Haptic Experience

Modern French Identities
www.peterlang.com
Crispin T. Lee
Haptic Experience
in the Writings of
Georges Bataille,
Maurice Blanchot
and Michel Serres
Peter Lang
Haptic Experience in the Writings of Georges Bataille,

Maurice Blanchot and Michel Serres
ISBN 978-3-0343-1791-7
Crispin T. Lee holds a PhD in French from the University of Kent. His
doctoral research, on which this book is based, included eight months
at the cole normale suprieure in Paris. His doctoral and MA studies
were funded by AHRC scholarships.
Crispin T. Lee
Our sensory relationships with the social and biological world have
altered appreciably as a result of recent developments in internet
and other mobile communication technologies. We now look at a
screen, we touch either the screen or a keyboard in response to
what we see and, somehow, an element of our sensory presence is
transmitted elsewhere. It is often claimed that this change in the way
we perceive the world and each other is without precedent, and is
solely the result of twenty-first-century life and technologies. This
book argues otherwise. The author analyses the evolving portrayals
of haptic sensations that is, sensations that are at once tactile and
visual in the theories and prose of the writer-philosophers Georges
Bataille (18971962), Maurice Blanchot (19072003) and Michel
Serres (1930). In exploring haptic perception in the works of Bataille,
Blanchot and Serres, the author examines haptic theories postulated
by Alos Riegl, Laura U. Marks, Mark Paterson and Jean-Luc Nancy.
Crispin T. Lee
Haptic Experience
in the Writings of
Georges Bataille,
Maurice Blanchot
and Michel Serres
Peter Lang
Haptic Experience in the Writings of Georges Bataille,

Maurice Blanchot and Michel Serres
www.peterlang.com
Crispin T. Lee holds a PhD in French from the University of Kent. His
doctoral research, on which this book is based, included eight months
at the cole normale suprieure in Paris. His doctoral and MA studies
were funded by AHRC scholarships.
Crispin T. Lee
Our sensory relationships with the social and biological world have
altered appreciably as a result of recent developments in internet
and other mobile communication technologies. We now look at a
screen, we touch either the screen or a keyboard in response to
what we see and, somehow, an element of our sensory presence is
transmitted elsewhere. It is often claimed that this change in the way
we perceive the world and each other is without precedent, and is
solely the result of twenty-first-century life and technologies. This
book argues otherwise. The author analyses the evolving portrayals
of haptic sensations that is, sensations that are at once tactile and
visual in the theories and prose of the writer-philosophers Georges
Bataille (18971962), Maurice Blanchot (19072003) and Michel
Serres (1930). In exploring haptic perception in the works of Bataille,
Blanchot and Serres, the author examines haptic theories postulated
by Alos Riegl, Laura U. Marks, Mark Paterson and Jean-Luc Nancy.
Haptic Experience in the Writings of

Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot
and Michel Serres
M odern F rench I dentities

Edited by Peter Collier
Volume 116
PETER LANG
Oxford Bern Berlin Bruxelles Frankfurt am Main New York Wien
l
Crispin T. Lee
Haptic Experience
in the Writings of
Georges Bataille,
Maurice Blanchot
and Michel Serres
PETER LANG
Oxford Bern Berlin Bruxelles Frankfurt am Main New York Wien
l
Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the
Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Lee, Crispin T., 1978- author.
Haptic Experience in the Writings of Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot and
Michel Serres / Crispin T. Lee.
pages cm. -- (Modern French Identities ; 116)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-3-0343-1791-7 (alk. paper)
1. French literature--20th century--History and criticism. 2. Touch in literature. 3.
Visual perception in literature. 4. Senses and sensation in literature. I. Title.
PQ307.T68L44 2014
840.93561--dc23
2014022567
Maurice Blanchot, Thomas lobscur (premire version, 1941) ditions Gallimard.
Tous les droits dauteur de ce texte sont rservs. Sauf autorisation, toute
utilisation de celui-ci autre que la consultation individuelle et prive est interdite.
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ISBN 978-3-0353-0655-2 (eBook)
Peter Lang AG, International Academic Publishers, Bern 2014
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All rights reserved.
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Printed in Germany
Contents
Foreword vii
Introduction 1
Chapter 1
Bataille and the Haptic: Fleshy Transcendence
41
Chapter 2
Blanchot, Haptic Sensation and a Visible Absence
105
Chapter 3
Serres: Haptic Perception, Touching Knowledge
185
Conclusion 275
Bibliography 295
Index 301
Foreword
In spite of their relative brevity, the writings of Georges Bataille, Maurice

Blanchot and Michel Serres are rarely a quick read; they enquire into
areas of philosophy and perception which defy concision and sometimes,
challenge the idea that language is even capable of articulating intellectual ideas and/or physical sensations. The writers negotiations of these
difficulties require time and consideration on their part and on our own.
It is for this reason that I have included extended quotations from the
works of Bataille, Blanchot and Serres where possible. (Particular thanks
to ditions Gallimard for granting me permission to reproduce excerpts
from Blanchots Thomas lobscur (premire version).) When added to the
fact that haptic perception is a concept that inspires significant debate in
its own right, I have been forced to be rather briefer in some of the analyses
contained in this book than I would have liked. My examination of the
sociopolitical and spiritual dimensions of the works of Bataille, Blanchot
and Serres has had to be particularly selective in order to ensure that my
commentary does not spill over into a second volume.
On the subject of selectivity, anyone who reads my analyses of Batailles
Histoire de lil or Le Bleu du ciel and experiences a sense of dj vu is quite
right to: a handful of phrases from these subsections appeared in my first
published article, Georges Bataille or the Theory and Fiction of Apocalyptic
Visions, which was included in Visions of Apocalypse: Representations of the
End in French Literature and Culture, ed. by Leona Archer and Alex Stuart
(Oxford: Peter Lang, 2013), pp.16575.
These are not the only acknowledgements I have to make. I begin
by highlighting the AHRCs financial support of my doctoral studies in
French and the taught MA that preceded it. I thank Dr Tom Baldwin,
Prof. Lorenzo Chiesa and Prof. Peter Read of the University of Kent,
Canterbury, for their supervision of the doctoral thesis from which this book
is derived. Thanks also to Prof. Patrick ffrench of Kings College London, and
viii Foreword
Dr Lucy OMeara of the University of Kent, Canterbury, who were the

highly attentive examiners of my thesis. I proffer a further nod of recognition to Hannah Godfrey, Dr Peter Collier of Sidney Sussex College,
Cambridge, and the Oxford branch of Peter Lang for their oversight of
this, my first monograph.
I reserve a final vote of thanks for my friends, my family, Miss K. and
most of all, Miss N.; without their encouragement and support, I would
never have completed this project.
Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain
their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologises for any errors or omissions in the above list and would be grateful
for notification of any corrections that should be incorporated in future
reprints or editions of this book.
C.T.L., London, July 2014
Introduction
In this book, I will be analysing how the critical and literary works of
Georges Bataille (18971962), Maurice Blanchot (19072003) and Michel
Serres (1930) portray instances of haptic perception. As I shall explain
shortly, the term haptic perception (or perception haptique in French)
may describe a number of different sensory processes. Even the definition
of what haptic perception in fact is tends to vary from one theory of perception to the next. Later in this introduction, I shall be undertaking a
detailed examination of this problem and explaining the contrasting definitions of haptic perception that I intend to use in my analyses of Bataille,
Blanchot and Serress works.
Until then, let us content ourselves with two dictionary definitions relating to the haptic. We begin with the prefix hapt(o)-, which is
described in the Larousse Lexis of 1989 as an lment, du grec haptein,
saisir.1 The same dictionary gives us the following definition of the term
haptique: [aptik] adj. (v. 1950). Relatif au toucher, sa mesure en
psychophysique.2
I have chosen to consider the manifestation of haptic perception in
Bataille, Blanchot and Serress works partly because, at the time of writing, there are no other in-depth studies of how these writers approaches
to haptic perception interconnect. My other motivation for writing this
book is more pragmatic. We live in an age in which the internet exerts a
1
2
Dictionnaire de la langue franaise: lexis, ed. by Jean Dubois and others (Paris:
Larousse, 1989), p.883; emphasis in original.
Ibid. All of the theoretical explanations of haptic perception that I shall examine
in this book discuss haptic perception in broader terms than the definitions given
above. Moreover, the majority of the texts by Bataille and Blanchot that I shall be
exploring were written before 1950.
2 Introduction
major influence upon our lives. In fact, technology has advanced so considerably that visual, audio and even tactile sensory data may now be encoded
and uploaded to or downloaded from a computer hard drive several
thousand miles away. The process of perception, which was once uniquely
corporeal, has begun to transcend the human body.
As this introduction will show, theoretical understandings of
haptic perception have kept pace with these major technological and
ontological evolutions. As a result, the descriptions of haptic perception that I shall analyse shortly tend towards a less and less corporeally
centred definition of what this perception actually is. Synergy between
sight and touch remains important in each case. Simultaneously, however,
the variety of philosophical and empirical circumstances under which such
synergy takes place also becomes increasingly relevant. The question of
whether the human body may be transcended or otherwise superseded
through the use of modern technologies has also become appreciably more
significant.
The particular importance of philosophical and empirical context
to matters of visual and tactile perception is a theme to which Bataille,
Blanchot and Serres return on a number of occasions. All three write
about this issue in philosophical treatises and in literary prose. My analysis
will illustrate how the writings of Bataille, Blanchot and Serres plot literary
and philosophical arcs, evolutions in the philosophical and literary
treatments of sight and touch in twentieth- and twenty-first-century
France. One way in which I suggest these philosophical and literary arcs
are entwined is that they foreshadow evolutions in haptic theory over the
last fifteen years (even if Serres alone makes any direct reference to haptic
perception).
It is clear that there are many possible ways in which to structure my
readings of Bataille, Blanchot and Serres and their portrayals of haptic
perception. Since relatively little secondary material concerning any of
these authors and haptic perception is available, the theoretical perspectives on haptic perception that I present below will determine the thematic
preoccupations of my readings of Bataille, Blanchot and Serres. I have
chosen to consider the various forms of haptic perception posited by Riegl,
Marks, Paterson and Nancy because they offer us the most concise means
Introduction
of appreciating the manifold possibilities of haptic perception portrayed

in the works of Bataille, Blanchot and Serres.3
Defining Haptic Perception: Alos Riegl

The first use of adjective haptic (or haptisch) in an art historical context is
often attributed to Alos Riegl, a Viennese academic and one-time museum
curator who died in 1905.4 Though Riegl popularised the term haptisch,
which is derived from the Greek verb haptein (to fasten),5 his application
of the term is somewhat erratic, alternating between use as an adjective
and a noun. Moreover, the term only appears in any form in two relatively late works, Das hollndische Gruppenportrt (The Group Portraiture
3
It would be possible, for example, to analyse the works of Bataille, Blanchot and Serres
through the haptic theories of Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari, Maurice MerleauPonty and/or Georges Didi-Huberman. Unfortunately, the evolving phenomenological explanations of haptic perception presented by Merleau-Ponty in texts such
as Phnomnologie de la perception (Paris: Gallimard, 1945; repr. 1976) or the posthumous, unfinished Le Visible et linvisible: suivi de notes de travail (Paris: Gallimard,
1964; repr. 2006) cannot be summarised easily or briefly. Merely reconciling MerleauPontys changing perspectives with the psychoanalytical and sociopolitical contexts
in which Deleuze and Guattari situate their postulation of haptic perception in Mille
Plateaux (Paris: Minuit, 1980) would require more space than is available here. Trying
to include Didi-Hubermans art-historical interest in the haptic (see for example
La Ressemblance par contact: archeologie, anachronisme et modernite de lempreinte
(Paris: Minuit, 2008)) would complicate this task further.
As Margaret D. Iversen points out, however, a number of Riegls characterisations
of the haptisch are subtle evolutions of theories put forward by nineteenth-century
scholars including Hegel, Adolf von Hilderbrand and Johann Friedrich Herbart (see
Iversen, Alos Riegl: Art History and Theory (Cambridge, MA/London: MIT Press,
1993), pp.9, 3435, 6263).
The lexical origins and subsequent usages of the verb haptein can be found in
A Greek-English Lexicon (New Edition), ed. by Henry Stuart Jones and others
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961), p.231.
4 Introduction
of Holland; 1902) and Der moderne Denkmalskultus: sein Wesen und

seine Entstehung (The Modern Cult of Monuments: Its Character and
Its Origin; 1903).6 Elsewhere, Riegl uses the adjectives taktisch, tastbar or
greifbar in place of haptisch, apparently doing so on an interchangeable
basis. As may be guessed from this list of substitutive adjectives, Riegl often
employs the term haptisch to refer to painted, sculpted or built surfaces
which exhibit overtly tactile, visible detail. Such detail creates a proximal
impression of space within the mind of its observer. Riegls clearest definition of the haptic object is presented in his lengthy analysis of sixteenthand seventeenth-century painters of group portraits in the Netherlands,
Das hollndische Gruppenportrt. (For ease of reading, I include English
translations of Riegls words.)
There are [] two modes of planar phenomena: the haptic mode, in which objects
seen at close range stand tangibly side by side in height and width, and the optic
mode, in which objects seen from a distance are presented to the eye even though
they are tangibly behind each other at different depths.7
As can be seen in the quotation above, Riegls presentation of the haptic

stems from what he considers to be an opposition between two forms of
perception which he terms haptic (or objectivist) and optic (which Riegl
6
All subsequent German quotations from these texts will be taken from the following editions: Alos Riegl, Das hollndische Gruppenportrt, 2 vols, I (Textband), ed.
by Karl M. Swoboda (Vienna: sterreichischen Staatsdruckerei, 1931); Riegl, Der
moderne Denkmalskultus: sein Wesen und seine Entstehung, in Riegl, Gesammelte
Aufstze mit einem Nachwort zur Neuausgabe von Wolfgang Kemp, ed. by Karl M.
Swoboda (Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag (Edition Logos), 1995), pp.14493.
Alos Riegl, The Group Portraiture of Holland, trans. by Evelyn M. Kain and
David Britt (Los Angeles: Getty Research Center for the History of Art and the
Humanities, 1999), pp.28182. All subsequent English translations of Das hollndische Gruppenportrt are also taken from this volume. (The original text is as follows:
es gibt zwei Arten von Erscheinungen der Ebene: die haptische, in welcher die aus
der Nhe gesehenen Dinge tastbar in Hhe und Breite nebeneinander stehen, und
die optische, in welcher die aus der Ferne gesehenen Dinge sich dem Auge darbieten,
wenngleich sie tastbar in verschiedenen Raumtiefen hintereinander zerstreut sind
(Riegl, Das hollndische Gruppenportrt, p.208).)
Introduction
considers to be synonymous with the subjectivism). The haptic object is

visually perceptible in the height and broadness of a given visual plane.
The haptic (art) object is discernible first and foremost through the visibility of the tactile qualities of its constitutive materials. Moreover, these
materials are arranged so as to be representative of something more than
their mere presence. Haptic objects exist in an extrapolative form of threedimensionality which is inspired by the visible possibility of proximal tactile contact between a beholder and the observable tactile details of part
of the surface being observed (in which objects seen at close range stand
tangibly side by side in height and width).
As his emphasis upon appearance above suggests, Riegls account of
haptic artistry is focussed most heavily upon the mental impression that the
Dutch painters canvases leave upon their beholder. By overpowering the
viewers rational, visual understanding of painted two-dimensional space
through its physical proximity to the beholders eye and its representations
of space and form, the sight of a section of the painted surface impresses
itself directly upon the viewers mind. This rationally unmediated impression leads the viewer to experience a sensation of tactility. Because this
impression occurs without conscious reordering or processing of visual
data, Riegl refers to the haptic as also being objectivist.8 In this way, the
I refer here to Riegls article from 1904, ber antike und moderne Kunstfreunde
(On the Ancient and Modern Art Connoisseur), which is reprinted in Riegl,
Gesammelte Aufstze, pp.194206. Because I have been unable to find any documented English translations of this article, the following and all subsequent English
translations of Riegls original German text will be my own: Two characteristics can
be distinguished in all earthly things represented in human art: 1. Those characteristics which things emanate under all circumstances, whether those characteristics
are observed by a human subject or not. These are objective characteristics. 2. Those
which are perceptible by a certain human subject at a certain moment. These are
subjective characteristics (of which a few, but not all, might also be considered objective; the same can be said of those characteristics which do not emanate from things
objectively, such as their lighting). (In Riegls words, An allen Dingen in der Welt,
wie sie ja auch die menschliche Kunst nachbildet, sind zweierlei Eigenschaften zu
unterschieden: 1. solche, die den Dingen unter allen Umstnden zukommen, ob sie
nun von einem menschlichen Subjekte betrachtet werden oder nicht. Das sind die
6 Introduction
sensation of tactile immediacy incited by visual cues that he postulates is a

product of unthinking feeling. In spite of its unreasoned nature, the same
sensation can also be schematised through rational analysis of the visual
stimuli that incite it.
Above all, haptic space as Riegl postulates it is inextricably linked
to our sense of corporeal presence. (Elsewhere, he qualifies this intimate
association of concepts as the result of an inevitable flavour of the haptic
and concrete.)9 Riegl continues:
We call art whose principle intent is to reproduce the objective characteristics of
things, objectivist; art whose fundamental intent is to reproduce the momentary
appearance of things on the retina of a single observing subject is called subjectivist.10
From this explanation, it is clear that Riegl believes the characteristics of a

