there and felt a flutter, I was caught by surprise.
Then ever since, the movements have gotten stronger. These
movements cannot just be described as an ‘inside’ touch, for they
evoke flutters and feelings of warmth throughout my body. As the
movements have got stronger, I am now aware of the power of the
conscious and more ‘outside’ knowing touch. I place my hand on
my belly to reaffirm the strength of the movement. But that
sometimes takes away from that special feeling, as I consciously try
to confirm the ‘inside’ movements from the ‘outside’.
Feeling the movements from the outside might suggest that this is
real touch because I can affirm the tangible felt sensation of the
movement. However, there is a consciousness associated with this
touch and I try to control the movement e it does not encompass
me; I try to encompass it.
When the movement is felt from within, I am not being touched by
the movement in a purely metaphorical sense. Yes, I feel touched,
but I am embodied by a touch which is not just mine. When I place
my hand on my belly and I feel the movements from within e there
is a dialogue between my hand, the baby and the skin and spaces
between us. And this is an all-encompassing ‘felt’ sensation that
moves me. And when my partner places his hand on my belly, the
feeling includes him; when he places his lips on my belly and
9
Literature on the senses has also opened up our understanding of the meanings
of touch (Classen, 2005; Feld, 1990; Geurts, 2005; Howes, 2003). Research on touch
no longer necessarily constitutes an independent domain of experience but inter-
acts with other sensory domains, often in different combinations and hierarchies
(Classen, 2005; Howes, 2003). Feld (1990) and Geurts (2005) also add important
dimensions to describing the priority and relations of the senses, particularly touch.
For example, Feld explores how sounds actively communicate and embody deeply
felt sentiments, while Geurts explores feeling and consciousness in terms of the
senses. Heller-Roazan’s (2009) recent archaeology of sensation, traces the sense of
touch, from Socrates to Aristotle to the Cartesians. He identifies various philoso-
phers and their understanding of touch, feeling and the “common sense”. His work
provides an interesting survey of how conceptions of touch and the senses have
evolved.
10
Guerts’ ethnographic analysis of Anlo-Ewe perspectives of sensory order is
particularly relevant here. She explores how the five-senses model does not
necessarily correspond to all cultural contexts. She suggests that for the Anlo-Ewes,
there is a “more generalized feeling in the body that includes both internal senses.
and external senses, as well as other perceptual, emotional, and intuitive dimen-
sions of experience” (2005, 166). Similarly, Heller-Roazan discusses several theorists
who explore and theorise this general feeling.
11
Such relations, when viewed within the context of human geography,
“emphasise the interplay between the haptic, the visual, the aural and the olfactory
e in short, with synaesthesia e in providing the precognitive and cognitive means
through which the body apprehends and negotiates place and time” (Dixon and
Straughan, 2010: 452).
12
I am aware that the term, heart, is ambiguous but it’s the Japanese meaning of
the term, kokoro (heart) to which I refer, and which further develops our under-
standing of embodiment. Kokoro (heart) cannot just be viewed in its physiological
capacity; rather kokoro is the ‘the seat of feeling and thought’ (Kondo, 1990, 105).
This emphasis on feeling and thought is fundamental to our understanding of touch
and connection as it helps take us away from popular discussions of feeling that are
located in the ‘body’.
speaks, the sounds may reverberate through to the baby and the
baby may respond. This responsiveness is touch; this inclusion is
touch; this all-encompassing felt experience is touch.
2.1. Touch as me and not-me: conscious versus felt forms of touch
The above description of my pregnancy was written in its early
stages, when I first began to feel our baby move. It made me begin to
consider the experience of touch from ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ my
body.13 Firstly, there was a consciousness ascribed to the physical
movements of ‘the baby’. I was consciously trying to feel the
movements of the baby, and anticipate the next movement.
