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Touch, time and technics: Levinas and the ethics of haptic communications

Boothroyd, David (2009) Touch, time and technics: Levinas and the ethics of haptic communications. Theory, Culture and Society, 26 (2-3). pp. 330-345. ISSN 0263-2764. (doi:10.1177/0263276409103123) (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:31688)

The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided.
Official URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0263276409103123

Abstract

The development of immersive media-communication environments, and their theorization in terms of the 'haptic', calls for a reconsideration of the relationship between sensuality and the ethics of contact. For the most part, the cultural theorization of the virtual which remains preoccupied with the visual has tended to limit its scope to the paradoxes, politics and ethics of representation. Much of media and cultural studies work, for instance, has adopted, directly or indirectly, the traditional visual and ocularcentric paradigm in its analyses of cultural forms and technologies as these have become integrated into contemporary life. Whilst it has been argued, for instance by Mark Hansen in his recent books, that this paradigm is inadequate to digital media and the developments of human-machine interactions the digital introduces, few comentators have addressed how new developments in immersive sensory media environments bear on the ethics of communication. By way of a reflection on the themes of the tactility of contact and the ethics of touch in the work of Emmanuel Levinas, this article critically evaluates the ethical significance of the 'sensory extension' haptic media represent. It identifies and argues against the neo-positivist tendency of Hansen's reliance on the empiricism of the neurosciences whilst locating the resources for an ethics of touch in Levinas' concept of time as 'diachrony'.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1177/0263276409103123
Uncontrolled keywords: Derrida, Haptics, Levinas, Materiality, Phenomenology, Skin
Subjects: H Social Sciences
Divisions: Divisions > Division for the Study of Law, Society and Social Justice > School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research
Depositing User: Andrew Buller
Date Deposited: 15 Oct 2012 13:33 UTC
Last Modified: 16 Nov 2021 10:09 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/31688 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

Boothroyd, David.

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