piece of objectivist art will be perceptible in the same way by any observer of
any epoch because it is capable of reproducing the objective characteristics
of things. Contrarily, subjectivist works of art seek to convey faithfully a
uniquely individual vision of a particular moment. The emphasis of such
artistry is its momentary appearance, the visual impact that it exerts upon
the eyes of an individual observer; the universal comprehensibility of the
vision conveyed is of markedly less importance.11
objektiven Eigenschaften. 2. solche, die ein bestimmtes menschliches Subjekt in einem
bestimmten Momente an ihnen wahrnimmt. Das sind die subjektiven Eigenschaften
(darunter werden immer auch einige objektive sein, aber nicht alle; dafr immer
auch solche, die nicht objektiv den Dingen zukommen, wie z. B. die Beleuchtung)
(Riegl, ber antike und moderne Kunstfreunde, p.202).)
9 Riegl, The Group Portraiture of Holland, p.339. ([U]nvermeidlichen haptisch-krperlichen Beigesmacke Das hollndische Gruppenportrt, p.256.)
10 My translation. (Eine Kunst, die grundstzlich darauf ausgeht, die objektiven
Eigenschaften der Dinge wiederzugeben, nennen wir eine objektivistische; eine
Kunst, die grundstzlich die momentane Erscheinung der Dinge auf der Netzhaut
der Augen eines einzelnen betrachtenden Subjektes wiedergeben will, nennen wir
eine subjektivistische (Riegl, ber antike und moderne Kunstfreunde, p.202).)
11 Riegls allusion to Erscheinung, translateable here as appearance, vision, phenomenon or figure in ber antike und moderne Kunstfreunde should also warn us that
we are not to equate subjective comprehension of an artwork with indisputable
Introduction
Having established these principles, let us now consider Riegls explanation of how the concepts of objectivist and subjectivist art interact with
those of the tactile and the optical:
The characteristics of things reveal themselves through stimuli which exert
themselves upon the senses of the perceiving subject. There are two forms of these
stimuli: 1. Purely optical, colourful characteristics which stimulate the eyes exclusively; 2. So-called tactile, which are the physical characteristics of things, spatial
prolongation and demarcation which stimulate the subjective observers tactile sense
but which are also conveyed visually at distance.12
As we see from this extract, Riegl believes that all things exude certain
stimuli which are perceptible by a self-aware subject. These stimuli fall
into two categories. The first such category is purely optical in nature
because it stimulates the eyes specifically. The trigger for this stimulus is
the colouring of the thing being observed. The second, so-called tactile
category of stimuli is based around the visible expanse of materials used
in the construction of the thing and how that expanse is framed in space.
This encompassing of space not only renders that space finite, but localises
it appreciably. This visible and proximal confinement of space solicits the
observers tactile sense whilst also creating a specifically visual impression of spatial distance. (Riegl does not use the term haptic (haptisch) in
ber antike und moderne Kunstfreunde (On the Ancient and Modern
Art Connoisseur). As I have shown already, however, the qualities that
12
truth; even a concise German-English dictionary includes no fewer than seven possible English translation of the word Erscheinung. (The other possible translations
include sign, apparition and symptom, according to the Collins Concise GermanEnglish, English-German Dictionary (Second Edition), ed. by Peter Terrell and others
(Glasgow: HarperCollins/Pons, 1996), p.165.)
My translation. (Die Eigenschaften der Dinge verraten sich in Reizen, die sie
auf die Sinne des wahrnehmenden Subjektes ausben. Diese Reize sind zweierlei
Art: 1. rein optische, das sind die farbigen Eigenschaften, die ausschielich auf
die Augen einen Reiz ausben; 2. sogenannte taktische, das sind die krperlichen
Eigenschaften der Dinge, ihre Ausdehnung und ihre Begrenzung im Raume, die den
Tastsinn des beschauenden Subjektes reizen, aber auf Distanz auch durch die Augen
vermittelt werden (Riegl, ber antike und moderne Kunstfreunde, pp.20203).)
8 Introduction
Riegl associates with the tactile sense and tactility in this short essay from
1904 are the same as those which he terms haptic in Das hollndische
Gruppenportrt.) Riegl summarises that, we shall call optical any art which
intends to show things as pure, colourful appearances; that other art, which
seeks first and foremost to make the physicality of things clear to see, we
shall call, tactile.13 In spite of his careful explanation of the roles that vision
and tactility play in his understanding of art history, Riegl is of the opinion
that it is optical, subjectivist artistry which dominates modern art:
One can now understand easily what optic subjectivism is to be taken to mean: an art
which intends to portray things as momentary, colourful stimuli of a lone, observing
subject. [] We encounter much of the predominantly optical subjectivism of the
era of the Roman Empire in modern art.14
What is unexpected about Riegls remarks is that while he believes

tactilely objectivist and optically subjectivist artistry to be temporally specific, he portrays the influence of optical subjectivity detectible in early
twentieth-century artistry as being a modified echo of late Roman artistic
sensibilities.15 In spite of their temporal continuity, the concepts of tactile
objectivity and optic subjectivity are therefore also avatars of anachronism,
of temporal disorder and creative repetition. Still, Riegl believes the Europe
of the early twentieth century to have embraced exclusively optical artistry:
The dominant tendency nowadays is to let the work of art vanish as a
physical object and become absorbed into the inner subjective experience
13
My translation. (Eine Kunst, die die Dinge als rein farbige Erscheinungen zeigen
will, nennen wir eine optische; jene andere, die vor allem die Krperlichkeit der
Dinge anschaulich machen will, nennen wir eine taktische (Riegl, ber antike und
moderne Kunstfreunde, p.203).)
14 My translation. (Nun wird man mhelos verstehen, was unter einem optischen
Subjektivismus zu denken ist: eine Kunst, die die Dinge darstellen will als momentane farbige Reize eines einzelnen betrachtenden Subjektes. [] Diesem optischen
Subjektivismus begegnen wir [,] bereinstimmend sowohl in der Kunst der rmischen Kaiserzeit als in der modernen Kunst (Riegl, ber antike und moderne
Kunstfreunde, p.203).)
15 Riegl discusses this enduring yet modified aesthetic influence in detail in ber
antike und moderne Kunstfreunde, pp.20305.
Introduction
of the viewer.16 This means that Riegl considers the Western European
art of his era to have divorced itself from representation. When viewed,
the arrangements of material which define the optical artworks physical
presence appear to be no more than surface colours which are visibly distinct from the surrounding space in which they are seen. Simultaneously,
however, the surface colours of the optical artwork appear as if they are
interconnected with the wider space in which they are observed:
When modern aesthetics says that objects are colours, what they really mean is that
objects are plain surfaces: however, not the haptic, polychrome kind associated
with the old masters, but the optical, colouristic kind that allows the object to be
depicted as a whole together with its surroundings without completely suppressing
its individuality.17
In Der moderne Denkmalskultus, by contrast, Riegl applies the terms

optic and haptic to built structures. The main thrust of Riegls argument
in this text is that conservation should not obscure or attempt to undo
natural wear upon a built structures surfaces. One aspect of this position
is that the more visible that such signs of ageing are, the more a monument
becomes a remnant of a bygone age and the more valuable it becomes as a
fading relic of rather than as a faithful preservation of the moment in
history that it seeks to commemorate: The traces of this process testify to
the fact that a monument was not created recently [], and the age-value
of a monument therefore rests on the obvious perception of these traces.18
16 Riegl, The Group Portraiture of Holland, p.4. (Unsere modernste Zeit beherrscht ja
die Tendenz, das Kunstwerk als Objekt vllig verschwinden und gleichsam krperlos
im subjektiven Seelenleben des Beschauers aufgehen zu lassen (Riegl, Das hollndische Gruppenportrt, p.5).)
17 Riegl, The Group Portraiture of Holland, p.373, n. 41. (Wenn es in der modernen
sthetik heit: die Dinge seien Farben, so ist damit nichts anderes gesagt, als die
Dinge seien Ebene, aber nicht die haptisch-polychrome der Alten, sondern eine
optisch-koloristische, die das Ding mitsamt seiner Umgebung als ein Ganzes versinnlicht, ohne gleichwohl seine Individualitt schlechtweg zu unterdrcken (Riegl, Das
hollndische Gruppenportrt, p.189, n).)
18 The Modern Cult of Monuments: Its Character and Its Origin, trans. by Kurt
W. Forster and Diane Ghirardo, in Oppositions Reader, ed. by K. Michael Hays
10 Introduction
This relatively simple explanation of natural decomposition acquires an

intriguing and specifically haptic complication when Riegl claims that
our optic sensory faculties afford us a better appreciation of the signs of
ageing on a built surface: Age-value manifests itself less violently, though
more tellingly, in the corrosion of surfaces, in their patina, in the wear and
tear of buildings and so forth. The slow and inevitable disintegration of
nature is manifest in these ways.19 (Though it emphasises the disintegration
of built surfaces, this translation makes no reference to the mehr optisch
als haptisch (more optic than haptic) way in which we perceive such disintegration, a point upon which Riegls original text remarks specifically.)20
Optical perception is favoured in this instance because, as we have seen
already, Riegl associates haptic perception and thinking with antique art,
not modern, post-Enlightenment artistry. As his presentations of haptically
orientated painting and building in Das hollndische Gruppenportrt suggest, the sensations that haptically orientated art creates within its beholders
are not compatible with physically or mentally detached observation of a
given surface, even if such sensations can be explained rationally.
These details aside, it should not escape our attention that Das
hollndische Gruppenportrt and Der moderne Denkmalskultus characterise Riegls understanding of haptic perception as being inspired by stationary
objects of artistic craftsmanship.21 Through its ability to impress itself upon
the observers vision, the haptic sensation inspired by an artwork imbued
(New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1998), pp.62151 (p.632). (An den
Spuren dieser Ttigkeit erkennt Mann nun, da ein Denkmal nicht in jngster
Gegenwart [] entstanden ist, und auf der deutlichen Wahrnehmbarkeit seiner
Spuren beruht somit der Alterswert eines Denkmals (Riegl, Der moderne
Denkmalskultus, p.161).)
19 Riegl, The Modern Cult of Monuments, p.632. ([W]eit wirksamer gelangt jedoch
der Alterswert durch die minder gewaltsame und mehr optisch als haptisch sinnfllige Wirkung der Zersetzung der Oberflche (Auswitterung, Patina), ferner der
abgewetzten Ecken und Kanten (Riegl, Der moderne Denkmalskultus, p.161).)
20 Forster and Ghirardo explain the stylistic choices they made in translating Riegls
work in The Modern Cult of Monuments, pp.65051, n.
21 On this point, it should not be forgotten that Riegl died in 1905, while filmmaking
was still very much in its infancy.
Introduction
11
with haptic characteristics can be used to date that artwork. Though he

believed the enduring influence of haptic perception upon artists of his
era to have become increasingly blurry, Riegl was certain that the evolution of art from haptic to optical perspective must also entail an element
of palpable social change, a comprehensive development into a growing
emancipation of mental functions from the bodily.22 Arts emancipation
of psychological life from the constraints of corporeality instructs the
course of art history [], then the course of religious history and
ultimately, the course of ethical developments in political and social life
in general, as well.23
Almost a century after Riegls death, his certainty of a coming change
in the plastic arts and his unsurprising silence on the moving images of
early cinema would inform three markedly different understandings of
what haptic perception in fact is. Over the coming pages, I present these
new perspectives.
Laura U. Marks
As a counterpoint to Riegls art historical presentation of hapticity, let us
now consider the specifically cinematic understanding of haptic perception
and sensation which is to be found in Laura U. Markss concept of haptic
visuality. In The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and
the Senses (2000), Marks states that in haptic visuality, the eyes themselves
22 My translation. ([G]esamte Entwicklung auf eine zunehmende Emanzipation der

geistigen Funktionen von den krperlichen (Riegl, ber antike und moderne
23 My translation. ([L]ehrt gerade der Verlauf der Kunstgeschichte [], dann der Verlauf
der Religionsgeschichte und schlielich auch der Verlauf der ethischen Entwicklung
in der Politik und im sozialen Leben berhaupt (Riegl, ber antike und moderne
12 Introduction
function like organs of touch.24 In order to clarify this statement, she refers
to Riegls postulations of haptic and optical artistry:
Riegl [] associated the haptic image with a sharpness that provoked the sense of
touch, while the optical image invites the viewer to perceive depth. [A] film or video
(or painting or photograph) may offer haptic images, while the term haptic visuality
emphasises the viewers inclination to perceive them. The works I propose to call
haptic invite a look that moves on the surface plane of the screen for some time before
the viewer realises what she or he is beholding. [A] haptic work may create an image
of such detail [] that it evades a distanced view, instead pulling the viewer in close.25
Though Marks admits to changing Riegls definitions somewhat,26

there are clear similarities between the theorists approaches to haptic
perception. The idea of haptic detail as a visually perceived invitation bordering on incitement to tactile interaction between an art object and its
observer is common to both theorists postulations. In spite of this, the
understandings of Riegl and Marks concerning the haptic differ significantly
in that Riegl only speaks of the haptic surface as being part of a static (and
solid) art object. Any movement therein is merely implied.27 Contrarily,
Markss understanding of haptic sensation relies upon the movement of
projected surfaces, regardless of whether such movement is actual or created by camera trickery. This indeterminacy also links Markss ideas with
those of Riegl through the latter theorists concept of modern art as being
optic. This is because, as we have seen, some degree of conflation and
thereby confusion of the differing spatial planes of an optically conceived
art object is desirable, in Riegls view.28 Markss recent work on film as a
24 Laura U. Marks, The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the
Senses (Durham/London: Duke University Press, 2000), p.162; emphasis in original.
25 Ibid., pp.16263; emphasis in original.
26 Ibid., p.162.
27 Marks herself makes a similar observation (ibid.).
28 As I explained earlier in this chapter (p.9), Riegl speaks of modern artistry as being of
the optical, colouristic kind that allows the object to be depicted as a whole together
with its surroundings without completely suppressing its individuality (The Group
Portraiture of Holland, p.373, n. 41).
Introduction
13
haptic phenomenon at once confirms and rebuffs Riegls assertions that

modern art is most interested in the visual realm:
While optical perception privileges the representational power of the image, haptic
perception privileges the material presence of the image. Drawing from other forms
of sense experience, primarily touch and kinaesthetics, haptic visuality involves the
body more than is the case with optical visuality [:] [t]ouch is a sense located on
the surface of the body []. The difference between haptic and optical visuality is
a matter of degree. In most processes of seeing, both are involved, in a dialectical
movement from far to near.29
As we see from Markss explanation of the difference between her

understandings of haptic visuality and optical visuality, she like Riegl
maintains that visual information holds a dominant role in artistic (or in
this case, filmic) presentations of form and space. Where the two theorists
differ is that Marks finds haptic perception to be of as much relevance to
modern life and (cinematic) artistry as optical visuality. Markss position
on this issue is entirely contrary to the artistic evolution from exclusively
haptic to exclusively optical perspective advocated by Riegl. In fact, Marks
goes so far as to state that we need both kinds of visuality: it is hard to
look closely at a lovers skin with optical vision; it is hard to drive a car
with haptic vision.30 As this quotation also suggests, Marks emphasises the
importance of kinaesthetics and the body in her formulation of haptic
visuality. Though Riegls explanation of hapticity makes reference to the
Beschauer, his attention is focussed squarely upon the observers visual
perception of the art object and the mental impressions that they may
incite. There is no enquiry on Riegls part as to whether (kinaesthetically
perceptible) changes in the observers self-consciousness might affect his
or her perception of an artwork. Indeed, Riegl prefers to think of modern
artistry as one in which [b]odies are stripped of their substance, their
29 Marks, The Skin of the Film, p.163.

30 Ibid.
14 Introduction
tangible and physical properties; haptic forms melt into the purely visual
experience of the free space around them.31
Contrarily, the dialectical movement from far to near, the shift from
intangible and distant imagery to tangible and proximal imagery that Marks
associates with haptic perception, is brought about by the greater corporeal
involvement in the act of looking that her formulation of haptic visuality
requires.32 Even if the difference between distant and proximal vision is only
a matter of degree,33 Marks suggests that the body and all of its inherent
material needs must exert a particular influence upon the way in which
we see. Awareness of this interrelation between corporeality and vision
becomes all the more relevant when considering how we perceive filmed
surfaces haptically because [h]aptic cinema does not invite identification
with a figure a sensory-motor reaction so much as it encourages a
bodily relationship between the viewer and the image.34 Marks concludes
that [t]he viewer is called upon to fill in the gaps in the image, to engage
with the traces the image leaves [,] to give herself up to her desire for it.35
The perceptible immediacy or reality of haptic images is therefore determined by the acuity of their viewers mental faculties and sensory organs.
So, in Markss view, cinematic images are presented as soliciting our
perceptual memories in order to fill in the sensory data that these moving
pictures lack. Consequently, [t]he subjects identity comes to be distributed
31 Riegl, The Group Portraiture of Holland, p.252. (Entkrperlichung durch Abstreifen

des Tastbaren und Begrenzten, dieses berfhren der haptischen Formen in den blo
sichtbaren Luftraum (Riegl, Das hollndische Gruppenportrt, p.179).) As Margaret
Olin observes in Forms of Representation in Alois Riegls Theory of Art (University
Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992), Riegls strategies do not work
for us because they assume a permanent subject entrenched in the tactile body of
the individual, whose soul gazes out through the eyes. [I]t is difficult not to see an
element of the quixotic in Riegls [] deployment of metaphors perceptual and
gestural (pp.18687).
33 Ibid.
34 Ibid., p.164.
35 Ibid., p.183.
Introduction
15
between the self and the object when we view these filmed images.36
Because this distributive process interferes with our sense of subjectivity,
the haptic image connects directly to sense perception, while bypassing the
sensory-motor schema.37 Rather than being rational, our initial reaction
to the haptic moving image is therefore instinctive or visceral. This is not
to suggest that the psychological effects of Markss specifically cinematic
postulation of haptic perception will manifest themselves in every circumstance: viewers may or may not respond to haptic detail while watching
films which contain such content.38
In all of this, it should not be forgotten that the visually solicited desire
to touch is experienced in a subconscious manner according to Marks.39
Even measuring a viewers response to haptic images with any consistency
is a challenge that Marks acknowledges.40 Following her rationale, a film
may be considered to be endowed with more or less haptic or optical properties, depending upon the social mores of the era in which it is viewed.
Its haptic allure may increase or diminish with the passage of time. Riegls
concepts of haptisch and optisch do not allow for any such ebb and flow:
for him, the progression of art towards pure opticality is unstoppable.41
Markss version of haptic perception is also gender-orientated in a way that
Riegls sensory theories are emphatically not:
The haptic is a form of visuality that muddies intersubjective boundaries, [] in
phenomenological terms. If we were to describe it in psychoanalytic terms, we might
argue that haptics draw on an erotic relation that is organised less by a phallic economy
36
37
38
39
Ibid., p.123.
Ibid., p.163.
Ibid., p.170.
As it happens, Riegls model of haptic perception is also one in which little conscious
interaction between observer and haptic surface takes place.
40 See in particular Marks, The Skin of the Film, pp.16670, 201 for her illustrations of
this difficulty.
41 Olin summarises Riegls theories thus: Each culture tries and fails to represent the
world in the limited way it would like to see it. [] Art finds itself untrue to itself and
forced to change its vision, thus advancing to the next stage [], leading inescapably
to acceptance of more of the world (Forms of Representation, p.151).
16 Introduction
than by the relationship between mother and infant. In this relationship, the subject
(the infant) comes into being through the dynamic appearance of wholeness with
the other (the mother) and the awareness of being distinct.42
A cursory glance at these remarks might lead us to believe that Marks is

attempting to explain her sensory theories in terms of Freudian, Lacanian,
Kleinian or even Hegelian alterity.43 Marks dispels any such notion promptly
and adds that her postulation of haptic visuality is neither uniquely feminine nor feminist:
I base haptic visuality on a phenomenological understanding of embodied spectatorship, which is fundamentally distinct from the Lacanian psychoanalytic model
[]. Though [] the use of haptic images may be a feminist strategy, there is nothing essentially feminine about it. [] The engagement of haptic visuality occurs not
simply in psychic registers but in the sensorium.44
Markss postulation of the relationship between subject and haptic

object is obviously somewhat equivocal. The clearest explanation she offers
is that her understanding of haptic visuality necessitates a respect of difference, and concomitant loss of self, in the presence of the other.45 In spite
of their ambiguities, psychoanalytical explanations of the kind offered
by Marks are largely alien to Riegls more academic understanding of the
haptic as mere differentiation between visual portrayals of space and our
perception of them. Part of the reason that Riegl does not differentiate
between genders is that his theorisations of haptic and optical artistry are
generalising concepts. No matter how rigorous its selection criteria, such
an approach cannot hope to provide an unequivocal overview of what is
artistically representative of a certain period of time.46
43 Marks refutes the approaches of these thinkers specifically (see The Skin of the Film,
p.193).
44 Ibid., p.188.
45 Ibid., pp.19293.
46 Jas Elsner explores Riegls attempts to address this problem in From Empirical
Evidence to the Big Picture: Some Reflections on Riegls Concept of Kunstwollen
(in Critical Inquiry, 32, 4 (2006) <doi: 10.1086/508091> [accessed 29 May 2014]).
Introduction
17
In spite of their profound differences, the theories of Marks and