However, there is a tension in the language here (and above) which I
had not been aware of in my initial writings about my pregnancy,
and which became more obvious as time went by and the feelings
and connections with the baby deepened. When I was consciously
attempting to feel the movement, I was already following the
Cartesian disjuncture of physical and non-physical, where touch
was located in the finite body or ‘me’. This involved a consciousness
about our separate bodies and movements and about where my
body was placed in this experience. In such a consciousness, touch is
experienced as ‘me’, ‘mine’ or from ‘my body’. There are no real
possibilities for feeling or connection here as the relationship is
stifled by subjectivity, separate and contained bodies and identity.14
Touch came from ‘inside-me’,15 a part of me that I thought could be
controlled or mastered when I affirmed the movements from the
outside. But the movements cannot be defined in Euclidean terms,
of minutes, hours and dimensions of time.16 I didn’t know when the
baby would move next, nor did I know for how long the baby would
move. Such a consciousness forces the movement and my response
into uncongenial and inaccurate terms where touch is finite,
calculated and knowing; it takes away from any feelings of warmth
and wholeness which may have preceded that actual consciousness.
Secondly, the movements become meaningful when there is no
expectation or awareness of subjectivity. Of course there is
awareness of these movements but there is renunciation associated
here where there is no baby, mother or father as separate entities.
Rather, there is a feeling that extends to and includes us all, a feeling
of ecological connectedness and mutual implication. This is an
example of a more embodied form of touch which includes
a feeling and connection extending to and including me, my
partner, our baby, our hands, and “the skin and spaces between us”.
The feeling is uncalculated and unconscious; there is a yielding to
the movements of the baby which is gratuitous. That is, there is an
13
Others have written about the boundaries in pregnant bodies. See Draper
(2003), Longhurst (2001), Schmiedl and Lupton (2001) for research in the context
of pregnancy and embodiment, abjection and social gaze.
14
Buber distinguishes between two relational orientations, one of identity
(totality), and one of relationality (wholeness). He calls these I-It and I-Thou rela-
tions. His argument is that our lives take place in both these states which rely on
each other. We do not, cannot, make I-Thou states occur; they happen, they befall
us. I-It states, on the other hand, are based on objectification, control and separation
of people, where I strive to know It finitely by making It into an object. This attempt
to exhaust It into what the I ‘knows’ ends up alienating both I and It, turning them
into separated contained and identified entities. When I experienced touch from
‘my body’, I was in a separate, contained body from the baby (It). There are no
boundaries in I-Thou relations, no entities. The ‘whole’ itself cannot be defined
(Metcalfe and Game, 2004).
15
Heller-Roazan (2009) traces philosophers’ understanding of the senses of
touch, and how some juxtapose internal touch with external sensation (i.e. Leibniz).
Hubner in the other hand, incorporates another “power of perception”.to feel
a thing “often encountered by the tactile power” (2009, 239).
16
The use of Euclidean geometric concepts objectifies lived experience (Buttimer,
1976). She notes instead, the importance of the relation of body and mind, and of
person and world.
 D.A. Tahhan / Emotion, Space and Society 7 (2013) 45e53
acceptance of a movement and feeling which is not-mine and not-
baby; this feeling exists in the spaces and connections between us.
There is an all-encompassing warmth which reverberates through
us, an awareness of a difference between us, and a renunciation
where I give my-self up to the movements, the flutters and the
feelings.17 These feelings are tangible (felt) but not locatable. For
Merleau-Ponty, this would occur through the flesh of the world,
and for Ichikawa, connecting us to one another through mi.
The flesh of my world includes the flesh of our baby’s world. Just
as the flesh ontology incorporates the experience of others, the
space that holds us becomes inclusive and fleshy through the
movements of the baby. The space shifts between us and this is
a movement that moves us and shifts us ontologically. That is, there
is a shift from my body to my child’s body to a sense of undefined
awareness in flesh. This awareness occurs through an “overlapping
encroachment”, when “things pass into us as well as we into the
things”, when I am both touched and touching (Merleau-Ponty,
1968: 123). The space that holds us in this awareness reflects
a hidden dimension in the depth of flesh that will never be wholly
perceived or articulated: who is touching who becomes less clear as
we become relaxed in the depths of touch (the flutters, movements,
connections and feelings between us).
