Haptic Contagion

The MateReal of Touch in a (Post-)Pandemic World

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3986/fv.44.3.05

Keywords:

idealism, materialism, haptic studies, psychoanalysis

Abstract

During the pandemic there were many ways of handling the contagious SARS-CoV-2 virus, most of them in haptic terms, or in terms of touch: masks, hand disinfection, social distancing, quarantines, (self)isolations. Touch thus became not only the privileged object of the new bio-politics, striving to preserve life at all costs, but also what was lost during the pandemic. To be sure, a loss of something we never had that even the vaccine, which promised a return to normal, but actually paved the way for a “brave new post-pandemic world,” could not rehabilitate. In short, one of the elements that radically changed with and in the (post-)pandemic world is precisely the elusive object of touch, which we propose to conceptually grasp through the coinage of the concept of its “mateReal hapticity.”

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Published

2023-12-27

How to Cite

Komel, M. (2023). Haptic Contagion: The MateReal of Touch in a (Post-)Pandemic World. Filozofski Vestnik, 44(3), 109–29. https://doi.org/10.3986/fv.44.3.05

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Section

Structures, Limits, Objects