Riegl posit the haptic gaze as being a skin-deep form of vision which
glances off the surface of its object. Moreover, Marks, like Riegl, presents
the haptic experience in a manner which relates the sense of touch to a
desire to better understand an object, surface or space that is already visible. Both versions of haptic perception describe a state of being in which
sight alone is insufficient to satisfy human curiosity. Both theorisations of
haptic perception also assume that the individual who experiences such
sensations is stationary, even if as in Markss postulations the sights
which solicit haptic perception may in fact involve the physical projection
of moving surfaces. The next form of haptic perception that I shall present
incorporates movements on the part of the beholder, as well as the objects,
images or spaces that he or she observes.
Mark Paterson
The third definition of haptic perception and sensation to which I shall
refer is provided by Mark Paterson in his text The Senses of Touch: Haptics,
Affects and Technologies (2007). Though this work dwells upon artistic and
technological uses of the haptic at some length, Paterson claims that, in the
first instance, the term haptic refers to the sense of touch in all its forms.47
He groups the cutaneous, tactile, kinaesthetic and vestibular senses which
constitute the haptic under the term proprioception, which describes the
[p]erception of the position, state and movement of the body and limbs
in space. Cutaneous perception, which pertains to the skin itself or the
A lack of space means that I must forgo any analysis here of Riegls theory that a
continously evolving Kunstwollen (in simple terms, an artistic volition or will
to art present in every humans conscious being) has dictated humanitys creative
development.
47 Mark Paterson, The Senses of Touch: Haptics, Affects and Technologies (Oxford/
New York: Berg, 2007), p. ix. All subsequent definitions are taken from this page.
18 Introduction
skin as a sense organ, encompasses sensation of pressure, temperature

and pain. Patersons definition of tactility relies upon this understanding
of cutaneous sense, but refers more specifically to the sensation of pressure (from mechanoreceptors) rather than temperature (thermoceptors)
or pain (nociceptors). Paterson describes kinaesthesia as the sensation of
movement of body and limbs. Relating to sensations originating in muscles,
tendons and joints. He designates vestibular sensation as [p]ertaining to
the perception of balance, head position, acceleration and deceleration,
which is derived from [i]nformation obtained from semi-circular canals
in the inner ear. Such sensation amounts to the bodys means of perceiving
its physical orientation, balance and the rhythms of its motions.
In addition to the purely organic forms of haptic sensation itemised
above, Paterson refers to a specifically mechanical variant of hapticity created by force feedback technologies. Paterson explains the term as [r]elating to the mechanical production of information sensed by the human
kinaesthetic system. Devices provide cutaneous and kinaesthetic feedback
that usually correlates to [a] visual display.48
This series of definitions underline the fact that when we speak of
haptic experience, we could now be describing a number of simultaneous
processes which involve not only our skin and our eyes, but also our ears
(and, at one point, Paterson remarks upon the proprioceptive value of the
olfactory sense).49 Patersons references to force feedback technologies also
demonstrate that haptic sensory data can now be created and transmitted by
machines. Through a detailed overview of the interrelation between vision
and tactility, The Senses of Touch attempts to explain the philosophical,
psychoanalytical, mathematical and scientific advances which have led us
to this point. As part of this project, Paterson analyses recent anthropological attempts to establish a felt phenomenology, which seeks to better
articulate the complex relationship between vision and touch, eyes and
48 The most common example of this technology at present would be the controllers
of a modern games console, which vibrate in response to events in the game.
49 Paterson, The Senses of Touch, p.90.
Introduction
19
hands.50 (When he explores the geometrical principles established during

antiquity, Paterson also adds feet to this list.)51 Paterson characterises The
Senses of Touch as being philosophical and psychological in its approach,52
a means of remembering and counteracting what he characterises as the
forgetting of touch.53 Though Riegls understanding of the haptic is referred
to, Patersons methodology owes appreciably more to the phenomenological enquiries of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Edmund Husserl.54
Given Merleau-Pontys discernible influence upon Patersons thinking
and the variety of sources of haptic sensation that Paterson identifies, it
is unsurprising that The Senses of Touch explores such sensation through a
number of specifically artistic and technological case studies. In common
with Markss investigations of projected, moving tactile spaces and surfaces,
the more recent creative technological applications of haptic perception that
Paterson discusses contrast with the unyielding physical presence and the
immobility of gaze upon which Riegls understanding of the haptic is based.
A useful example of this problematisation is provided by Patersons
description of the first virtual handshake to be conducted internationally in
2002.55 As Paterson explains, the handshake required two identical Personal
Haptic Interface Mechanisms (or PHANToMs for short). One of these
desktop devices, manufactured by SensAble Corporation, was installed
in an MIT lab in Boston, MA. The other was in a UCL lab in London,
UK. The two machines communicated via a low-latency internet connection. The premise of the experiment was simple: at MITs TouchLabs,
one operator in proximal contact with a PHANToM interface makes a
gesture akin to a handshake. The device then converts the tactile contact
50
51
52
53
54
55
Ibid., p.35.
Paterson explains this choice in ibid., pp.7277.
Ibid., p.5.
Paterson even gives a chapter of The Senses of Touch this very title (ibid., pp.5977).
Riegl is referred to on fifteen pages of The Senses of Touch, while Husserl is alluded
to on almost twice as many occasions. Merleau-Ponty receives more mentions than
the other two theorists combined, however.
This handshake is discussed in detail in Paterson, The Senses of Touch, pp.127,
13237, 14043.
20 Introduction
it receives into data. The information travels via the internet to a replica of
the first device which sits in a laboratory some three thousand miles away.
This replica then shakes its operators hand by vibrating against his or her
finger. The second operator knows when to expect the handshake because
live footage of the initial handshake is streamed with the tactile data that
it creates. During the test, the two operators were also able to touch and
manipulate other items placed within the interfaces grip.
Patersons use of the term haptic to characterise the experiment
described above is significant because like Markss concept of haptic
visuality it no longer requires haptic interaction to be based upon
physical proximity. However limited its scope, the PHANToM device
is capable not only of creating a simulated synthesis of visual and haptic
proximity, but also of effacing physical distance between two biological
entities (the machine operators on either end of the two PHANToMs
internet connection).
Notionally, the conversion of initially simultaneous tactile and visual
cues into data streams would allow these facets of sensory data to be saved
and (re-)experienced together or separately at a later date. As a result, the
machine which stores this data becomes the primary mediator and repository of haptic sensation, rather than the interconnected brains, retinas
and cutaneous layers of the human beings who wish to experience these
sensations. Because of these possibilities, haptic perception in the early
twenty-first century loses the temporal specificity that Riegls art historical
theories had imbued it with previously.
In principle at least, technology such as the PHANToM ensures that
the way we feel about a given sight and our tactile memory of it need not
change with the passage of time. By replaying data stored on a hard drive,
the same haptic experience could be relived because it would have been
reduced to quantifiable visual and tactile cues through machine coding.
Under these circumstances, what might once have been an ineffable, unrepeatable experience would also be transmissible to those with no temporal or physical proximity to the events which they perceive haptically.
Haptic perception would quite literally transcend its material sources and
receptive surfaces. The binary language of this transcendence is based on
repetitious strings of noughts and ones, of nanoseconds of presence and
Introduction
21
absence which are encoded, decoded and juxtaposed in order to create a

continuous stream of haptic data.
It would be wrong to assume that the sundering of haptic perception,
its sources and its receivers is purely a product of recent advances in computing. Paterson demonstrates that the decorporealisation of sensation
was already possible during the era of videotape. To illustrate this point,
he describes a piece of performance art conceived by Paul Sermon entitled
Telematic Dreaming. Staged in 1992, the month-long piece required Susan
Kozel, a trained dancer, to pose on a bed in one room before a camera. Live
images of her were projected onto a screen in the adjoining exhibition hall.
An empty bed identical to the one on which Kozel would lie was installed
beneath the screen in the hall. She would respond to the filmed gestures
of gallery goers in the other room as they moved across the empty bed.
Looking at the gallery halls monitor, these people could in turn see how
Kozel reacted to their gestures.56 On occasion, the spectators actions could
become violent. Summing up Kozels subsequent descriptions of her experiences during the performances, Paterson remarks that Kozel
invested emotionally in her screen presence, watching her virtual interactions as an
avatar. Although purely optical, there was indubitably a play with telepresence (the
sense of presence at a distance) where the setting of the bed fostered a simultaneous
sense of intimacy and distance. The status of real and virtual body becomes elided,
since attacks or violations that Kozel saw on the screen caused her to feel distance, but
[] constant reminders of the body resurfaced due to pain, cramps and stiffness. []
What Kozel experienced in that early interactive performance was a tension between
the virtual and the visceral, a tension present within any digital performance.57
Patersons comments here demonstrate an appreciable evolution in the

understanding of haptic perception posited by Riegl a hundred and five years
earlier. The optical illusion of physical proximity described above which
is created for artistic purposes is sufficient to create physical sensation
on the part of at least one (and probably both) of its human participants.
56 Sermons Telematic Dreaming is described in greater detail in Paterson, The Senses of
Touch, pp.11920.
57 Ibid., p.119.
22 Introduction
As Patersons interpretation of Kozels remarks makes clear, the tangible

reality of these sensations results from a wilful confusion of the real and
virtual bodies involved in the illusion. The confusion of optical contrivance and corporeally perceptible haptic stimuli that Telematic Dreaming
demands of Kozel and the members of the public involved in the installations enactment demonstrates the limited scope of Riegls presentation
of the spectator. Indeed, Riegls concept of a motionless (and, seemingly,
genderless) individual being satisfied by simply peering at a similarly static
painted, handcrafted or built surface appears rather quaint when compared
with either of Patersons examples of haptic perception being transmitted
by modern technology.
In the case of Sermons Telematic Dreaming, the divorce of haptic perception from the optical image which incites it goes a stage further than
in the virtual handshake discussed earlier. Patersons account of the 1992
art installation demonstrates how, in that instance, haptic perception from
proximal, simultaneous visual and cutaneous contact no longer concerns
even (binary) language, which could at least be related to sensory experience on a demonstrative basis. Instead, Kozel experiences haptic sensations
as the result of a purely visual stimulus which inspires her to react to the
bodily gestures of others. She allows her body to react on a simultaneously
visceral and visual level to the sights she sees projected before her. Kozels
reactions are a consciously mediated response to visual stimuli, however.
The sensations which result from these responsive actions cannot therefore be considered haptic according to Riegls definition of the term. (As
I have shown, the Riegl of Das hollndische Gruppenportrt characterises
the haptisch as being objectivist.)
The theoretical and empirical tensions and paradoxes exposed by my
presentation of haptic perception thus far find a point of convergence in
the recent philosophical writings of Jean-Luc Nancy, the last of my chosen
quartet of haptic theorists. His work straddles an intriguing line between
critical theory and literary prose, often addressing matters of corporeity,
transcendence and artistry. Nancys writings also provide examples of how
the divergent forms of haptic sensation and perception detailed thus far
may find some degree of convergence in the inscriptive praxes of literature
and critical theory. For these reasons, Nancys understanding of haptic
Introduction
23
perception will be of the most direct relevance to my subsequent readings

of Bataille, Blanchot and Serres.
Jean-Luc Nancy
The understanding of haptic perception formulated by JeanLuc Nancy
over the last four decades does not integrate sight and touch in the manner
of any of the haptic theories presented thus far. In fact, Nancy scarcely
uses the term haptique in his writings. This choice is surprising because
many of his texts refer to a synergy between touch and vision which is
suggestive of the forms of haptic perception posited by Riegl and Marks.
Nancys portrayal of haptic perception is complex. For example, Jacques
Derrida observes that Nancy does not understand haptic perception in
terms of the objective universality implicit in Riegls conjunction of the
haptic and objectivism. As a result, il ny a pas le toucher, il ny a pas de
toucher originaire in Nancys explorations of the haptic.58 Derrida adds
that Nancys writing of these enquiries into haptic perception is itself un
acte qui nest ni actif ni performatif de part en part, ni seulement un speech
act, ni un acte simplement discursif .59
As Derridas characterisation suggests, contradiction and confusion
are integral to Nancys understanding of the haptic. The traces of haptic
thinking in Nancys work are most clearly connected by what he terms sensory zones and the manner in which he believes our perception of tactility
interlinks these sensory zones with our appreciation of art objects. I shall
therefore begin by analysing how Nancys understanding of touch interacts
with his theorisation of perceptual zones and how, in turn, these affect our
perception of works of art. I will then address the manner in which Nancy
relates haptic perception to these issues.
58
59
Jacques Derrida, Le Toucher, Jean-Luc Nancy (Paris: Galile, 2000), p.252.

Ibid.; emphasis in original.
24 Introduction
In order to understand Nancys postulations concerning touch, we

must be aware that in his opinion, le toucher dabord est local, modal,
fractal.60 The fractal nature of touch is a localised indicator of a characteristic which defines all of our perceptive faculties: [i]l ny a pas de totalit du
corps, pas dunit synthtique. Il y a des pices, des zones, des fragments.61
At first glance, this lack of unit synthtique suggests that the synergy
of multiple sensory faculties implicit in the versions of haptic perception
posited by Riegl, Marks and Paterson would not be possible. Nancys explanation of corporeal feeling (le sentir) proves otherwise:
Le sentir et le se-sentir-sentir qui fait le sentir lui-mme, cest toujours sentir la fois
quil y a de lautre (ce que lon sent) et quil y a dautres zones du sentir, ignores par
celle qui sent en ce moment, ou bien auxquelles celle-ci touche de tous cts, mais
seulement par la limite o elle cesse dtre la zone quelle est. Chaque sentir touche
au reste du sentir comme ce quil ne peut pas sentir. La vue ne voit pas le son, ni ne
lentend, bien que ce soit, en elle-mme aussi, ou mme elle-mme, quelle touche
ce non-voir et quelle est touche par lui.62
As can be seen here, Nancy postulates a form of sensory awareness which

is aware of an unquantifiable blind spot that exists in its midst. This blind
spot comes into contact with sensory zones which are fully stimulated by
the perceptible occurrences of that moment. The unquantifiability of this
nonetheless perceptible blind spot overrides the discernible feelings of
that instant and impinges perceptibly upon the sensory zones which call
these feelings to our conscious attention. This encroachment subdivides
60 Jean-Luc Nancy, Corpus (dition revue et complte) (Paris: ditions Mtaili, 2006),
p.76.
61 Ibid., p.156. In Les Muses (dition revue et augmente) (Paris: Galile, 2001), pp.32,
3436, Nancy states that this zonal understanding of perception owes much to
Sigmund Freuds contention that erotic, sensory stimuli (which Freud terms Reize)
are most effective when they disrupt interaction between sensory organs (see Freud,
Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, trans. by James Strachey (New York: Basic
Books, 1962)). As I noted above (pp.78), Riegl writes at length about the importance
of visually attractive hints of tactility (or Reize) in stimulating integrative sensory
function (specifically, haptic perception).
62 Nancy, Les Muses, p.36; emphasis in original.
Introduction
25
the zone which was previously fully aroused into new zones of enduring
excitation and newly created indifference to a given sensory stimulus. As a
result, [l]a zone est elle-mme zone.63 To borrow a phrase from Donald
A. Landes, [r]ather than focusing on the function or object of a particular
sense, the motif of the sensuous zone allows Nancy to stress the quasiheterogeneity and discreteness of zones emerging from their self-touching
and touching each other.64
Landes adds that [i]n the isolation and folding of zones of sensing,
we discover a proliferation of difference that is irreducible to the continuity of synaesthesia or to the unity of common sense.65 Landes is wise to be
wary of theories of perception which imply unbroken sensory continuity, not least because Nancy believes the ostensibly tactile impingements
exchanged between sensory zones to exert a simultaneous influence on a
virtual level: les touchers se promettent la communication de leurs interruptions, chacun fait toucher la diffrence de lautre [] et virtuellement,
de tous, mais dune totalit sans totalisation.66
The implication of Nancys theory (and Landess reading of it) is that
prior to its sundering and reorganisation, a given sensory zone which is
impinged upon by more than one variety of sensory data may be fleetingly responsive to vestibular, kinaesthetic or indeed haptic stimulation.
Moreover, the touches that Nancy describes oscillate between states. In
one form, they leave physical impressions upon our sensory faculties. In
another form, these touches cause a continual fission, fusion and reordering
of sensory zones whose sensory parameters cannot be measured and must
therefore be considered virtual, at least in empirical terms. Nancy relates
these stages of sensory differentiation to specifically haptic perception
through his explanation of what occurs when we write about anything:
63 Ibid., p.42. Nancy offers his fullest explanation of sensory zonage in ibid., pp.3242.
64 Donald A. Landes, Le Toucher and the Corpus of Tact: Exploring Touch and
Technicity with Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy, LEsprit Crateur, 47, 3
(2007), 8092 (p.82).
65 Ibid., p.83.
66 Nancy, Les Muses, p.45.
26 Introduction
[l]excription de notre corps, voil par o il faut dabord passer. Son inscriptiondehors, sa mise hors-texte comme le plus propre mouvement de son texte: le texte
mme abandonn, laiss sur sa limite. Ce nest plus une chute, a na plus ni haut, ni
bas, le corps nest pas dchu, mais tout en limite, en bord externe, extrme. [I]l ny a
plus quune ligne in-finie, le trait de lcriture elle-mme excrite, suivre infiniment
bris, partag travers la multitude des corps, ligne de partage avec tous ses lieux:
points de tangence, touches, intersections, dislocations.67
As Nancy explains in the quotation above, the act of writing transforms

our conscious understanding of sens into a form of virtual, self-referential
touche which in turn comes into momentary, unavoidable contact with the
empirical touche of corporeal sensation, of le sentir. This brief, piecemeal
interaction of the virtual and the empirical through written language defines
Nancys concept of excription (or exscription, as it is spelt in English): it
calls our attention to the particular inability of written language to express
the sensory extremes that we have experienced through our own bodies.
Unquestionably the most radical of the sensory experiences that Nancy
associates with excription are those which offer us a palpable feeling of
alterity. The written word provides us with this feeling of alterity through
the self-referential tactility which is inherent to le se-sentir-sentir. In turn,
these tactile references mitigate the supposedly transcendental characteristics of rational sens. The equal and opposite solicitations of corporeality
and non-corporeality which the written word places before our eyes negate
the possibility that any form of sense will arise from those words, such that
cette excription est la vrit dernire de linscription. Absent en tant que discours, le
sens vient en prsence au sein de cette absence, comme une concrtion, un paississement, une ossification, une induration du sens lui-mme. Comme un alourdissement,
un apesantissement, un poids soudain, dsquilibrant, de la pense.68
Because of its characteristics, Nancy believes excription to be a matter

of perceptible chance: Nous ignorons quelles critures ou quelles
67 Nancy, Corpus, p.14; emphasis in original.