Similar to the flesh ontology, the understanding of the depth
and space of mi helps us move beyond touch as finite and
physical and conscious to an emotional connectedness that
includes much more. Just as we become implicated in flesh, We
become different and connected through our relation and lived
experience in mi (Ichikawa, 1993). In other words, when the
movements occur, an all-encompassing warmth reverberates and
there are feelings of wholeness and connection. There is no
attempt to control-the-unfolding occurrence. There is at once
a sense of stillness and a sense of life unfolding (without any one
having to make it happen). The warmth and sense of connection
softens the borders and blurs the boundaries between our bodies
(and subjectivity) so that we are implicated and become affected
via touch.
The feelings of warmth and connection experienced in the
depths of touch can be further understood and developed in the
context of a relational understanding of sensorium, where touch
interacts with, for example, sight and sound to help people feel
connected. The following reflection highlights sensuous experi-
ences of touch and how rituals and shared experiences can deepen
the potential for feeling and connection. Consider the following
example:
3. Case 2: sensuous and sonorous touch via laughter
They used to sit together and watch 80s and 90s American TV
comedies like Full House and Empty Nest altogether, the five of
them: the mother, father, two daughters and one son. It was
a family ritual, something they all looked forward to. Of course the
content was amusing but almost 20 years later, they cannot
remember weekly episodes. What they can remember is that, in
those days, they wouldn’t see their father much during the week
as he worked, and he was also quite serious back then. But there
they would sit, altogether, sharing in this comic relief. They
wouldn’t necessarily discuss the content of the show. That wasn’t
really important. But they loved hearing their father laugh, a crazy
laugh which was infectious, and which made them all smile and
laugh.
17
This would be an I-Thou relation in Buber’s terms where we are not separate
subjects but a meeting occurs between us as whole and active beings (Buber, 1958).
49
3.1. Sensuous qualities of touch
This example presents us with the sensuous qualities of touch.
Although this reflection is based on a real personal experience, my
initial recounting of this event felt non-emotive and not at all
connected with what I was writing. This is reflected in the use of
third person. The memory is unclear, but I remember there was
always a nice feeling of warmth associated with this ritual. As I
began to unpack the reflection I became aware of more sensuous
feelings of touch which made the actual memory more meaningful,
and helped to explain the connection between us, ‘this family’. As
with the next reflection, I maintain a distanced voice: whether this
experience or these feelings are my own is not important; these
feelings and memories have the capacity to develop a universal
potential for feeling, connection and emotion vis-à-vis touching at
depth.
In this reflection, it is not the actual TV show or the particular
episode the family watched together which is significant; the
feelings of closeness aroused in this setting are much more
significant. This closeness is not necessarily grounded in physically
proximal forms where the family sits (in close proximity) with one
another in the same space, watches the same TV show, and shares
in the ‘same’ experience. Of course on one level, the family seemed
to enjoy the ritualistic nature of the show-watching, where the
television is a medium for their interaction. However, there is
a sensuous quality to this experience which connects the family at
a deeper level, one where sight and sound connect them in the
depths of touch. That is, the medium of the TV provided a sonorous
experience and all-encompassing warmth where the father would
laugh an “infectious laugh” and this sound carried throughout and
within them, connecting them in a touching at depth. Furthermore,
the sensuous experience of vision (watching the TV) contributes to
the filled space between the family.18 Before further unpacking the
sensuous nature of this experience, however, it is necessary to
explore how the experience might be intimate in the first place.