68 Jean-Luc Nancy, Le Poids dune pense, lapproche (Strasbourg: Le Phocide, 2008),
p.15; emphasis in original.
Introduction
27
excriptions se prparent venir de ces lieux. Quels diagrammes, quels

rticules, quelles greffes topologiques, quelles gographies des multitudes.69
Its effects cannot be predicted, nor are they guaranteed to be perceived.
For this reason, excription also designates a roving blind spot within our
perceptual faculties as much as it does the effacement of empiricist concepts
of the body or the disappearance of rationalist sens from language. The
notion of excription as an ineffable perceptual blind spot also links Nancys
literary presentations of haptic sensation with his empirical theorisations
of how haptic perception might function on a sensory basis. The inexplicable interference wrought by this exscriptive blind spot ensures that we
can never portray the perceiving human body with absolute consistency
or accuracy. Therefore, [u]n corpus nest pas un discours, et ce nest pas un
rcit.70 This said, it should not escape our attention that Nancy considers certain other forms of art to have inscriptive properties. Elsewhere, he
discusses photography in this very manner.71
In spite of the absence of chronological rcit that Nancy postulates,
the ceaseless and random re-zoning of every living individuals sensory
faculties creates a collectivised understanding of le sentir. This collective
experience of sensation is, simultaneously, a mark of individual uniqueness because it is continually modified by individual memories and new
experiences. These empirical modifications form the basis of a temporal
patchwork which oscillates between the past, the present and the future
as they are sensed individually. Because these modifications stem from
the virtual aspect of the Nancyan toucher and senti, they are only ever
fleetingly perceptible:
69 Nancy, Corpus, p.14.

70 Ibid., p.46; emphasis in original.
71 Linstant nest pas du temps: mais topique, topographie, circonstance, circonscription
dun agencement particulier des lieux, ouvertures, passages. Photographie, criture
de lumire (Nancy, Le Poids dune pense, p.87). Nancy adds that, Le regard touche
car il approche. [] Ainsi la photo est-elle tactile: elle palpe toute la surface, toute la
peau, lcorce ou la crote du lieu (ibid., p.119).
28 Introduction
La mmoire et lanticipation, ou lattente, nont lieu quau prsent: en forment des
topiques particulires, rien de plus. [] La venue est lespacement du temps par
quoi le temps a lieu, toujours au prsent. Mais prsent est un mauvais concept, qui
cache la venue en tant que telle, et qui tend sa prise sur le pass et sur lavenir: alors
que ceux-ci ne dsignent rien dautre que le non-prsent, et la non-venue.72
The exscriptive and therefore, almost undetectable synergy between

empirical and temporal that results from this situation (and which Nancy
describes above) creates a fractal continuity between space and time which
is also fleetingly haptic. This is because the virtual, arbitrary interaction of
space and time that Nancy postulates requires the constant re-zoning of
all human sensory faculties. This process is led by the self-reflexive toucher
which informs our conscious understanding of le sentir. It is attested to
by our perception of the inscriptive act in certain art objects.73 Due to the
influence of excription, however, we are never more than dimly aware of the
spatio-temporal ebb and flow of which criture is the sole enduring remnant.
One final and extremely important aspect of Nancys treatment of the
haptic and the excrit is that our gender plays a role in all of the concepts
that I have just presented:
Il ny a pas de corps unisexe []. Le corps se rapporte au corps de lautre sexe. Dans
ce rapport, il y va de sa corporit en tant quelle touche par le sexe sa limite: elle
jouit, cest--dire que le corps est secou au dehors de lui-mme. Chacune de ses
zones, jouissant pour soi-mme, met au dehors le mme clat. [] Le fini et linfini
se sont croiss, se sont changs un instant. Chacun des sexes peut occuper la position du fini ou de linfini.74
In short, Nancy states that a perceiver may transcend or exscript his or

her body and its sensory processes momentarily, but this brief transcendence
72 Ibid., pp.8788.
73 [C]e que lart fait voir cest--dire ce quoi il touche et qui est en mme temps ce
quil met en uvre [] , cest [] que lunit et lunicit dun monde sont, et ne sont
pas autre chose, que la diffrence singulire dune touche, et dune zone de touche.
Il ny aurait pas de monde, sil ny avait une discrtion de zones (Nancy, Les Muses,
p.38; emphasis in original).
74 Nancy, Corpus, pp.16162; emphasis in original.
Introduction
29
is only possible because the perceivers body is interacting in a perceptible

manner with that of another.
Conclusion
Where does all of this leave our understanding of haptic perception? The
traces of haptic theory discernible in Jean-Luc Nancys understandings of
human perception are by no means easily explicable. Thanks to the significant role that Nancy attributes to excription in his writings, these traces are
not easily demonstrable either. What is apparent from Nancys writings on
matters of perception is that he does not believe haptic perception to be
clearly distinguishable from optical perception in the manner that Riegl
considered them to be. In common with Paterson and Marks, Nancy does
not appear to share Riegls association of haptic sensation with universality.
For Riegl, universality equates with unmistakeability and, therefore, the
possibility that space may be perceived in an absolutely objective manner.
Even if Nancy discusses haptic perception in art historical and social contexts as Riegl did, he does not adhere to Riegls conviction that haptic appeal
is characteristic of the artistry of antiquity: la vrit, cest la peau. Elle est
dans la peau, elle fait peau: authentique tendue expose, toute tourne
au dehors en mme temps quenveloppe du dedans, du sac rempli de borborygmes et de remugles. La peau touche et se fait toucher.75 Moreover,
Nancy rejects the unbreakable chronology of artistic development inherent
to Riegls understanding of haptic and optical art.
At first glance, Markss theory of haptic visuality seems more consistent with Nancys thinking, especially in her preoccupation with visually
indistinct yet tactilely appealing projected images and their effects upon a
flesh and blood observer. However, none of the ambiguities in our sensory
interaction with projected images that Marks identifies are explicable in
75
Ibid., p.160.
30 Introduction
terms of one overarching concept, whereas much of the sensory ambiguity

that Nancy points out is then attributed to excription.
Where the two theorists do share some common ground is on the
issue of temporal discontinuity and the possibility that our perceptions do
not necessarily function according to the age-old chronology of sensory
stimulus leading inexorably to corporeal response. The filmed world that
Marks describes can be replayed, reversed, speeded up or slowed down and
zoomed in or out upon to such an extent that space and time can become
indistinct, even indistinguishable from each other. Nancys sensory world is
comparable with that of Marks in that it is made up of sensory and spatiotemporal localities from which shared visions may be viewed. The medium
of the sensory world described by Nancy is one of inscribed language and
artistry which solicits the beholders mental images. Marks analyses visions
projected from a specifically optical source. Both domains are capable
nevertheless of fabulating and/or manipulating a moment in space and
time for their observers. Cinemas optical inscriptions upon a reel of film
or a hard disc may reject rational thought just as readily as the painting or
the photograph, the written or typed word, in order to explore the world
from different sensory perspectives. Both theorists also acknowledge that
the gender of an observer might be thought to have a bearing on how he
or she perceives the world and its artistic or literary artefacts. However,
while Nancy is certain that gender plays a role in our perceptive processes,
Marks believes the question of gender to be of peripheral importance to
her formulation of haptic visuality.
In matters of gender, rationalism and spatio-temporal perception,
Patersons explorations of art and technology as haptic phenomena allow
for experiential possibilities comparable with those posited by Marks and
Nancy. Where his understanding of haptic sensation differs from that of
Marks or Nancy is in his insistence that haptic sensation be thought of
in proprioceptive terms, rather than as a unique synergy of optical and
tactile sensory data. Perhaps due to its phenomenological grounding,
Patersons understanding of haptic perception is not so fascinated by
what is imperceptible or indistinguishable as the theories of Marks,
Nancy or even Riegl appear to be. Indeed, Patersons presentation of the
haptic as the proprioceptive appears to suggest that some empirically
Introduction
31
useful information may be gleaned from almost any corporeal sensation.

This position is far removed from the other three haptic models analysed
here, all of which appear to begin from the standpoint that where there is
empirically valuable sense to be found, there must also be worthless
nonsense.
I now present the texts by Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot and
Michel Serres that I shall be examining both in their own right and in the
context of the haptic theories just discussed.
Georges Bataille
In order to explain Georges Batailles theoretical stance concerning the
core sensory elements of haptic perception (sight and touch), I shall analyse his postulations of the il pinal, htrologie and the informe. The
majority of my primary sources for this section of the chapter are articles first published in the journal Documents between 1929 and 1930,
though I shall also consider a selection of published and unpublished
articles that Bataille wrote for other periodicals such as Acphale and
Verve during the late 1930s. (All of these pieces are reprinted in the first
two volumes of Batailles posthumous uvres compltes (1970).) Based
upon my appraisal of these articles, I will suggest that Batailles critical approach to matters of perception indicates a consistent mistrust of
haptic and uniquely tactile sensation. Furthermore, I will contend that
Batailles apparent favouring of optical perception is largely in keeping
with Riegls understanding of early twentieth-century artistic tastes,
even if Bataille does not refer to Riegl or his theories directly. Having
drawn these conclusions, I turn to Batailles prose works from the same
period; might his critical treatment of haptic perception be reflected in his
literary works?
The first rcit by Bataille that I shall be considering in response to this
question is the original version of his debut novella, Histoire de lil, which
first appeared in small quantities in 1928 bearing the pen name Lord Auch.
32 Introduction
The novella describes a young couples violent confrontation with interwar

European morality and its bastions, most notably the Catholic Church,
the French Gendarme and the medical profession. Aided in their frequently
sadomasochistic enterprises by a voyeuristic English aristocrat named
Sir Edmond, the first of the novellas two male narrators and his female companion Simone cut a swath of destruction across France and Spain, using
sexuality as their weapon of choice. The couples mutual preoccupation with
haptic sensations of carnality is a major feature of this works first-person
narrative. Ultimately, however, their search for absolute and simultaneous
visual and tactile satisfaction of their desires results in death and failure.
Madame Edwarda, the first edition of which appeared in 1941, is
attributed to the fictitious Pierre Anglique. Its rcit is a first-person narrative set in peacetime, probably pre-World War II. Batailles tale recounts
an unnamed mans encounter with the titular prostitute in a brothel and
the events which unfold in its wake. The narrative of Madame Edwarda
dwells upon the sights and sensations of male and female skin coming
into proximal contact. In spite of this, there are several instances during
which intimate haptic contact gives rise to a specifically optical form of
transcendental experience.
Instances of this transcendence are even more apparent in Le Bleu du
ciel, the last of the prose works by Bataille that I shall be examining. This
work was written in 1935, but remained unpublished until 1957. Prefaced by
Batailles explanation of why he chose not to publish the text when first it
was written, the narratives main protagonist, Henri Troppmann, describes
the consequences of his attempts (and failures) to come to terms with his
repeated infidelities amidst the first stirrings of the Spanish Civil War of 1936
to 1939. Troppmanns narrative of events is also a chronicle of his inability to
rid his troubled life of the need for simultaneously visual and tactile (haptic)
excitation of his carnal desires. In my analysis of this and the other two rcits
by Bataille that I examine, I shall consider how the main characters sensory
preferences shift gradually from haptic interaction to optical perception,
only for the tale to conclude with both forms of sensation coexisting briefly
and unsatisfyingly in one sensory continuum. As I will show, Nancys subsequent understanding of haptic perception as a manifestation of excription
offers us valuable perspectives upon these changes in sensory preference.
Introduction
33
Maurice Blanchot
For reasons that I shall elucidate in the chapter on Maurice Blanchot itself,
I begin my assessment of his treatment of haptic perception by presenting a thematic synopsis of his critical works from the period 1941 to 1969,
with some reference to his subsequent critical texts. Through analysis of
critical texts such as Faux pas (1943), La Part du feu (1949), LEspace littraire (1955) and LEntretien infini (1969), I intend to demonstrate that
Blanchots treatment of the component sensations of haptic perception is
as equivocal as his portrayals of uniquely optical perception. In order to
justify this contention, I will present Blanchots theorisations of image,
objet and fascination as varying forms of optical and tactile aporia. I shall
then examine how these postulates can be related to another Blanchovian
concept, le rapport du troisime genre, by haptic means. In order to complete this task, I will ask what insights Markss subsequent postulation of
haptic visuality and Nancys understanding of excription as a simultaneously
literary and proprioceptive phenomenon offer us concerning the aporetic
nature of Blanchots perceptual theories. The paradox of Blanchots critical
presentations of haptic perceptions visual and tactile sensory components
is that he affords corporeity as little philosophical credence as possible. At
the same time, he cannot resist returning regularly to the subject of the
human body and exploring his belief that its sensory experiences can never
be articulated adequately through language.
My analysis of Blanchots literary output will demonstrate that the association between haptic sensation and the ineffability of corporeal sensation
which underpins his theorisations of perception is equally important in his
prose works. The first literary piece by Blanchot that I shall be examining
is his debut novel, the original version of Thomas lobscur (1941).76 As shall
be seen, the contemporaneity of Thomas lobscurs initial, Occupation-era
publication and Batailles first version of Madame Edwarda offers many
76 A better known (though heavily abridged) second version of Thomas lobscur was
published in 1950.
34 Introduction
rich areas of investigation. In Blanchots lengthy third-person account of

the dysfunctional relationships between the titular protagonist and two
females (Irne and Anne), the pre-eminence of optical distance over haptic
proximity that is favoured in Batailles later literary works proves fatal for
all three of Blanchots characters. His trio of protagonists undergo a gruelling emotional and perceptual journey from haptic to optical perspectives
before transcending their perceiving bodies, only for the narrative to end
with a return of sorts to haptic sensation. I will be paying particularly close
attention to the parallels that can be drawn between selected moments of
optical interaction described in Thomas lobscur and the manner in which
all seem to exert an appreciable haptic force upon the characters involved.
Blanchots critical concept of fascination will feature significantly in these
enquiries.
A rcit from Blanchots later career, La Folie du jour (1973; first published in 1949 under the title Un rcit?), addresses sensations of chronic
physical illness and their psychological effects rather differently than
is the case in the far lengthier Thomas lobscur. La Folie du jours brief,
first-person rcit focuses mostly upon the unnamed narrators confused
thoughts and sensations whilst he convalesces from eye surgery after being
glassed. Blanchots text is notable for its almost total absence of direct
dialogue and a similar dearth of non-violent physical interaction. Indeed,
by the final sentence of La Folie du jour, silence and ineffability are portrayed as the most perceptible characteristics of the sensing human body.
As Blanchots narrative progresses, instances of fleeting but vivid haptic
sensation give way to increasingly indecipherable visions which remain
rooted in perceptual agony. The other sensations which accompany these
visions never transcend bodily suffering, but are so vague as to communicate
almost nothing of corporeal sensation or indeed, its transcendence. Might
these visions pre-empt the haptically perceptible limits of corporeality
at which Nancys postulations of excription and criture come into
their own?
LInstant de ma mort (first published in 1994), Blanchots final rcit,
is a short first-person narrative of a young maquisards encounter with an
enemy firing squad during the Allied invasion of France in mid-1944. The
almost complete absence of reference to haptic perception in this narrative
Introduction
35
is all the more apparent because it is set during a period of intense, often
hand-to-hand combat. There is also a significant lack of female presence
in this text (as is the case in La Folie du jour). As a point of comparison
with Bataille, I consider whether the presence of female characters in either
writers literary works entails an increase or decrease in references to haptic
perception. I discover that the presence of female characters does indeed
correlate with an increase in allusions to hapticity in the literary works of
Blanchot and Bataille. I then examine whether it is possible that Blanchot
and Bataille presage Nancys assertion that there is no corps unisexe in
matters of perception. I will also ask whether the brief, ultimately abortive
transcendence of not only haptic but also optical perception postulated
by Bataille is apparent in any of the Blanchovian critical works and prose
that I have studied.
Michel Serres
The works of Michel Serres are generally rather more difficult to categorise
than those of Bataille or Blanchot, and the texts selected for examination
here are no exception. The distinction between critical theory and literary
prose is particularly hazy in Serress oeuvre. His works also differ appreciably from those of Bataille and Blanchot in their almost ceaseless praise and
exploration of synergies between the bodys various sensory faculties. As
we shall see, Serres believes fervently that an awareness of these synergies
is crucial to the continued evolution of social, scientific and philosophical knowledge.
As with Bataille and Blanchot, I begin my investigation of Serress
approach to haptic sensation by examining his critical theorisations of
perception especially those involving touch and vision. For the purposes
of my analysis, the Serres works that I shall designate as critical theory are
those whose content is structured by the critique of concepts or hypotheses. In addition, these texts contain little or no personal anecdote and are
written from a predominantly third-person perspective.
36 Introduction
The works of critical theory by Serres that I will consider span

most of his published career. Of those that I shall be discussing here,
Herms II: LInterfrence (1972) and Herms V: Le Passage du Nord-Ouest
(1980) are the nearest to being purely theoretical texts. Indeed, the ostensibly empirical stance advocated in both works is firmly rooted in the guiding
philosophical principles of the mathematical and scientific practices of the
time. (For example, I illustrate that the influence of Information Theory
is particularly apparent in Herms II. I also show that an interdisciplinary
approach to the humanities and sciences is at the heart of Serress arguments
in Herms V.)
It is Serress continual philosophical refinements of his own brand of
modern-day empiricism that best illustrate the importance of haptic perception in his thinking. I examine the role of haptic sensation in Serress
theorisations of the reception and transmission of information in particular
detail. I will examine how the real physical contact involved in haptic perception also becomes a form of virtual communication in Serress perceptual
theories. In order to explore the temporal and philosophical repercussions of
this haptic synergy between the virtual and the actual, I shall also examine
claircissements (1992; co-written with Bruno Latour) and extracts from
the fourth volume of Serress Petites chroniques du dimanche soir (2011;
with Michel Polacco). In my analysis, I enquire as to how Serress empirical understanding of haptic perception alters as he reappraises his views
concerning the modifying effects of vision upon tactility and vice versa.
I shall also consider whether the evolving theoretical explanations of haptic
perception that Serres offers are reflected in his more anecdotal writings.
Let us now turn to the literary works by Serres that I will be examining. The texts by Serres that I shall class as being literary prose contain
anecdotes which are often written in the first person. We begin with Les
Cinq Sens, which was published in 1985. Though Serres had been including
personal anecdotes in his writings since the mid-1970s, it is only with the
publication of Les Cinq Sens that he adds haptic perception to his existing
gamut of mathematical and philosophical enquiry definitively. Over the
course of its almost five hundred pages, Les Cinq Sens addresses subjects
as diverse as canvas paintings by Pierre Bonnard, Serress recollection of
how speaking can dull the pain of a hornet sting and the undermining of
Introduction
37
language by modern science. Several episodes of ancient Greek and early

Christian mythology and etymology are also discussed at length. In my
analysis of Les Cinq Sens, I shall be focusing upon Serress depiction of the
role played by haptic perception in the growing convergence of artistry,
science, geometry and philosophy that characterises his view of the late
twentieth century.
Serress preoccupation with haptic experience is equally apparent in
Le Tiers-Instruit (1991). This literary work contains anecdotes illustrating
the ills of modern Western schooling and tertiary education, the myth and
dramatic personae of Arlequin (Harlequin) and the empirical knowledge
that can be gained through the haptic experience of river swimming. Serres
also presents us with tales concerning the positive physical, mental and
social effects of playing football, tennis and dancing. He then connects
these benefits with the three Laws of Planetary Rotation established by
seventeenth-century astronomer Johannes Kepler. Serress musings are
punctuated by his own recollections of academic elitism, globalisation and
the importance of being ambidextrous. In order to grasp Serress understanding of haptic perception as a proprioceptive phenomenon of the kind
postulated by Paterson, I will be comparing Serress presentation of a river
swimmers haptic experiences with instances of swimming in Blanchots
Thomas lobscur and Batailles Le Bleu du ciel. My comparison will highlight
a number of significant differences in the manner that the three writers
approach the concept of proprioception, both in its own right and as the
symptom of haptic perception that Mark Paterson portrays it as being.
The last of my chosen literary texts by Serres, La Guerre mondiale
(2008), is rather different in tone and style than either of the prose works
discussed above in that it reads more like a personal plea than Les Cinq Sens
or Le Tiers-Instruit do. On this occasion, Serres demands that unbreakable
ethical limits be placed upon the scope of armed conflicts. He asks that
these limits be determined by philosophical examination of haptic experiences and virtual realms which are, ostensibly, unable to exert a haptic
influence over us, such as events in the distant past or the numerical values
displayed by an internet website. Somewhat unexpectedly, Serres chooses
to illustrate the benefits of these proposed curbs on violence by recounting
how he filmed a drunken bar brawl between sailors. Serres then offers us
38 Introduction
his philosophical appraisal of a rugby match. Laura U. Markss concept of

haptic visuality is central to my reading of these examples. I will be examining why Serres appears to exhibit an increasing penchant for the optical
over the haptic in these instances.
As La Guerre mondiale draws to a close, Serres explains how he believes
one particular statistic calculated by the World Health Organisation should
determine the internets increasing influence upon our understanding of
reality and of virtuality. Serress assertions on this subject form the backbone
of his attempt to bridge the ontological distance between haptic perception as a paradigm of tangibility and optical perception as a synonym of
intangibility. Intriguingly, Serres insists that haptic interaction between
human beings must be limited and sublimated (rather than exscripted in
a Nancyan sense). Serres believes this reduction of haptic contact to be
the only means of stemming what he fears to be an otherwise inexorable
increase in violence on a global scale. In my analysis of La Guerre mondiale,
I seek to understand how Serres comes to denounce haptic perception as
being so damaging after having praised its positive influence upon modern
humanity in Les Cinq Sens and Le Tiers-Instruit.
Bataille, Blanchot and Serres: Haptic Experience

In the conclusion of this text, I will summarise my findings concerning
Bataille, Blanchot, Serres and the haptic. I demonstrate that haptic perception becomes increasingly subordinated to optical perception in the
critical theories and literary prose of Bataille, Blanchot and Serres as their
careers progress. Each writer-philosopher presents and justifies this rejection in his own manner.
Though their reasonings differ considerably, the critical works of Bataille
and Blanchot are consistently scathing of any attempt to write about human
perception as a rational, socially integrative sensory phenomenon. However,
the literary narratives of Bataille and Blanchot rely upon haptic perception as
a trope to be undermined. The variety of ways in which Bataille and Blanchot
Introduction
39
achieve this subordination of haptic perception in their prose works helps

them to illustrate their critical arguments that the human body can only complicate and distort our attempts to understand the world through rational
theories. Correspondingly, the prose works by Bataille and Blanchot that
I shall be studying each begin with some haptic allusions before hesitating
between a preference for haptic or optical sensation and concluding with
a pronounced endorsement of uniquely optical interaction. This pattern
holds true from the earliest literary forays of either writer.
By contrast, I observe that the critical and literary works by Serres
that I study in this book remain favourably disposed towards haptic perception from the 1970s onwards. Serres is staunch in his insistence that
sensory interaction equates with social integration and the consolidation
of practical knowledge. His reasons for advocating this stance change significantly between the 1970s and 2000s, but Serress only notable rejection
of the haptic occurs in La Guerre mondiale in 2008. Modern technologies such as the internet play a significant role in his demand that haptic
interaction be heavily limited in favour of visual contact. I note that even
instances such as this cannot divest themselves of haptic influence, however.
Though profound differences exist between the writings and philosophies of Bataille, Blanchot and Serres, I conclude that for all three
writer-philosophers, the philosophical and stylistic consequences of subordinating haptic perception also exert an enduring (and paradoxically)
haptic influence upon the dominant, ostensibly optical sensibility which
has resulted from it. In short, haptic perception remains an inescapable
touchstone of the critical theories and literary prose of Bataille, Blanchot
and Serres. This remains true even when they attempt to reject the influence of the haptic and write about purely optical perception or, in Serress
case, to discuss forms of proprioception which involve all of the bodys
sensory faculties at once.
With the terminology and subject matter of my investigation now
established, I will begin my textual analysis in earnest. For ease of reading
and to highlight the changes in approach from one writers works to the
next, I shall proceed chronologically on an author-by-author basis. The
critical and literary works of Georges Bataille will therefore be the first
that I consider.
Chapter 1
Bataille and the Haptic: Fleshy Transcendence
In the introduction of this book, I presented four distinct understandings

of haptic perception. Linking Georges Batailles writing with these postulations of haptic perception is not the easiest of tasks. Not least because the
word haptique does not appear even once in all twelve volumes of Batailles
posthumous uvres compltes. Nor, in spite of Bataille being employed
by several libraries during his lifetime, is there any evidence that he had
read or even heard of Riegl, much less any of his aesthetic theories.1
With these facts acknowledged, I shall begin this chapter with two
quotations from Batailles critical writings. These quotations demonstrate
the complications of analysing Batailles literary works from a haptic standpoint.2 If, for example, we consider the synergy between sight, touch, physical balance and spatial awareness that Patersons model of proprioception
as haptic phenomenon requires, quotations such as the following suggest
that Batailles theories do have some form of haptic sensibility:
See Georges Bataille, uvres compltes, 12 vols (Paris: NRF/Gallimard, 19701988),

XII, pp.549621 for a list of texts Bataille is known to have borrowed from the
Bibliothque Nationale between 1922 and 1950. All subsequent references to Batailles
works will be taken from his uvres compltes and will take the following form: name
of work, uvres compltes page number(s). For ease of reading, uvres compltes
volume numbers will only be included in the first reference to each work.
I wish to take issue here with Brian T. Fitchs stance in his text, Monde a lenvers,
texte reversible: la fiction de Georges Bataille (Paris: Lettres modernes, 1982), which
specifically refuses to link Bataillean rcit and critique (Notre propos ne concerne
que sa fiction. (p.48)). I contend that Fitchs approach is problematic, given Batailles
well-publicised assertion that Madame Edwarda is the cl lubrique to the Supplice
section of his theoretical text, LExprience intrieure (Bataille, cited in Gilles Mayn,
Georges Bataille, lrotisme et lcriture (Paris: Descartes et Cie, 2003), p.339).
42
Chapter 1
Ce qui frappe des yeux humains ne dtermine pas seulement la connaissance des
relations entre les divers objets, mais aussi bien tel tat desprit dcisif et inexplicable.
Cest ainsi que la vue dune fleur dnonce, il est vrai, la prsence de cette partie dfinie
dune plante; mais il est impossible de sarrter ce rsultat superficiel: en effet, la
vue de cette fleur provoque dans lesprit des ractions beaucoup plus consquentes
du fait quelle exprime une obscure dcision de la nature vgtale. Ce que rvlent
la configuration et la couleur de la corolle, ce que trahissent les salissures du pollen
ou la fracheur du pistil, ne peut sans doute pas tre exprim adquatement laide
du langage; toutefois, il est inutile de ngliger, comme on le fait gnralement, cette
inexprimable prsence relle, et de rejeter comme une absurdit purile certaines
tentatives dinterprtation symbolique.3
Le Langage des fleurs, the article from which this extract is taken, was
first printed in Documents, a relatively short-lived arts magazine of which
Bataille was a founder member and regular contributor. Particularly apparent in the opening two phrases above is a postulation of vision as an incisive,
literally impressive experience of (spatial) interrelation not dissimilar to
Riegls explanation of haptic surfaces as those whose portrayal of proximal
images invite us ever closer to touching them.4 What role touch actually
plays in the interaction that Bataille describes above is not fully explained.
He does however insist upon the importance of prsence relle in the
final sentence. The fact that this assertion follows a lengthy description
of the flowers properties, most of which are simultaneously visible and
tangible (and therefore haptic), should not be ignored. Indeed, Bataille
even evokes the smell of the flower. All of this suggests a conviction on
his part that some form of conjunction between our sensory faculties is
possible, however fragmented its constitutive elements may in fact be. In
1943, Bataille even writes in his seminal text LExprience intrieure that
through the act of writing the book, he has discovered [l]a possibilit dunir
en un point prcis deux sortes de connaissance jusquici ou trangres lune
3
4
Bataille, Le Langage des fleurs, Documents, 3 (1929). Reprinted in Bataille, uvres

compltes, I, pp.17378 (p.173; emphasis in original).
See Riegl, The Group Portraiture of Holland, pp.28182 and p.4, n. 7 above.
Bataille and the Haptic
43
lautre ou confondues grossirement []: tout entier le mouvement de la

pense se perdait, mais tout entier se retrouvait, en un point o rit la foule
unanime.5 It is clear therefore that Bataille is not averse to the idea of
fusion in itself.
Nevertheless, Patersons definition of the haptic as a proprioceptive
phenomenon, as the [p]erception of the position, state and movement
of the body and limbs in space,6 complicates our reading of Batailles
remarks above. Not least because Patersons definition of haptic perception postulates a sensory continuum whose constitutive faculties are consciously discernible. Contrarily, Bataille states in LExprience intrieure
that [l]exprience atteint pour finir la fusion de lobjet et du sujet, tant
comme sujet non-savoir, comme objet linconnu.7 Lest we forget, Riegl,
Marks, Paterson and even Nancy explain haptic sensation as a form of
sensorial construct, as a conceptual tool to understand the synergetic interaction of sight and touch in the spatial and social realms. The theorists
(admittedly varying) postulations of haptic perception thus run contrary
to Batailles theoretical approach to corporeal experience because all of
their explanations rely upon rationality while Batailles understanding of
corporeal perception does not.
At this stage of his career, it seems that Batailles critical postulations
do not allow for the consciously rationalised schematisation of perceptive
processes demanded by the haptic theories of Riegl, Marks, Paterson or
Nancy. In the next subsection, I explore how Batailles position is rather
more nuanced than first it appears.
LExprience intrieure, in Bataille, uvres compltes, V, pp.7190 (p.11; emphasis

in original). It should be noted that in the quotation above, Bataille is referring to a
fusion of connaissance motionnelle and connaissance discursive, rather than any
form of haptic/optic binary.
6 Paterson, The Senses of Touch, p. ix.
7 Bataille, LExprience intrieure, p.21.
5
44
Chapter 1
Perspectives
One of Batailles earliest articles for Documents, published in its first issue
(April 1929), makes some assertions strikingly similar to those of Riegl: On
trouve, lies lvolution humaine, des alternances de formes plastiques
analogues celles que prsente, dans certains cas, lvolution des formes
naturelles.8 It is equally noticeable, however, that in this early Documents
article Bataille does not attempt to differentiate between the sight and
touch of the plastic form. His choice may be explained by the fact that
this article, Le Cheval acadmique, discusses the images of horses found
on pre-Christian coinage in Gaul; the value of the horses image and the
metal upon which it appeared could be seen and touched. Nevertheless,
when Bataille does speak of vision specifically (in a Documents article entitled il, which was published less than a year after the extremely limited
pressing of Batailles maiden novella Histoire de lil), he presents the human
eye as being a cutting edge, a tool of material seduction:
Il semble, en effet, impossible au sujet de lil de prononcer un autre mot que sduction, rien ntant plus attrayant dans les corps des animaux et des hommes. Mais la
sduction extrme est probablement la limite de lhorreur. cet gard, lil pourrait
tre rapproch du tranchant, dont laspect provoque galement des ractions aigus
et contradictoires.9
Batailles theoretical examinations of other parts of the body prove

similarly unable to accommodate the synergy between sensory faculties
that Riegl, Marks, Paterson or Nancy believe to be implicit in haptic perception. In almost all cases, Batailles understanding of the body is presented in terms of a sensory disjuncture comparable with that detailed
in the extract above. Indeed, several of Batailles articles on parts of the
8
9
Bataille, Le Cheval acadmique, Documents, 1 (1929). Reprinted in Bataille, uvres

compltes, I, pp.15963 (p.159).
Bataille, il, Documents, 4 (1929). Reprinted in Bataille, uvres compltes, I,
pp.18789 (p.187; emphasis in original).
45
human anatomy published in Documents during 1929 and 1930 present

the body as a discontinuous string of perceptual foci which are frequently
in no more than chaotic sensory communication with one another. In an
article entitled Bouche, for example, Bataille describes the human mouth
in the following terms:
dans les grands occasions la vie humaine se concentre encore bestialement dans la
bouche, la colre fait grincer les dents, la terreur et la souffrance atroce font de la
bouche lorgane des cris dchirants. Il est facile dobserver ce sujet que lindividu
boulevers relve la tte en tendant le cou frntiquement, en sorte que sa bouche
vient se placer, autant quil est possible, dans le prolongement de la colonne vertbrale,
cest--dire dans la position quelle occupe normalement dans la constitution animale.10
The human mouth is presented here not as the articulator of rational

thought but as an avatar of uncontrolled bodily affliction. It betrays an
intellectually unmediated, insidious animality of which humanity cannot
rid itself any more readily than it can the painful sensations which provoke
its actions. The cris dchirants which emanate from the human mouth
do not only attest to sensations of pain. They also denounce a physicality unable to maintain its sensorial composure in moments of physical
or mental anguish. Importantly for us, this lack of composure expresses
itself haptically through involuntary movements of the body. Of these, the
heads movements are the most immediately noticeable, as it is this part
of the body that we treat as the centre of perception and expression. The
tendency of perceptual theories to treat the human head as the focal point
of existence is problematic in itself, according to Bataille. He goes so far
as to suggest that the most human part of the human body is in fact the
big toe (Le gros orteil est la partie la plus humaine du corps humain en ce
sens quaucun autre lment de ce corps nest aussi diffrenci de llment
correspondant du singe anthropode).11 At the same time, however, Bataille
10
11
Bataille, Bouche, Documents, 5 (deuxime anne) (1930). Reprinted in Bataille,

uvres compltes, I, pp.23738 (p.237; emphasis in original).
Bataille, Le Gros orteil, Documents, 6 (1929). Reprinted in Bataille, uvres compltes,
I, pp.20004 (p.200; emphasis in original).
46
Chapter 1
asserts that the mundane, repetitive realities of haptic interaction with the
world in which we live make us forget the humanity of the toe:
Aussi la fonction du pied humain consiste-t-elle donner une assise ferme cette
rection dont lhomme est si fier (le gros orteil, cessant de servir la prhension
ventuelle des branches, sapplique au sol sur le mme plan que les autres doigts).
Mais quel que soit le rle jou dans lrection par son pied,lhomme, qui a la tte
lgre, cest--dire leve vers le ciel et les choses du ciel, le regard comme un crachat
sous prtexte quil a ce pied dans la boue.12
In the quotation above, Bataille explains our forgetting of the humanity apparent in our big toes in terms of a dizzying haptic confusion which
we experience between our feet and the earth upon which we see them
tread. By walking, we determine what is physically inferior to or below
us (labject). By looking up at the distant sky as we do so, we form ideas as
to what transcends our physical presence, what we consider to be superior
to or above us (le sublime). Through the synchrony of sensation implicit
in the concept of proprioception, we generally see and feel the physical
presence of our feet as they come into contact with the surfaces on which
we walk. The harmonious synchrony of these sensations means that we
pay them less attention. (Lest we forget, our proprioceptive actions allow
us to perceive the position, state and movement of the body and limbs in
space.)13 Indeed, these sensations become banal, even mundane to us. As
a result, lhomme, qui a la tte lgre, cest--dire leve vers le ciel et les
choses du ciel, le regard [le gros orteil] comme un crachat sous prtexte
quil a ce pied dans la boue.
I shall clarify this idea further. We can learn what a given surface is like
by placing our bodies into visual and dermal contact with it. Contrarily,
we can only see the sky; it cannot leave a simultaneously visual and tactile
imprint on our skin. The blueness of the sky will not rub off on our hands if
we reach skyward, for example. Even with aviation having become a routine
experience for many people, it would be difficult for us to run our fingers
12 Ibid.
13 Paterson, The Senses of Touch, p. ix.
47
through a bank of cloud. Bataille implies that part of what so fascinates us

about the sky is that we can see it, but this sight can never leave an obviously
related trace of itself on our skin. The lack of tactile information that we
can glean from looking at the sky captivates us. Seeing but not touching
becomes more interesting than seeing and touching at once. This misguided
logic in turn defines modern human perception, such that the head and its
sense organs are, to a certain extent, narcotised (left with a tte lgre) by
areas of space which are not at once visual and tactile. Our perception of
those spaces which are haptic, and which leave their mark upon our skin,
are looked upon with disdain because they root us too rigidly to a particular
place, time and set of social circumstances. As Bataille puts it,
[l]e pied humain est communment soumis des supplices grotesques qui le rendent
difforme et rachitique. Il est imbcilement vou aux cors, aux durillons [,] aux oignons
[] et [] la salet le plus curante: lexpression paysanne elle a les mains plus
sales comme on a les pieds qui nest plus valable aujourdhui pour toute la collectivit
humaine ltait au XVIIe sicle.14
Those who reject the metaphorical schema of high and low in their physical conduct, who do not hide the baseness of their condition, must reap
the social consequences (Claire Lozier observes that, true to its Latinate
etymology, labject dsigne la nature ou ltat de ce qui a t jet en bas ou
au loin).15
On this evidence, the haut/sublime and bas/abject threaten to scupper
any haptic interpretation of Batailles work.16 To follow his argument, we
14
15
16
Bataille, Le Gros orteil, p.201.