Firstly, the father and his laugh are central to this experience of
touch. There is a tension in the language used which draws atten-
tion to the father’s relaxed presence. At one level, the father (as
a separate subject and body), his moods and his laughter could
dictate the rest of the family’s positioning in this space. That is, the
family could comprise of separate bodies and subjects who are
affected by the father’s power, where “his” laughter has the power
to relax them, while his “serious moods” might have a different
outcome. Yet, on another level, there seems to be a special quality to
the laughter which connects them and the ritualistic nature of the
TV watching. For the laughter to connect the family in this shared
experience, it is no longer the father’s laughter (as a sound that
comes out of a separate, contained subject and body), but rather
a sound which reverberates throughout the whole family and is
inclusive, arousing feelings of closeness. Touch simply happens
through this connection, via the TV and the laughter, but this is not
comprised of separate subjects or bodies (mother, father, and
children). Instead, there is a new, mixed, inclusive body that
emerges through relation. That is, there are no definable people,
objects or sounds. There is an ‘everywhere-ness’ to this experience
where everyone is in relation, implicated, touching and laughing.
The relaxed tone of this experience, therefore, is not locatable in the
father but in the relationship that emerges between the family.
Secondly, Ichikawa provides us with a way to interpret how such
an experience can manifest feelings of connection via an object. For
Ichikawa, mi includes an all-encompassing space whereby that
18
As Cataldi notes, “these felt perceptions are all skin deep. And distinguishable.
And have affective tones to them” (Cataldi, 1993: 133).
50 D.A. Tahhan / Emotion, Space and Society 7 (2013) 45e53
which is attached to mi (mi wo tsuketeiru mono; Ichikawa, 1993: 81)
becomes a part of or implicated in mi. In many cases, that which is
‘attached’ to mi is an object. The television in this setting is the
object which becomes a part of their lived experience, connecting
the family and blurring the boundaries of their bodies and
subjectivity. Extending beyond the object, Ichikawa also provides
us with an understanding as to how we are connected to and
embedded in the world via mi. Similar to Bourdieu’s (1977) notion
of habitus, Ichikawa’s relational equation describes mi in the
context of the universe. For Ichikawa, this sense of being ‘in’ the
world is possible through locating mi in terms of a relational
equation of mi-house-village-city-universe. This relational exis-
tence explains how we are connected to and embedded in the
world, that we “correspond mutually” into a kind of “nested
structure” (Ichikawa, 1993: 161).19 Similarly, this helps us reassess
the TV setting where the family obviously feels connected and
close, yet we don’t necessarily know how. Through mi and the
family’s sense of being in the world together, the object (TV) might
gradually lose its importance as feelings of connection become
manifest in different ways. That is, even in instances where they
may not be watching the TV or the father is at work or in a “serious”
mood, they may still feel close or touching for they have been
connected through such shared experiences and rituals. And these
make non-television or non-comedy settings meaningful, precisely
because of the “reminders” of the family’s touching experience via
the TV and the laughter.20
Bachelard (1994: xix) who talks of “intimate space”, also offers
insight into such past experiences and how they can “awaken new
depths” of feelings within us. There is an all-encompassing quality
to this experience where the warmth and closeness is felt between
the family though not necessarily in physically locatable ways. But
this doesn’t mean that they weren’t touching, or that years later,
they cannot still feel close because of such shared experiences.
There is a link to wholeness: a “sonority of being” where the sound
of laughter and feelings of warmth reverberate through the rela-
tionships, connecting the family even years later when they are not
watching the TV comedies together anymore.21 Similarly, the
family watching TV may “experience resonances, sentimental
repercussions, reminders of [our] past” (1994: xix) when they hear
the sound of laughter. The laughter might bear the “essence of the
notion of home” even when they no longer watch the TV altogether.