Claire Lozier, De labject et du sublime: Georges Bataille, Jean Genet, Samuel Beckett
(Oxford: Peter Lang, 2012), p.6. Lozier adds that le sublime another term with
Latinate etymology signifie suspendu en lair, haut, lev, grand au sens propre
et figur (p.12), but identifies a number of problems with the terms usage, relative
to its etymology (pp.1220). For a comprehensive overview of the haut/sublime
and bas/abject in Batailles writing, see ibid., pp.27109.
The sacrifice of sens (defined as a sense which is derived from the bodys perceptive
faculties) appears consistent with Batailles thinking. In a posthumously published
article, he says that [l]a pratique du sacrifice est aujourdhui tombe en dsutude
48
Chapter 1
focus our sight and touch upon the sky because it is the most distant object
from our eyes and hands. Our skin cannot be soiled by the sky. Nor can
the surface of the sky be soiled by our attempts to touch it. Our perception of the sky thus becomes a paradox in which our eyes are seduced or
impressed upon by intangibility itself.17 In looking at the sky, we reach out
to touch that which we know we cannot sully by hand or sight. We touch
nothingness when we look skyward.
The eyes are a part of the sensory disjuncture which defines our bodies,
according to Bataille. However, the human body does not exist in a sensory
vacuum. As Bataille reminds us, the desire to touch the nothingness of the
sky is a physical expression of the impossible, since our necks strain when
we look above us.18 Moreover, looking too closely at the wrong part of the
sky (its sunniest area) risks blinding us to the visual presence of the intangible.19 Our attempts to look for the intangible can never be fully satisfied,
therefore. To paraphrase Gilles Mayn (and Jacques Derrida), there will
always be a blind spot (or tache aveugle) in our visions of the intangible.20
Batailles articles postulate an inescapable embrace of that very blind spot,
of a sullied humanity. The human eye can never tear itself away from this
et cependant elle a t, de lavis unanime, une action humaine plus significative
quaucune autre (Bataille, Le Jsuve, uvres compltes, II, pp.1320 (p.13)).
17 This denial also inverts the characteristics of haptic experience as they are defined
by Riegl or Marks.
18 See Bataille, Lil pinal (1), published posthumously in Lphmre, 3 (1967) and
reprinted in Bataille, uvres compltes, II, pp.2135. Ibid., pp.2527 are particularly
relevant to Batailles presentation of the sky as an image of impossibility.
19 Denis Hollier reminds us of this fact in La Prise de la Concorde (Paris: NRF/
Gallimard, 1974), p.113, whilst he discusses the Nietzschean joie de la ccit and
Batailles theoretical engagement with it. Compare for example Batailles LAnus
solaire, a pamphlet written in 1927 and published some years later (Paris: ditions
de la Galerie Simon, 1931; reprinted in Bataille, uvres compltes, I, pp.7986) with
Soleil pourri (Documents, 3 (deuxime anne) (1930). Reprinted in Bataille, uvres
compltes, I, pp.23132).
20 See Mayn, Georges Bataille, p.93. On the tache aveugle, see also Hollier, La Prise
de la Concorde, pp.18084 and Jacques Derridas Mmoires daveugle: lautoportrait et
autres ruines (Paris: Ministere de la culture, de la communication, des grands travaux,
et du bicentenaire, 1990), pp.12030.
49
sight, which is also a blind spot. This is because the sight/blind spot is
situated by, and refers to, the human body: on est sduit bassement, sans
transposition et jusqu en crier, en carquillant les yeux: les carquillant
ainsi devant un gros orteil.21
The sky, the suns retina-burning trajectory and the evolution of
Batailles critical engagement with these images leaves us with one certainty.
The blind spot, the simultaneously right and wrong place to look and
thereby touch upon the impossibility of haptic interaction in Batailles
theory is not a fixed point.22 There is no one quotation or text which proves
or disproves Batailles stance on perception with any authority. Instead, the
haptic blind spot in Batailles theories of perception invites our gaze, asks us
to follow and touch upon it, however briefly. It then leaves us lightheaded
and with burned fingers, our enquiring eyes momentarily blinded. To put
it less poetically, we can never get to grips entirely with the haptic potentiality of Batailles theories of perception.
Having scratched the Bataillean bodys dermal surface, we shall now
turn to its inner realms. How does Bataille posit their interactions with
external stimuli?
Lil pinal
What is the il pinal? Near the centre of the upper, outer surface of the
brain in modern humans, there exists an apparently undeveloped appendage of the pineal gland, which was believed by Descartes to have been the
epicentre of the human soul.23 Bataille, anti-religious from the early 1920s
21 Bataille, Le Gros orteil, p.204.

22 As demonstrated by the differing approaches adopted by Bataille in LAnus solaire
and Soleil pourri.
23 As discussed by Michel Surya, Georges Bataille: la mort luvre (Paris: NRF/
Gallimard, 1992), p.139. It is worthy of note that Descartes insisted upon the existence
50
Chapter 1
onward, did not share Descartess opinion.24 He did, however, believe

there to be a spiritual quality to this area of the brain; he considered it an
embryonic il virtuel, a vision de la vote cleste en gnral.25 Between
1927 and the mid-1930s, Bataille made five written attempts to explain the
characteristics and implications of the il pinal. Only one of these attempts
can be dated with any certainty: it was written in 1930.26 At any rate, none
of these works would be published during Batailles lifetime. (A short piece
entitled LAnus solaire, published in 1931, refers obliquely to the il pinal,
but only in terms of its premise that corporeal sensations are something
to be excreted in a visible, public manner.)27 The non-publication of these
articles suggests that Bataille did not consider any of these formulations of
the il pinal to be definitive. The articles do, however, offer a further insight
into the variety of ways in which Bataille attempts to explain perception.
With these caveats in mind, let us begin our analysis of the Bataillean
il pinal with a quotation:
Chaque homme possde au sommet du crne une glande connue sous le nom dil
pinal qui prsente en effet les caractres dun il embryonnaire. Or des considrations sur lexistence possible dun il daxe vertical (ce qui revient dire sur le caractre alatoire des corps qui auraient pu tre tout autres quils ne sont) permettent
de rendre sensible la porte dcisive des diffrents parcours auxquels nous sommes
si gnralement habitus que nous sommes arrivs les nier en les qualifiant de parcours normaux ou naturels. Ainsi lopposition de lil pinal la vision relle apparat
comme le seul moyen de dceler la situation prcaire pour ainsi dire traque de
lhomme au milieu des lments universels.28
Here, Bataille qualifies the importance of the il pinal in terms of its ability
to improve humanitys usual field of vision, to counter our blindness to the
celestial, intangible world. From a haptic standpoint, it is noticeable that
of a physical connection between the body and the soul, a role which the il pinal
postulated by Bataille could undertake.
24 As is demonstrated in ibid., pp.13941.
25 See Bataille, Lil pinal (3), in uvres compltes, II, pp.3840 (p.39).
26 See Bataille, uvres compltes, II, p.413.
27 See Bataille, LAnus solaire, pp.8586.
28 Bataille, Lil pinal (2) in uvres compltes, II, pp.3637 (p.37).
51
within two sentences, Bataille refers to a sensory continuity (parcours),

porte, and vision while discussing the il pinal. However, he posits
this third eye as being an organ of mental excretion, rather than corporeal
sensory ingestion: [j]e me reprsentais lil au sommet du crne comme
un horrible volcan en ruption, [] comme une envie de devenir soi-mme
soleil (soleil aveugl ou soleil aveuglant, peu importe).29
Batailles references elsewhere to modern humans upright posture as
being equivalent to tumescence (rig comme un pnis) makes clear that
this new eye, the first point of human contact with the sky, is instrumental
in projecting sexual desires outwards.30 The il pinals sexual potential is
based upon a sensual interconnection between the senses of sight and touch
which tallies with aspects of the haptic perception posited subsequently
by Marks, Paterson and Nancy.
Sexual potency is by no means the only characteristic of the Bataillean
il pinal. Bataille asserts that, since its descent from the trees, humanity
has communed with the world on a predominantly physical basis, as it must
interact with the ground in order to accomplish anything. With this daily
emphasis upon steady tactile interaction with the earths surface, a human
reliance upon physical, aesthetic expressions of harmony has arisen. This
reliance exists at the expense of the functional though chaotic aerial movements of our primate ancestors:
les dmarches de branche en branche qui ont conditionn la station semi-verticale
des singes impliquaient au contraire un mouvement de dplacement discontinu, qui
na jamais permis une harmonie nouvelle et a dvelopp peu peu une manire dtre
et en mme temps un aspect monstrueux.31
At the same time, however, the newfound physical harmony of erect, ambulatory balance and the sacrifice of multi-axial motion and vision which it
necessitates have had an undesirable psychological effect upon us. Standing
erect (and the horizontal vision which results from it) has made the sacred
29 Bataille, Le Jsuve, p.14; emphasis in original.

30 Ibid., p.15.
31 Ibid., pp.1617.
52
Chapter 1
realm of the sun and sky tangibly more remote from us than was the case
when our primate ancestors swung through the trees.32 Worse, modern
psychology places the mind (and the head which houses it) at the centre
of human perception. The limitation of sight and touch resulting from the
human heads inability to look (and feel) beyond the horizontal axis with
comfort has thus become our defining characteristic:
Le sommet de la tte est devenu psychologiquement le centre daboutissement
du nouvel quilibre. Tout ce qui dans lossature allait lencontre des impulsions
verticales de ltre humain comme les saillies des orbites et des mchoires, souvenir du dsordre et des impulsions du singe encore demi horizontales, a presque
entirement disparu. Mais la rduction de la saillie de lorifice anal est, vrai dire,
beaucoup plus significative.33
The bursting forth of the il pinal and its vertical view of the sky therefore offers humanity a badly needed integration of sight and touch. Most
importantly, this union occurs not on some distant horizon, but on the
very ground upon which we stand. In this sensorial integration, Bataille
foresees a reunion of the high/sublime and the low/abject, of the troubled,
often profane material world and the decorporealised world of the sun
and the long history of sacred mythology associated with it. Yet, as we see
from Batailles interest in the recession of the human anal cavity, a sullied
carnality remains critical to any sensorial reintegration of the sublime and
the abject. I shall return to this issue in a moment.
In the meantime, let us consider the deficiency that the sensory reintegration provided by the speculative il pinal actually combats. Bataille
states that modern humanity has allowed itself to se laisser polariser, dans
un certain sens, par le ciel.34 According to Batailles Lil pinal (1), the
titular organs speculative union of sight and touch can only benefit humanity, as all of the science and philosophy which has developed since humanitys descent from the trees is blind to the limited axis of our species vision:
32 Ibid.
33 Ibid., pp.1718.
34 Bataille, Lil pinal (1), p.26.
53
La description des axes perpendiculaires ne prend sa valeur qu partir du moment o

il devient possible de construire sur ces axes le jeu puril dune existence mythologique:
rpondant non plus lobservation ou la dduction mais un dveloppement libre
des rapports entre la conscience immdiate et varie de la vie humaine et les donnes
prtendues inconscientes qui sont constitutionnelles de cette vie.
Ainsi lil pinal, se dtachant du systme horizontal de la vision oculaire normale, apparat dans une sorte de nimbe de larmes, comme lil dun arbre ou plutt
comme un arbre humain. En mme temps cet arbre oculaire nest quun grand pnis
rose (ignoble) ivre de soleil et il suggre ou sollicite un malaise: la nause, le dsespoir
curant du vertige.35
Bataille makes a number of assertions here which will impact upon my

reading of his literary works. Of most importance is his refusal of scientific
observation in any attempt to understand the perceptive process. In its place,
Bataille posits a qualified return to certain aspects of mythology, enacted
through spectacles of physical sacrifice. This new sacrifice consummates the
refusal of any scientific attempt to understand the world through physical
sensation or detached observation. Only an unmediated sexual rapport and
the suns light, which blinds us to all else, remains. Bataille evokes
des dgagements dnergie au sommet du crne aussi violents et aussi crus que ceux
qui rendent si horrible voir la protubrance anale de quelques singes [;] un organe
sexuel dune sensibilit inoue, qui aurait vibr en me faisant pousser des cris atroces,
les cris dune jaculation grandiose mais puante [;] [une] fantaisie dil pinal comme
une fantaisie excrmentielle.36
By and large, Bataille posits the il pinal as a focal point of counterhaptic perception which excretes inner visions and sensations, rather than
receiving sights and sensations from the bodys exterior. It is worth noting,
however, the manner in which Bataille imagines the bursting forth of this
new eye: [l]e tranchant de la hache senfoncerait dans ce crne imaginaire
comme les couperets des marchandes qui fendent en deux parties dun seul
coup violemment frapp sur le billot la tte curante dun lapin corch.37
In short, Bataille presents the arrival of this old but recuperated eye not
35
36
37
Ibid., p.27.
Bataille, Le Jsuve, p.19.
Ibid., pp.1920.
54
Chapter 1
as an inner part of the body bursting outward, but as a violent, incisively

haptic blow which is struck from outside the body. Unlike the rabbits skull,
however, the il pinals cranial berth remains vital and potent. In summary,
the il pinals emergence is presented as being a speculatively excretive sensory phenomenon, yet Batailles rabbit skull simile suggests that the bursting forth of the il pinal would in fact be an incisive sensory experience.
Htrologie
Many of Batailles articles particularly those of 1927 to 1935 shun any
attempt to ascribe sens to haptic perception (or any other sensory phenomenon). We have already seen how, in several published and unpublished
articles from this period, Bataille claims that sens should instead be placed
firmly beyond the vocabulary of scientific or philosophical discourse. He
terms this refusal of scientific and philosophical vocabulary htrologie.
Much of the apparent discontinuity between Batailles literary and critical
treatments of haptic perception can be attributed to the concept of htrologie, so let us analyse his understanding of the term before going any
further. This [s]cience de ce qui est tout autre38 is defined most clearly
in Batailles unpublished journal article from 1933, La Valeur dusage de
D.A.F. de Sade (1): [a]vant tout, lhtrologie soppose nimporte quelle
reprsentation homogne du monde, cest--dire nimporte quel systme
philosophique.39 Riegls attempts to understand previous civilisations use
of visual and tactile space in terms of their philosophical conception of
their world would therefore be a futile undertaking, in Bataillean terms.40
Bataille, La Valeur dusage de D.A.F. de Sade (1), reprinted in Bataille, uvres
compltes, II, pp.5469 (p.61, n.). (Sections of this article were also published posthumously in LArc, 32 (1967).)
39 Ibid., p.62.
40 See for example the account of ancient Egyptian and Greek aesthetics offered by
Riegl in a page-for-page reprint of his 1901 text, Die Sptrmische Kunst-Industrie
38
55
Bataille tells us that htrologie has very specific applications:

Seuls tombent sous le coup de lhtrologie en tant que science, le processus de
limitation dune part, ltude des ractions dantagonisme (expulsion) et damour
(rabsorption) violemment alternes, obtenues en posant llment htrogne,
dautre part. Cet lment lui-mme reste indfinissable et ne peut tre fix que par
des ngations. Le caractre spcifique des matires fcales ou du spectre comme du
temps ou de lespace illimits ne peut tre lobjet que dune srie de ngations telles
quabsence de toute commune mesure possible, irrationalit, etc 41
It is the act of excretion which holds Batailles attention here. Physicality and
the philosophising that it brings with it are not only rejected but forcibly,
viscerally ejected from his understanding of presence and absence. The concept of what is present is no longer quantifiable by tangible measurements
or demonstrable rationale. Presence is instead defined by its immeasurable
characteristics. The problems that this concept poses for any attempt to
explain Batailles writing haptically are obvious. Writing of philosophys
urge to explain the world systematically, Bataille remarks that
[d]e telles reprsentations ont toujours pour but de priver autant que possible lunivers
o nous vivons de toute source dexcitation et de dvelopper une espce humaine
servile apte uniquement la fabrication, la consommation rationnelle et la conservation des produits. [] Lhtrologie [] procde au renversement complet du processus
philosophique qui dinstrument dappropriation quil tait passe au service de lexcrtion
et introduit la revendication des satisfactions violentes impliques par lexistence sociale.42
The views outlined in the statement above place a potentially troublesome emphasis upon spatial appropriation. Might the definition of htrologie given here imply that the postulations of haptic experience presented
Nach den Funden in sterreich-Ungarn (Vienna: Druck und Verlag der KaiserlichKniglichen Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, 1901; repr. Paderborn: Salzwasser Verlag,
2012), pp.6364. (For an English translation of these passages, see Riegl, Late Roman
Art Industry, trans. by Ralf Winkes (Rome: Giorgio Bretschneider Editore, 1985),
pp.7273.)
41 Bataille, La Valeur dusage de D.A.F. de Sade (1), p.63.
56
Chapter 1
by Riegl, Marks, Paterson and Nancy are simply outmoded philosophies of

spatial perception? Haptic perception as it is defined by Marks in particular does, after all, describe a form of sensory stimulation which demands
that the objects which excite it be grasped. Such grasping could surely be
interpreted as an appropriation of space. Batailles qualification of htrologie through scatologie does little to answer this potential problem with
Patersons subsequent theory. This becomes especially clear when Bataille
explains the manner in which the less abstruse doublet of htrologie operates upon the human mind: cest surtout le terme de scatologie (science de
lordure) qui garde dans les circonstances actuelles (spcialisation du sacr)
une valeur expressive incontestable, comme doublet dun terme abstrait tel
quhtrologie.43 Bataille adds that
[] partir du moment o leffort de comprhension rationnelle aboutit la contradiction, la pratique de la scatologie intellectuelle commande la djection des lments
inassimilables [,] ce qui revient constater vulgairement quun clat de rire est la
seule issue imaginable, dfinitivement terminale, et non le moyen, de la spculation
philosophique.44
As Bataille explains, at the moment that rational thought (or perception) faces contradiction, the mind reacts physically, viscerally, to that
mental conflict through laughter. Whether this constitutes a haptic experience is debatable. Laughter the action which turns abstract htrologie into
scatologies practical rejection of philosophy as a means of understanding
perception cannot be seen or touched. But the facial and bodily behaviours which give rise to that laughter and result from it can be. Haptic or
not, the postulation of htrologie in relation to scatologie45 suggests as much
distaste for the purely theoretical as it does for the materialistic. It is almost
as if Bataille cannot resolve which of the two domains he dislikes more.
43 Ibid., p.62, n.; emphasis in original.

45 See Patrick ffrench, After Bataille: Sacrifice, Exposure, Community (London: Legenda,
2007), pp.3138 for a detailed analysis of the differences between htrologie and
scatologie.
57
LInforme
Batailles hesitation appears to be longstanding. A similarly disaffected
indecision between theory and the perceptual experience of bodily sensation is apparent in his definition of the informe, which is included in a 1929
Documents article of the same name:
Un dictionnaire commencerait partir du moment o il ne donnerait plus le sens
mais les besognes des mots. Ainsi informe nest pas seulement un adjectif ayant tel
sens mais un terme servant dclasser, exigeant gnralement que chaque chose ait sa
forme. Ce quil dsigne na ses droits dans aucun sens et se fait craser partout comme
une araigne ou un ver de terre. Il faudrait en effet, pour que les hommes acadmiques
soient contents, que lunivers prenne forme. La philosophie entire na pas dautre
but: il sagit de donner une redingote ce qui est, une redingote mathmatique. Par
contre affirmer que lunivers ne ressemble rien et nest quinforme revient dire que
lunivers est quelque chose comme une araigne ou un crachat.46
This definition of the informe is instructive. Most apparent is its sundering

of rationalist links between forme and sens. Bataille insists that philosophys goal is to unify these concepts, which he considers irreconcilable.
Simultaneously, he points out the danger of thinking of the informes nonresemblance to anything as being constitutive of a thing in its own right.
This would amount to the very philosophical appropriation which we
see Bataille at such pains to avoid in the article on Sade analysed above.
Languages role as bringer of sens is refuted by Bataille, who seeks to reify
the demonstrative impositions of sens from the area of space that they are
intended to designate. Moreover, the philosophical desire to clothe the
universe in a frock coat of mathematically derived sens shrouds amorphous
form with fixed form. This means that empirical thinking provides a construct which explains why we see and feel the world as we do. Unfortunately,
these constructs are also a stumbling block to the acquisition of knowledge
precisely because they render non-existent any perceptive experience which
46 Bataille, Informe, Documents, 7 (1929). Reprinted in Bataille, uvres compltes, I,
p.217 (p.217; emphasis in original).
58
Chapter 1
cannot be schematised mathematically or reconstructed using philosophical terminology.