This feeling of belonging is related to what Capra et al. (1992: 14)
call “I am home” and what Ichikawa (1993: 161) calls “atto
homu”k (at home). There is a sense of rightness to this experience
where there is no locatable object or person providing the family
with feelings of contentment and belonging. Instead, there is a state
19
Similarly, Buttimer suggests that people are surrounded by centric layers of
lived space from room to home, neighbourhood, city, region and nation, where
a feeling may be so strong or one may have a “natural place” which is considered to
be the “zero point of his personal reference system”(1976: 284). See also Dixon and
Straughan (2010: 450) and how a person’s everyday interaction with particular
environments allows for an emotive ‘sense of place’ to emerge”.
20
See Buttimer (1976) whose reference to noncognitive, bodily and emotionally
based perceptions of space are particularly relevant here whereby the family may
feel connected even when they are not in the same room or watching TV.
21
Bachelard explores this “mutual deepening” and intimate space in the context
of imaginative powers and simple images associated with felicitous space (i.e. the
house). Bachelard describes being itself, archetypically, and how all “really
inhabited space bears the essence of the notion of home” (1994: 5). In such
a space, there is a “synthesis of immemorial and recollected” (Bachelard, 1994: 5),
experienced even outside the home. Bachelard notes that “these dwelling-places
of the past remain in us for all time” (Bachelard, 1994: 6). There is a feeling of
harmony and peace which call to mind images of the house and nest (Ehrmann,
1966: 577).
of connectedness with the “cosmos as a whole” and a relational
existence with people and objects (Capra et al., 1992: 14). That is,
many years later, the memory evokes strong feelings of content-
ment and connection with the (my) family.
It is important that we also explore “the potential for cross-
sensory activation” (Howes, 2006: 6) in this case. We have
touched on the sound of laughter eliciting feelings of warmth and
closeness, and how the TV becomes the medium for feeling close.
However, the sight associated with ‘watching the TV’ is what
enables the potential space for connection between the family in
the first place. It is therefore necessary to pay attention to the ways
in which sight and vision might also contribute to feelings of
warmth and connection.22 There is a mutual understanding and
filled space between them where feelings of closeness and intimacy
are diffused through a “dialogic way of looking” (Metcalfe and
Game, 2004: 358). This dialogue does not involve the family as
separate members watching the object (TV) but extends to and
includes the spaces between them. That is, the family watches the
TV (or one another) with a tender or soft eye: sight becomes
a manifestation of intimacy here because they are a part of one
another and share the same flesh. There is a reversible relationship
which necessarily comes with a soft eye or tender gaze. This sight
does not rely on active participation of ‘each’ family member;
rather their presence changes one another and the experience.
There is a mutual implication of their lives, their TV watching ritual
and the spaces between them.
An understanding of the cross-over of the senses in a non-finite
sense opens up the potential to discuss feeling and touching at
depth in a broader, encompassing way. This family touches in a non-
locatable sensuous way (i.e. the sound of laughter elicits feelings of
warmth and closeness), however, which sense enables touch is
actually unclear as there is a more profound feeling of a filled space
which diffuses feelings of closeness through a cross-over of vision,
sound and touch (that is, the soft sight associated with watching the
TV enables the intimate space for connection in the first place).
There is a quality to these experiences which evokes feelings
such as comfort, security and closeness. And yet, such a quality
cannot be tidily summed up as a result of auditory, visual or tactile
sensations. Such ‘profound feelings’ require further attention.
These feelings draw on different notions of time, space and rela-
tionships, opening up an ontology of connection, closeness and
warmth that requires a sensuous and embodied understanding of
the world, one which is not necessarily located in a particular sense
or body.
Theoretical recognition of this touching at depth allows attention
to be given to fleshy experiences of intimacy that are not neces-
sarily linked to physical feeling or closeness in a Euclidean sense or
a Cartesian separation of body and mind.23 Intimacy and relational
tact are the direct connection of flesh or mi. We have seen this in
the reflection of my pregnancy and the family’s TV ritual. We will
now move to the final reflection which presents us with a felt
connection between mother and child, a connection which draws
on Japanese discourses of the ‘heart’.