In this context, Batailles choice of the term besogne or task is also
rather odd, since to perceive a change in what is formless (or informe)
would prove difficult without imposing a formative pattern upon that
formlessness. By defining besogne as the absence of sens, however, Bataille
imposes form and order upon our understanding of the word besogne. Yet,
to borrow a phrase from Patrick ffrenchs The Cut, the Bataillean informe
ruins mimesis, ruins resemblance, the possibility of saying what the universe is like.47 The only obvious way to reconcile these characteristics of
the informe is to treat it as a language which oscillates between sens and
besogne, unaware that it does so.48
However, as ffrench suggests, [t]he operation of the informe is a
reminder of the body, of the low (le bas), [] not in order to propose a
primary physicality or sexuality, but for the purposes of desublimation.49
The characteristics of the informe make us wonder how the components
of haptic experience in Batailles writing can be analysed if as is the case
with his definition of the informe he refuses consistently to attribute any
of the sens which the haptic demands to the language that he uses. The
solution is not to be found in mathematical formulae or philosophical
schematisations of truth, according to Bataille. In a subsequent Documents
article, he states that lespace est rest voyou et il est difficile dnumrer ce
quil engendre. Il est discontinu comme on est escroc, au grand dsespoir
de son philosophe-papa.50 Space is an outlaw: it rejects all philosophically
or linguistically led attempts at categorisation or homogenisation. The
47 Patrick ffrench, The Cut/Reading Batailles Histoire de lil (Oxford: British Academy/
OUP, 1996), p.20.
48 A sentiment echoed by Roland Barthess assertion that the text of Batailles first
novella, Histoire de lil, exhibits a proto-structuralist vibration between rationalist
conceptions of sens and non-sens (see Barthes, La Mtaphore de lil, in Essais
critiques (Paris: Seuil, 1964), pp.23845 (p.244)).
49 ffrench, The Cut, p.21; emphasis in original.
50 Bataille, Espace, in Documents, 1 (deuxime anne) (1930). Reprinted in Bataille,
uvres compltes, I, p.227 (p.227).
59
difficulties which this poses for haptic differentiation between tactile and
visual space are clear; Bataille appears to reject the distinction between
haptic and optical surfaces and spaces upon which the theories of Riegl,
Marks and Paterson rely. How then can we write about Bataille and haptic
perception? Nancys concept of excription provides us with the answer.
Reconciling Bataille and the Haptic

In spite of the difficulties in reconciling Batailles writing with haptic perception, all is not lost. The following extract from an article written in 1938
suggests another dimension to Batailles thinking of physical perception
which is worthy of our attention:
Lexistence nest vraiment humaine elle ne devient diffrente de lexistence des
roches ou des oiseaux que dans la mesure o elle sait se donner un sens. Un homme
qui mnerait une vie si obscure quelle naurait de sens ni pour lui ni pour les autres
aurait mme aussi peu dexistence quune algue: [] rien de beau, rien de grand. []
Le sens de la vie humaine apparat donc li des chances rares.51
Even here, Bataille refuses to understand human perception on any basis

other than self-determination and chance. Batailles distaste for any systemic attempt to quantify life experience would appear to scupper any
haptic interpretation of his work more or less definitively. But it is at this
moment that the exscriptive understanding of writing put forward by
Jean-Luc Nancy comes into its own.
I stated earlier that Batailles postulation of the informe leaves us with
a form of language which oscillates between sens and besogne, unaware
that it does so (and thereby pre-empting Roland Barthess understanding
51
Bataille, La Chance, Verve, I, 4 (1938). Reprinted in Bataille, uvres compltes, I,

pp.54144 (p.541).
60
Chapter 1
of Histoire de lils narrative as a form of vibration).52 If we add to this

postulation the htrognes involuntary refusal of physicality as scientifically observable sens, we arrive at the image of the Acphale. This headless,
muscular figure, sketched by the painter Andr Masson, has a deaths head
in place of its genitalia. It was the logo of a rarely-published magazine also
named Acphale, which was founded by Bataille in 1936.53
The Acphales image offers us a simplified though accurate summary
of the human body as Bataillean theory portrays it: the human head is no
longer the centre of perception. The new centre of the bodys perceptive
functions is a vision of mortality (the deaths head). In Massons sketches,
this image of death appears in the area where previously genitalia would
have defined the bodys geographical (though not its intellectual) centre.
Under the sign of the Acphale, sight and sensuous touch are rendered
deathly. As ffrench reminds us, however, this morbid sexuality is neither
all-consuming nor definitive of the Bataillean human body.54 To justify
this position, let us examine a recent comment made by Nancy in Corpus:
le corps nest pas un lieu dcriture []. Le corps, sans doute, cest quon crit, mais
ce nest absolument pas o on crit, [] toujours ce que lcriture excrit. Il ny a
dexcription que par criture, mais lexcrit reste cet autre bord que linscription, tout
en signifiant sur un bord, ne cesse obstinment dindiquer comme son autre-propre
bord. Ainsi, de toute criture, un corps est lautre-propre bord; un corps [] est
donc aussi le trac, le tracement et la trace. [] crire, lire, affaire de tact [] la
condition que le tact ne se concentre pas, ne prtende pas comme fait le toucher
cartsien au privilge dune immdiatet qui mettrait en fusion tous les sens et le
sens. Le toucher aussi, le toucher dabord est local, modal, fractal.55
This explanation of how physical perception may be expressed through

excription suits Batailles writing well; the excrit explores the fractured, localised qualities of tactile perception and interaction which Batailles theory
52
53
See Barthes, La Mtaphore de lil, p.244.

All of the articles that Bataille contributed to Acphale between June 1936 and June
1939 are collected in Bataille, uvres compltes, I, pp.44292, 54558.
54 ffrench makes this assertion in more general terms in The Cut, p.22.
61
postulates, but does not know that it does. As we see from the quotation
above, the excrit leaves indecipherable visual traces of tactile perceptions
intermittent communication with the bodys other senses. Through the
necessarily partial and brief interaction of sense, vision and touch that it
incites, the text can therefore be said to exhibit haptic qualities. But what
about the act of reading the text? ffrench gives the following reply:
The informe [] would be a discursive operation, a move in the play of writing. This
comes down to proposing writing, and reading, as a resistance to the recovery or
sublimation of sight. In their play, that is, the forward movement of their structuring/destructuring, they would operate from a point of blindness, a position of risk
as if at the edge of an abyss.56
To adapt ffrenchs stance, the haptic is at once present and absent in

Batailles theoretical critique and literary prose (though the quotation
above refers specifically to Batailles Histoire de lil). In ffrenchs terms,
the haptic operates as a precariously unbalanced blind spot in Batailles
text, oscillating from point to point with varying degrees of perceptibility.
Because of this fact, the haptic sensibilities of Batailles texts are to be found
in his accounts of physicality. These accounts teeter between visceral experiences of attraction and the physical repulsion that follows them. These
textual remnants express the uncomfortable sight and sensation of moving
from distant visual (optical) balance to proximal (haptic) imbalance and
back again. Such movements are uncertain and ambiguous, tenuous and
fleeting. They are, nevertheless, there to be read and interpreted. I shall
now examine their various manifestations in Batailles literary works and
consider how strongly his critical stance on haptic perception resonates
within his prose.57
56 ffrench, The Cut, p.175; emphasis in original.

57 Whilst undertaking such analyses, we must remember the Bataillean injunction
against the philosophical telos of the projet, which appears repeatedly in LExprience
intrieure: dans le projet, il y avait simplement rejet du dsir. Le projet est expressment le fait de lesclave, cest le travail et le travail excut par qui ne jouit pas du
fruit (Bataille, LExprience intrieure, p.71).
62
Chapter 1
Histoire de lil
Histoire de lil is Batailles first novella and contains many instances of
haptic experience, though none of them are ever designated as haptique.
The text was first published in 1928, in very limited numbers (fewer than 150
copies) under the pen name of Lord Auch (Dieu se soulageant, according
to a passage from Le Petit, a short text first published in 1943).58 Bataille
would rewrite significant portions of Histoire de lil for its subsequent
printings, but its plot remained largely unaltered. Though a close reading of these textual evolutions would be rewarding, constraints of time
and space dictate that I focus upon a handful of scenes from the 1928
edition of the text.59 The book is split into two distinct sections. The first
is entitled Rcit and is just that: a first-person account, narrated by an
unnamed 16-year-old male. The novels shorter second section is entitled
Concidences in the 1928 version, but was renamed Rminiscences in
subsequent editions. These few pages, narrated by a second, unnamed male,
discuss some actual events in the narrators life which explain the use of
certain imagery in the Rcit.
Marcelle and the Haptic Experience

The narrator of the Rcit meets Simone, a very distant relative of approximately the same age, on the beach of an unnamed village. The couple are
engaging in mutual masturbation in nearby undergrowth when a girl of
their age named Marcelle, la plus touchante de nos amies, runs past them.
The unhappy teenager collapses in tears near the couple and they waste
58
59
Le Petit (1943) is reprinted in Bataille, uvres compltes, III, pp.3370 (p.59).

The original 1928 draft of Histoire de lil is reprinted in Bataille, uvres compltes, I,
pp.978. All subsequent references are to this version.
63
little time in sexually assaulting her. Tellingly, it is Marcelles footsteps

which first attract the couples attention. The moment that she ceases to
be mobile, the duo pounce upon her:
le pas recommena [], presque une course, et je vis paratre [] une ravissante jeune
fille blonde, Marcelle, la plus pure et la plus touchante de nos amies. [N]ous tions
trop fortement contracts dans nos attitudes horribles pour bouger mme dun doigt
et ce fut soudain notre malheureuse amie qui seffondra et se blottit dans lherbe en
sanglotant. Alors seulement nous nous arrachmes notre extravagante treinte pour
nous jeter sur un corps livr labandon. Simone troussa la jupe, arracha la culotte et
me montra avec ivresse un nouveau cul aussi beau, aussi pur que le sien: je lembrassai
avec rage tout en branlant celui de Simone dont les jambes se refermrent sur les reins
de ltrange Marcelle qui ne cachait dj plus que ses sanglots.
Marcelle, lui criai-je, je ten supplie, ne pleure plus. Je veux que tu membrasses
la bouche
Simone elle-mme caressait ses beaux cheveux plats en lui donnant partout des
baisers affectueux.60
It is Marcelles shifting state moving from untouchable mobility to tangible immobility that invites the couples (unwanted) attention here. This
fact raises some issues concerning any haptic understanding of the passage.
As I stated earlier, Riegl explains the haptic in terms of static, threedimensional spaces and figures whose surface details impress themselves
upon an observers eyes. Marks meanwhile qualifies haptic visuality as a cinematic, two-dimensional evocation of spaces and figures whose movement
incites the viewer to touch them. In the passage above, the couple only attain
sensorial satisfaction through impeding Marcelles movements, undressing
her as they wish to. Yet this impedance occurs in three dimensions whose
confines move when Marcelle struggles to get free of the couples grasp.
Marcelles oscillation between moving and static object of desire means that
she does not necessarily fall within either Riegls or Markss understandings
of haptic interaction. The assault begins when Marcelle becomes motionless and the couple are able to overcome the paralyses of their own bodies
60 Bataille, Histoire de lil, p.16.
64
Chapter 1
(nous tions trop fortement contracts dans nos attitudes horribles pour
bouger mme dun doigt). The renewed vigour of their sensual exertions is
such that they efface Marcelles kinaesthetic presence: no mention is made
of her attempting to fight off her attackers in the extract above. Moreover,
her body becomes a series of visually and tactilely stimulating locations (her
behind, her genitals, the small of her back, her tearful eyes.)
The unveiling of Marcelles genitals occurs during the enforced containment of her body by another female body (Simone) and that of the
male narrator. This bilateral, gendered containment or immobilisation of
(Marcelles) female form reveals a vision (of Marcelles erogenous zones)
which solicits tactile interaction from both male and female bodies. But
this sight and the tactile interaction it solicits is also narcotising because
these sensory stimuli coincide temporally, because they are haptic. The
ivresse which Simone experiences in exposing Marcelles most intimate
(feminine) areas to her male partner suggests a deadening of conscious
perception rather than a sharpening of its acuity.
Sight leads to a violent tactile experience in this case, but also results
in a displacement of the narrators physical penetration. It is Simone
and not Marcelle that the narrator penetrates digitally (Simone
troussa la jupe, arracha la culotte et me montra avec ivresse un nouveau
cul aussi joli que le sien: je lembrassai avec rage tout en branlant celui
de Simone). The inviting sight and touch of Marcelles anus invites the
narrators oral interaction with it. This interaction results in the penetration of a different object of desire than that which incited it. It is as
if the tactile element of haptic vision is deflected or redirected by the
narrators oral impositions upon Marcelle. As the mouth is the seat of
language, we may infer from the above passage that the narrators linguistic
interaction with carnality (his kissing of Marcelles buttocks) leads to a
displacement of haptic experiences constitutive elements (as he focuses
his sight and touch upon Marcelles anus, he is in fact penetrating Simones
anus with his finger). The narrators oral interaction with Marcelles skin
leads the language which articulates that contact astray (while the narrator penetrates Simone, he demands to kiss Marcelles mouth: Marcelle,
lui criai-je, je ten supplie, ne pleure plus. Je veux que tu membrasses la
bouche ).
65
The passage above is a fictitious account of haptic perception being

perverted by the fleshy surfaces which define it.61 This perversion occurs
in the midst of a sexual assault a profound moral transgression. This fact
suggests that there is a discernable moral and ethical ambivalence to haptic
experience which is as unspoken as the haptic concept is in Batailles writing. The visually impressive solicitations of haptic experience exert their
influence upon considerably more than just the eyes, on this occasion.
In the name of transgressing bourgeois morals, Bataille wishes to assert
that physical presence confers an automatic right to touch. However, the
violence unleashed in the passage above by desirous looking and touching seems excessive and disturbing, to say the least. The ethical and moral
ambivalence of haptic perception in this regard is not immediately apparent in Riegls theories, even if Marks, Paterson and Nancy develop aspects
of this problem in their writings on haptic perception. In the attack on
Marcelle and the events which follow it, the sexually defined diffrence
that is so important to Nancys recent postulations of the haptic finds an
uncomfortable precedent. (Le corps se rapporte au corps de lautre sexe.
Dans ce rapport, il y va de sa corporit en tant quelle touche par le sexe
sa limite: elle jouit, cest--dire que le corps est secou au dehors de luimme).62 Contrarily, the respect of difference demanded by Markss haptic
visuality is certainly not pre-empted by Batailles description of the attack,
even if a concomitant loss of self, in the presence of the other is manifest
in the sexually aggressive behaviours of Simone and the narrator.63
The possibility that the perceptive functions of human sensory organs
may be affected by differences in gender is raised repeatedly in Batailles
prose works. During the attack upon Marcelle, for example, her body is
described as being nouveau and trange, even though her physical presence is the same as Simones in a narrowly defined, sexual sense. Equally,
Marcelles body can be said to differ little from that of the narrator on any
61
Lozier suggests that Bataillean literary prose is a form of terrorisme littraire based
upon a non-cathartic perversion of the processes of reading and writing (De labject
et du sublime, pp.7677, 8386).
63 Marks, The Skin of the Film, pp.19293.
66
Chapter 1
basis other than the sexual, since both bodies belong to the same human
genus. It is not entirely clear from the narrators words whether it is he,
Simone or both of the characters who feel Marcelles form to be nouveau or
trange. In haptic terms, we must wonder whether this newness or strangeness transcends gender. We shall return to this question in due course.
A Social Encounter with the Haptic

When next Marcelle sees her attackers, her blushing, which is tangible only
in terms of the heat it radiates dermally and the reddening of her facial skin,
is sufficient invitation for the couple to insist that she lunch with them.
Though unwilling, Marcelle allows herself to be talked into this, only for
the lunch to turn into a drunken orgy. While the handful of teenage boys
and girls also present dance increasingly salaciously, Marcelle refuses to join
them. Instead, she stands blushing and motionless:
Simone seule dansant un charleston frntique montra ses jambes tout le monde
jusquau cul et les autres jeunes filles invites danser seules de la mme faon taient
dj beaucoup joyeuses pour se gner. Et sans doute elles avaient des pantalons, mais
ils bridaient lchement le cul sans cacher grand-chose. Seule, Marcelle ivre et silencieuse refusa de danser.64
Once more, Marcelles visible lack of movement spurs those around her
into action and things take a turn for the worse:
Tout coup, Simone tomba terre la terreur des autres. Une convulsion de plus
en plus forte lagitait, les vtements en dsordre, le cul en lair, comme si elle avait
lpilepsie, [] elle prononait des mots presque inarticuls:
Pisse-moi dessus pisse-moi dans le cul , rptait-elle avec une sorte de soif.
Marcelle regardait avec fixit cette spectacle: elle avait encore une fois rougi
jusquau sang. Mais elle me dit alors, sans mme me voir, quelle voulait enlever sa
67
robe. Je la lui arrachai moiti en effet []; elle ne garda que ses bas et sa ceinture
et stant peine laiss branler et baiser la bouche par moi, elle traversa la chambre
comme une somnambule et gagna une grande armoire normande o elle senfermera
aprs avoir murmur quelques mots loreille de Simone.
Elle voulait se branler dans cette armoire et suppliait quon la laisst tranquille.65
As we see, Marcelle only moves when she sees Simone rolling on the floor,
demanding to be urinated on by the males around her. Rather than seeking
haptic interaction with her attackers or the other party attendees through
sexual relations or other skin-to-skin contact, Marcelle seeks to place an
extracorporeal boundary around her desires and her haptic sensations. By
doing so, she deprives the other party attendees of the sight and touch of
her rendering her inner desires tangible through masturbation. Aside from
blushing momentarily before entering the wardrobe, she does not allow
others to witness how her erotic visions manifest themselves upon her
skin. While the other teenagers perform a variety of sexual acts before one
anothers eyes and upon one anothers skin, Marcelle denies them either
sight or touch of her carnal pleasures.
Unfortunately for her, the wooden confines of the wardrobe that
Marcelle places between herself and her peers whilst engaging in a moment
of autoeroticism cannot contain (or conceal) perceptible indications of
her desires. The sounds made by her orgasmic body crashing against the
wooden walls that surround her draw the others attention. Marcelles
body then further denies her wish to keep her autoerotic pleasures private
when she urinates during orgasm and the urine begins to trickle under the
wardrobe door:
un trange bruit deau suivi de lapparition dun filet puis dun ruissellement au bas de
la porte de larmoire: la malheureuse Marcelle pissait dans son armoire en se branlant.
[L]clat de rire absolument ivre qui suivit dgnra rapidement en une dbauche de
chutes de corps, de jambes et de culs en lair, de jupes mouilles et de foutre. Les rires
se produisaient comme des hoquets idiots et involontaires, mais ne russissaient qu
peine interrompre une rue brutale vers les culs et les verges.66
65 Ibid., p.20.
66 Ibid., pp.2021.
68
Chapter 1
Nobody laughs at the carnal disorder that Simone displays because the
simultaneously tangible and visible confusion of sensory stimuli emitted
by her desirous body are terrifying in their unexpectedness. Contrarily,
Marcelle places a haptic barrier around her carnal desires by entering the
wardrobe to masturbate. The other partygoers contemptuous ridiculing
of Marcelles orgasmic behaviour implies that, in a communal context, the
unpredictable, simultaneous interactions of sight and touch that the desiring body offers are to be taken seriously. Enclosed or concealed enjoyment
of sensory stimuli are not.
In her moment of autoerotic passion, Marcelle experiences the negative
reality of Batailles subsequently postulatedpossibilit dunir en un point
prcis deux sortes de connaissance jusquici ou trangres lune lautre
ou confondues grossirement [], en un point o rit la foule unanime.67
The terror of Marcelles orgasmically sensual but now senseless confusion
only becomes apparent when the narrator attempts to extricate her from
the wardrobe:
dans la pissotire de fortune qui lui servait maintenant de prison [] Marcelle []
tremblait et grelottait de fivre [;] elle manifesta une terreur maladive [.] [ J]tais ple,
[] ensanglant, habill de travers. Derrire moi, dans un dsordre innommable, des
corps effrontment dnuds et malades gisaient presque inertes. Au cours de lorgie,
des dbris de verres avaient profondment coup et mis en sang deux dentre nous
[]. Il en rsultait une odeur de sang, de sperme, durine et de vomi qui me faisait
dj presque reculer dhorreur, mais le cri inhumain qui se dchira dans le gosier de
Marcelle tait encore beaucoup plus terrifiant.68
Marcelle feels irredeemably sullied and is unready to join the unclean

masses outside the margins of sensorial propriety that the wardrobes
fixed panels offer her.69 The prospect of venturing beyond her self-imposed
sensual and sensory limits proves too much for her:
67 Bataille, LExprience intrieure, p.11; emphasis in original.