22
The sensuous experience of vision relies on the sense of touch (Merleau-Ponty,
1964; Montagu, 1986; Ong, 1991; Vasseleu, 1998). For Montagu, eye contact can be
“a form of touching at a distance” (Montagu, 1986: 24). For Merleau-Ponty, visible
‘belongs’ to tactile qualities (1968: 134). For Ong, “the tactile senses combine with
sight to register depth and distance when these are presented in the visual field”
(1991: 25).
23
Others have explored a generalized feeling in the body which includes internal
and external senses as well as emotional dimensions of experience (cf Geurts, 2005;
Heller-Roazan, 2009). For example, Heller-Roazan traces references to these, i.e. “a
general feeling”, “coenaesthesis” (common feeling) and so on.
 D.A. Tahhan / Emotion, Space and Society 7 (2013) 45e53
Consider the following example:
4. Case 3: eyelashes and a mother’s lap
She always had long eyelashes. The pediatrician had informed her
mother that this would be a problem for her, particularly at a young
age as she would play outdoors and the dust would settle on her
lids. She was always losing an eyelash in her eye and was unable to
get it out. Often, after her shower, the discomfort would become
unbearable, so much so that she would climb on her mother’s lap to
get the lash out. Her mother would open her eye, find the lash, rub
her lid and the daughter would feel much better. Over the years, the
problem became less, but sometimes she felt like she needed the
comfort of her mother’s lap. She would sometimes feign an eyelash
in her eye, to lie across her mother’s lap and feel her gentle touch on
her lid.
4.1. Heartfelt touch
Similar to the family TV ritual, I wrote this reflection as an adult
in a distanced tone. The memory was unclear, but there were
positive and warm feelings associated with this ritual. There seems
to be a touching, emotive quality to this experience, one which
moves beyond the eyelash, and helps us further explore the rela-
tions between the emotional and physical sense of touch, particu-
larly via the notion of ‘heart’. Elsewhere I have defined
a similar quality to touch as a meeting between bodies (Tahhan,
2008). Manning (2007) defines touch in a similar way, calling it
“tender”. She cites Derrida and Dufourmantelle (2000: 111) who
describes tender in the following way:
to offer, or give, what can be given without rendering, that is to
say without exchange, or without waiting for an other to render
(Manning, 2007: 12).
Similarly, intimate experiences of touch which draw on an
emotional sense (that which affects us) are an encounter between
whole people, not separate subjects or objects or ‘bodies’. There is
no expectation of “exchange” or “waiting for an other to render”.
Just as there are no borders in love (Metcalfe and Game, 2002) and
I-Thou relations (Buber, 1958), there are no borders in touch which
comes from the ‘heart’; there is also no merging.
In Heartfelt Touch (see Case 3), the child seems to seek
a certain form of contact with her mother to achieve a certain
state. What might have begun from a physical manifestation of
pain or discomfort (i.e. a lost eyelash) eventually becomes a way
for her to feel close with her mother and experience the earlier
more familiar forms of touch in later encounters (i.e. comfort,
security).24 What is illuminating here is that although the child
consciously sought this form of contact (with the aim and
expectation) to remove the eyelash, the feelings of warmth which
follow suggest that the child and mother are not separate and
located selves, subjects or bodies coming together to achieve
a certain state, but rather, are taken out of their self-
consciousness because of the very eyelash. That is, the very
existence of the eyelash allows conscious and knowing ways of
seeking closeness to be put aside; there is a renunciation
between mother and child which has a special quality in its very
“offering”.25
24
This may be mistaken as Freud’s primitive ‘oceanic’ feeling of infantile merger,
where there is no distinction between oneself and one’s mother (and instead there
is a merging in a symbiotic and undifferentiated union).
25
There are no separate bodies in this offering (Manning, 2007).
51
There is a reciprocal relation here where the child receives the
“gift of touch” (Manning, 2007: 10) because the mother offers it
freely.26 This gift of touch is not located in a finite sense or body part
but finds meaning in their relation and the spaces between them.
That is, the feelings of warmth which emerged from this touch were
not located purely in her mother’s ‘touch’ (or hand); rather, there
were a combination of comforts which included her mother’s lap,
her eyelash, the ritualistic nature of the scenario, the memories of
comfort aroused in such a ritual, and, most significantly, the gift and
the very offering which came from the ‘heart’.
The word heart suggests a locatability in the body, but heart (as
feeling) really signifies a presence of touching at depth, touch that is
not locatable at all. There is a depth here that is not surfaced or
layered in conceivable terms; there is a feeling that passes which is
shared, mutual and inclusive. This feeling is best described as
wholeness and incorporates a tug or warmth e a tangible feeling of
connection, of belonging in the world.27 This is relevant to
Ichikawa’s (1993: 161) relational equation (and feelings of being “at
home”). There is a sense of rightness to this experience where there
is no locatable object or person providing the child with feelings of
contentment and belonging. Instead, there is a state of connected-
ness with the “cosmos as a whole” and a relational existence with
people and objects (Capra et al., 1992: 14). Although the mother
provides the child with feelings of security and comfort, this feeling
also extends to and includes the ritualistic nature of the experience,
the memories associated, and so on.28 This feeling of belonging (of
“feeling-with” and “with-ness” of the world) helps us to question
whether the eyelash was always there, whether the mother always
eliminated the eyelash, or whether the feelings aroused in this
setting, and the fact that it was done “from the heart” (Winnicott,
1981: 105) are what actually comforted the child.29
The term heart, and in particular, the notion of heartfelt touch, is
commonly grounded in discourses of Japanese relationships
(Tahhan, 2010; Lebra, 2004; Kondo, 1990). We have already seen that
an understanding of European and Eastern discourses of embodi-
ment helps us understand the potential for feeling and connection.
Discourses of the ‘heart’ are also relevant here, specifically the term
kokoro. The term kokoro refers to the ‘heart’ but it is not limited to its
physical, biological function. Rather, the kokoro is the “seat of feeling
and thought” (Kondo, 1990: 105). Literature on kokoro is often
associated with the word ‘spirit’ or ki, just as the literature on mi
draws on both heart and spirit in its very meaning. The meeting of
kokoro evokes a different sense of time and space: kokoro is not truly
here but also not truly there. There is a feeling of everywhere-ness in
kokoro that fit in with Ichikawa’s mi as the whole existence and spirit
of mi as all-encompassing. The spirit or ‘heart’ of mi becomes
implicated by other mi and internalised and positioned accordingly.
Although the word heart suggests a locatability in the physical
body, heart (as related to spirit and mi) really signifies a presence of
touching at depth, or heartfelt touch, that is not locatable at all.
Instead, the sensuous experience in heartfelt touch incorporates
26
See Metcalfe and Game (2010) who explore the giving and receiving of a gift
relation, one that is neither locatable nor sequential.
27
This is not a meeting of separate subjects or bodies but a new, mixed, inclusive
body that happens through relation. There is a sort of infinitude where there are no
definable people or objects or places. There is a kind of everywhere-ness where
everyone is in relation, implicated and touching, yet there is also respect for the
unique (but indefinable) difference that each participation makes to the whole.
28
Cf Manning’s reference to affect as the “with-ness of the movement of the
world.[T]hat which grips me first in the moment of relation” (2007: xxi). It is also
relevant to Paterson’s (2007) felt phenomenology as there is a sentiment of
“feeling-with” between mother and child via cutaneous sensation, interpersonal
affect and other metaphorical aspects of touch.
29
As Winnicott notes, “the proper care of an infant can only be done from the
heart” (1981: 105; emphasis added).
52 D.A. Tahhan / Emotion, Space and Society 7 (2013) 45e53
a felt and embraced connection in a meeting. There is a feeling that
passes which is shared, mutual and inclusive. Implicated and
“animate”, the feeling between hearts might incorporate a tug or
a warmth that is indescribable, but a meeting so clear it is almost
spoken.30 There is a link to wholeness: a “sonority of being” where
the tones and feelings reverberate through the relationship, con-
necting the child and mother who “experience resonances, senti-
mental repercussions, reminders of [our] past” (Bachelard, 1994:
xix). These reminders act as a way to maintain togetherness and “an
enveloping warmth” (Bachelard, 1994: 7) that almost protects or
cocoons the child when the eyelash no longer needs removing and
the child no longer seeks the mother’s lap. The “original warmth”
still resonates for the child, enabling the atto ho mu (at home)
feeling to exist. Their hearts are still connected.
I am not adding the ‘heart’ as an additional sixth sense, nor am I
suggesting that mind-body dichotomies need to take into account
a separate and contained understanding of the heart. Rather,
feelings of closeness and connection require an understanding of
heartfelt touch, as a manifestation of mi, a meeting between
people that enables connecting and feeling close to someone
through ways which are not necessarily always cutaneous, but are
always affective. We have seen this in all three accounts, of the
pregnancy, the ritual and memories evoked for the family
watching the TV together, and the feelings of security and comfort
which we felt between mother and child. There is a movement
between people, a felt pull towards the other person but not as
a separate subject or body. The pull happens in the relational space
which is between and includes them. Just as the home is the
“intimate space” which bears a mutual deepening for being
(Bachelard, 1994), the heart is the “intimate space” which bears
a mutual deepening between people in touch. Such a notion
requires further attention, but this article has started to challenge
familiar ways of thinking about touch, the senses and emotions via
this notion of touching at depth.
5. Conclusion
This article has explored the potential of feeling and connection
in touch. It deliberately focused on three accounts of intimacy to lay
the foundation of this conceptual device, touching at depth. It has
shown that to understand touch as an affective and embodied
experience, we need to move beyond subjectivity and beyond
common assumptions about touch as physical and visible. Instead,
we have seen that such forms of touch emanate from the finite
body (separate, subjective and contained bodies) and this stifles the
potential for feeling and connection. When touch is seen through
a non-finite logic of the world, however, we become aware of an all-
encompassing space, depth and connection via the lived body
which enables us to explore the potential for feeling and connec-
tion. This article has explored the lived body vis-à-vis the concepts
flesh (Merleau-Ponty, 1968) and mi (Ichikawa, 1993). These not only
help to dislocate mind-body dichotomies but have also begun to lay
the foundations for understanding the relation between physical
and emotional (affective) forms of touch. The concept, touching at
depth, has also helped us further understand this relation. This
depth is not located ‘inside’ or ‘outside’ the body or in a finite
sense; rather touching at depth helps us move beyond the senses in
a bodily (and therefore finite) capacity and explore an encom-
passing space and relationship in touch that brings out the
potential for embodied and sensuous feeling and connection.
30
A popular phrase which emerged in my research on Japanese touch, intimacy
and kokoro was: kokoro no ginsen ni fureru, which can directly be translated as, to
touch one’s heartstrings.
Touching at depth is the moment of meeting, intimacy and love.
This article has looked at examples of personal intimacy but as an
analytical device is relevant to relational forms of intimacy that
can be both inside and outside, public and private, bodily and non-
bodily. Touching at depth is the felt quality of connection, a rela-
tional existence between people which relies on the shift from
Cartesian body to wholeness. Theoretical recognition of this
touching at depth may change the way we think about intimacy,
the body and emotions. By taking away the primary focus on
subjectivity, and focussing on the relational, fleshy space between
people, touching at depth provides a conceptual language to
approach wider social, cultural and political relationships and may
change the way issues such as sexuality and identity have come to
be seen. Touching at depth helps us to appreciate the more subtle
connections in real lived relationships and this could also be
achieved by a thorough ethnographic approach which draws on
the fleshiness of dialogue.
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