69 As the narrator guesses too late (see ibid., p.43).
69
Je dois dire [] que Simone [] dormait tranquillement, le ventre en lair, la main

encore la fourrure, le visage apais []. Marcelle qui stait jete travers la chambre
en trbuchant et en criant [] seffondra en faisant entendre une kyrielle de hurlements de plus en plus inhumains.70
That Marcelles horror is brought about through a combination of proprioceptive faculties (sight, sound, smell and the threat of taste or touch)
makes it all the more difficult for the narrator to understand. Significantly,
Marcelles indecipherable words are referred to as a kyrielle, as a stream
(or string) of cries which are inextricably linked with physical actions. The
combination of Marcelles unabated movement and oracy, coupled with
the apparent impossibility of enacting physically the anguish that she is
experiencing mentally are what shock the narrator most. Neither movements nor words were tolerated from Marcelle when the couple attacked her
near the beach. It is therefore unsurprising that in the following quotation,
Marcelle attacks her mother when she attempts to restrict her daughters
movements. Marcelles anguish not only transcends mental and physical mediation, it consumes them, just as Marcelle attempts to consume
portions of her mothers face when she and other parents are alerted by
Marcelles screams:71
Nos camarades eux-mmes staient mis [] produire un clat dlirant de cris en
larmes: on aurait cru quon venait de les mettre tous en feu comme des torches vives.
[] Marcelle reste nue continuait tout en gesticulant exprimer par des cris de douleur dchirants une souffrance morale et une terreur impossibles supporter; on la vit
mordre sa mre au visage, au milieu des bras qui tentaient vainement de la matriser.72
I asked earlier whether the haptic experience of a given event is the

same for both men and women in Batailles prose works. The wardrobe
incident at the party suggests that it is; the bodily horror that Marcelle
70 Ibid., p.21.
71 Hollier refers to such inexplicable horror as a terrorisme de jouissance in his
1992 essay, La Tombe de Bataille (p.84). This essay is reprinted in Denis Hollier,
Les Dpossdes (Paris, Minuit, 1992), pp.7399.
70
Chapter 1
experiences subsequently is transmitted to all of the (male and female)

partygoers bar Simone, as if it were a virus.
A Sensory Prison
With Marcelle now incarcerated in an asylum, it is the couples desire to
hear her transcendent cries once more. Following a botched first attempt
to free Marcelle from her asylum, une sorte de chteau entour dun
parc mur, isol sur une falaise dominant la mer,73 the couple stand in
the asylum grounds, staring at what they believe to be Marcelles window.
Suddenly, she appears:
Quand elle nous aperut enfin, [e]lle nous cria mais nous nentendions rien. Nous lui
faisions signe. Elle avait rougi jusquaux oreilles. Simone qui pleurait presque, et dont
je caressais affectueusement le front, lui envoya des baisers auxquels elle rpondit sans
sourire; Simone laissa tomber ensuite la main le long du ventre jusqu la fourrure.
Marcelle limita []. Chose curieuse, elle avait une ceinture blanche et des bas blancs
alors que la noire Simone, dont le cul chargeait ma main, avait une ceinture noire
et des bas noirs. Cependant, les deux jeunes filles se branlaient avec un geste court
et brusque, face face dans la nuit hurlante. Elles se tenaient presque immobiles et
tendues, le regard rendu fixe par une joie immodre.74
As each woman masturbates to the sight of the other masturbating,

they are shown to be opposite sides of the same sensory coin by their contrasting undergarments. Though Marcelle is geographically and mentally
distant from Simone, she is able to partake of the same visual sensuality. In this instance, sight is a (self-) touching sensory experience of the
kind that Nancy would postulate subsequently in his concept of zonage.
Indeed, the disjuncture of Simone and Marcelles mental states is bridged
by their visual sharing of an intimate touch at a distance, much as Markss
73 Ibid., p.27.
74 Ibid., p.31.
71
understanding of haptic visuality postulates filmed surfaces tapping our

subconscious desires to see to and to touch, and to be seen and touched
ourselves.75 Neither woman in Batailles narrative can make her thoughts
heard above the storm by any means other than the simultaneously visual
and tactile moment of autoeroticism in which they indulge.
A Lingering Glance?
In keeping with Histoire de lils general motif of objects of desire moving
from distant vision into proximal sight and touch (the narrator and Simone;
the couple and Marcelle at the asylum), Simones encounters with the
human eye exhibit a growing propensity for the proximal at the expense
of the distant. When Marcelle hangs herself shortly after the couple finally
liberate her from the asylum, the thing which Simone finds most horrifying about Marcelles corpse is that her eyes no longer respond to physical
stimuli. Even when Simone urinates on them, she is unable to make them
react. They remain open, but are simultaneously unseeing and unfeeling. Where once Simone saw and felt life in Marcelle, no haptic response
remains. It is next to the corpse that Simone and the narrator first have full
intercourse; the lack of responsiveness of Marcelles eyes demands a tactile
interaction between the couples living bodies:
Simone tant encore vierge, je la baisai pour la premire fois auprs du cadavre. Cela
nous fit trs mal [], le cadavre tant devant elle trs irritant, comme sil lui tait
insupportable que cet tre semblable elle ne la sentt plus. Les yeux ouverts surtout
taient irritants. tant donn que Simone lui inondait la figure, il tait extraordinaire
que ces yeux ne se fermassent pas. Nous tions parfaitement calmes tous les trois [].
[I]l nous tait impossible de comprendre ce qui arrivait et bien entendu cela nest pas
plus comprhensible aujourdhui que ce jour-l.76
75 See Marks, The Skin of the Film, pp.183, 19293.

76 Bataille, Histoire de lil, p.46; emphasis in original.
72
Chapter 1
What results from this situation is a dry, physically painful sexual encounter between Simone and the narrator. The physical, sexualised poles of
masculinity and femininity that the two characters represent remain vital
and unchangeable while Marcelle lies dead: the lubricious fluidity of her
universal sexual appeal has died with her.77 Nevertheless, the haptic stimulus of her presence, her appeal to both sexes, survives even the death of her
body and the couple feel compelled to have intercourse for the first time
next to her motionless corpse.
Marcelles is by no means the only corpse to appear in Histoire de
lil. The novellas final scenes are dominated by the murder of a Seville
priest named Don Aminado. Having throttled the priest during forcible
intercourse while the narrator and Sir Edmond, a perverted English aristocrat, held him down, Simone sees a fly settle on one of Don Aminados
dead eyes; it agitait ses longues pattes de cauchemar sur ltrange globe.78
As if desiring to mimic the flys unpredictable actions, Simone decrees
that [j]e veux jouer avec cet il.79 Sir Edmond grants her wish and severs
the priests eye. After various sexual activities involving the narrator
and the disembodied eye (including a failed anal insertion), Simone inserts
the severed eye into her vagina. The narrator looks on:
en cartantles cuisses de Simone [], je me trouvai en face de ce que, je me le figure
ainsi, jattendais [] de la mme faon quune guillotine attend un cou trancher.
[M]es yeux me sortaient de la tte, comme sils taient rectiles force dhorreur;
je vis exactement, dans le vagin velu de Simone, lil bleu ple de Marcelle qui me
regardait en pleurant des larmes durine. Des traines de foutre dans le poil fumant
achevaient de donner cette vision lunaire un caractre de tristesse dsastreuse.80
This tangible vision is one of a desired eye which no longer works; the
tears of urine which the dismembered globe weeps not only demonstrate
77 Lozier (De labject et du sublime, pp.9091) posits Marcelles body as a point of sensual juncture between Simone and the narrator. Mayn establishes the link between
Marcelle and liquefaction (see Georges Bataille, p.70, n. 80).
79 Ibid.
73
its physical displacement, but also its rejection by its new environs. This
transmogrified and moribund eye is now a refugee from all rationality. It
is a paragon of htrologie and scatologie, existing beyond the material help
of science, philosophy or religion.
The urine tears which the transfigured eye cries are acidic, bitter; they
attest to the relocated eyes sad, disastrous failure to integrate into its newly
carnal and feminine environment, having been severed forever from its masculine and chaste housing in the priests eye socket. Were this eye alive in the
body of either Marcelle or Don Aminado, it would be twitching violently
to cleanse itself of the blinding substances which, presently, it allows to pass
without action. In this sense, the eye does not see itself; even if it were not
dead, it would be blinded by the vital waste with which it must share its new
physical space.81 Simones envaginated eye is dead and cannot be revived;
its unseeing nature may only be re-contextualised as an icon of the informe.
The severed eye sits lifeless in Simones sex, yet stimulates her senses and
those of her partner. As Gilles Mayn remarks, the couples understanding
of how this perceptual synergy of life and death feeds their desires is tenuous, never entirely graspable either psychologically or haptically.82
No matter how grimly attracted or physically aroused the narrator
is by the scene before him, it is not illuminating. The sight that Batailles
narrator beholds is a bastion of htrologie and scatologie, as well as being
exemplary of the informe. Brian T. Fitch suggests that what the narrator
sees as he looks at the contents of Simones sex is a vision of an impenetrable
darkness, of a reality that can be observed and touched at once, but which
can never be assimilated intellectually.83 The operational synergy between
the severed eye and any perceptual faculty that is stimulated by it makes no
sense: neither quantifiable sensory data nor rational argument can explain
their sensory interrelation coherently.84
Jean-Luc Steinmetz also notes this in his article Bataille le mithiraque (sur Histoire
de lil), Revue des Sciences Humaines, 206 (1987), 16986 (p.183).
82 See Mayn, Georges Bataille, p.82.
83 Fitch, Monde a lenvers, texte reversible, p.46.
84 Mayn (Georges Bataille, p.77) refers to the severed, envaginated eye as the sommet
du non-sens [] du non-savoir culminant de lrotisme in Histoire de lil.
81
74
Chapter 1
In spite of this last detail, we are a long way from witnessing the bursting forth of the Bataillean il pinal in the closing scenes of Histoire de
lil, even if the simultaneously mortal, ritual and sexual characteristics of
the il pinal are evoked. Lest we forget, the il pinal looks skyward and
is specifically solar. By contrast, the severed, lunar eye of Don Aminado/
Marcelle looks nowhere: it is merely seen by others.85
Coincidences of Sight and Touch

We have seen in Histoire de lils Rcit that haptic coincidences of sight
and touch are numerous. But the abiding feature of their perceptive simultaneity is that one or more of the interrelated sensory faculties fails to work
properly or in an expected manner with the other(s) involved.86 Sight is particularly vulnerable to this failing and in the Concidences/Rminiscences
section of Histoire de lil, we learn why. The character who narrates this
second section of Batailles text is apparently the author of the Rcit. He
says of his blind, crippled and syphilitic father that,
Comme il ne voyait rien sa prunelle se dirigeait trs souvent en haut dans le vide,
sous la paupire, et cela arrivait en particulier dans les moments o il pissait. Il avait
dailleurs de trs grands yeux toujours trs ouverts [] et ces grands yeux taient donc
presque entirement blancs quand il pissait.87
Much like Marcelle in the Rcit, the second narrators father is rooted
to the spot (in this instance, clou dans son fauteuil)88 in an involuntary
sacrifice of his own mobility, mind and vision. The fathers unseeing eyes
As Fitch (Monde a lenvers, texte reversible, p.66) may lead us to conclude. However,
as I mentioned earlier, Fitch refuses all recourse to Batailles theoretical works (see
ibid., p.48).
86 Fitch too remarks upon this detail (Monde a lenvers, texte reversible, pp.3842).
88 Ibid., p.75.
85
75
are the icons of this sacrifice. The sight of the fathers eventual madness also
rubs off on the second narrators mother. According to the second narrator, she would attempt suicide on a number of subsequent occasions.89 The
powerlessness which motivates her desperate acts is in striking contrast to
the likeness between testes icons of male potency and the demented
fathers empty eyes. As the second narrator remarks, les couilles humaines
ou animales sont de forme ovode et [] leur aspect est le mme que celui
du globe oculaire.90
This final realisation sheds much light on the rest of Batailles novella.
The instances of haptic perception contained in Histoire de lil are often
violent expressions of desire which are incited by a visible sexual difference.
The couples desire to see and touch ostensibly unrealisable aspects of their
sensual desires proves fatal for Marcelle, a young woman whose physical
and carnal presence Simone and the first narrator enjoy. As Don Aminado
finds to his cost, abstinence from carnal interaction (and, by extrapolation,
the adoption of a purely optical approach to life) is no less fatal. In fact,
both Marcelle and Don Aminado eventually die because they attempt to
shield themselves from the prying eyes and bodies of others whilst engaging in haptic expressions of their own inner desires. (Marcelle loses her
mind and eventually hangs herself after attempting to hide the fact that
she is masturbating. Don Aminado also dies after trying to avoid having
penetrative sex in front of his attackers in the church.) In spite of this, the
attempts made by certain characters in Histoire de lil to efface sensory
barriers prove no more successful. Even the realisation of Simones deepest
desire to create a simultaneously visual and tactile experience of sexuality
through her placing of Don Aminados severed eye into her vagina leads
to her body rejecting this new ocular prosthesis by urinating it out of her
sexual orifice. Moreover, whatever sensual power the envaginated eye might
have is born of associative sensory memory, rather than current sensory
synergy between living perceptual faculties. The severed eye is simply a
piece of rotting flesh in the midst of the couples various bodily excretions.
89 Ibid., pp.7778.
90 Ibid., p.75.
76
Chapter 1
Even the most haptically vivid of desires cannot overcome death and the
sensory numbness that it entails.
The unresolvable confusion between blindness, virility, impotence and
hapticity which concludes Histoire de lil resurfaces in Madame Edwarda,
the next example of Batailles prose that I shall be analysing.
Madame Edwarda: Attraction, Reflection and the Haptic

As with Batailles earlier novella, Madame Edwarda (1941) was published
under a pseudonym. Pierre Anglique was Batailles preferred nom de
plume on this occasion.91 The rcit begins with an account of the blunted
sensations of its unnamed male narrator:
La solitude et lobscurit achevrent mon ivresse. La nuit tait nue dans des rues
dsertes et je voulus me dnuder comme elle: je retirai mon pantalon que je mis sur
mon bras []. Je me sentais grandi. Je tenais dans la main mon sexe droit. [] Inquiet
de quelque bruit, je remis ma culotte et me dirigeai vers les Glaces: jy retrouvai la
lumire. Au milieu dun essaim de filles, Madame Edwarda, nue, tirait la langue. Elle
tait, mon got, ravissante. Je la choisis: elle sassit prs de moi.92
After a curtailed moment of autoeroticism, the narrator goes in search of

someone he can be certain shares his desire to experience sexuality in an
open, easily perceptible manner. He therefore walks to a brothel named
Les Glaces, perhaps in hopes of finding a desirous mirror image of himself,
a female willing to take his sexuality (and her own) in hand.
The first edition of Madame Edwarda was published in 1941, but gives a false printing
date of 1937. Batailles introductory essay was only added to the third (1956) edition
of the text. All subsequent references will be to this third draft (reprinted in Bataille,
uvres compltes, III, pp.731). See Bataille, uvres compltes, III, p.491 for further
details of Madame Edwardas various printings.
92 Bataille, Madame Edwarda, p.19.
91
77
Upon his arrival at Les Glaces, the narrator is first confronted with a
swarm of women. What distinguishes Edwarda, the naked woman (or queen
bee?) whom the narrator chooses from the female swarm which greets him
is not her nakedness, but the fact that she pokes her tongue out at him.
When the narrator interacts with her tactilely as well as visually, Edwardas
tongue comes into contact with his own for the first time. Breathlessness
becomes suffocation, their embrace, a terrified, pathogenic death grasp:93
je saisis Edwarda qui sabandonna: nos deux bouches se mlrent en un baiser malade.
[ J]e sentis Madame Edwarda, dont mes mains contenaient les fesses, elle-mme en
mme temps dchire: et dans ses yeux plus grands, renverss, la terreur, dans sa
gorge un long tranglement.94
The sense of illness and fright in the proximal exchange between the narrator and Edwarda is communicated haptically through their mutual visual
and tactile contact. Their embrace is so intensely engaging of their sensory
faculties that Edwarda in particular is profoundly scared by the experience.
It seems that the narrator is somehow repelled by her simultaneously visible
and palpable fright because from holding her in his hands, he is described
as clenching the table just a few sentences later:
Tu veux voir mes guenilles? disait-elle.
Les deux mains agrippes la table, je me tournai vers elle. Assise, elle maintenait
haute une jambe carte: pour mieux ouvrir la fente, elle achevait de tirer la peau des
deux mains. Ainsi les guenilles dEdwarda me regardaient, velues et roses, pleines
de vie comme une pieuvre rpugnante. Je balbutiai doucement:
Pourquoi fais-tu cela?
Tu vois, dit-elle, je suis DIEU
Je suis fou
Mais non, tu dois regarder: regarde!
Sa voix rauque sadoucit, elle se fit presque enfantine pour me dire avec lassitude,
avec le sourire infini de labandon: Comme jai joui!95
93 In After Bataille, pp.16768, ffrench makes particular allusion to the pathogenic

aspect of human contact portrayed in Madame Edwarda.
95 Ibid., pp.2021.
78
Chapter 1
In order to counter the repellent fright that both characters have

endured through their initial haptic contact, Edwarda demands that the
narrator look at the most intimate area of her body. He gazes and discovers that her sexual organs appear to look back at him with a sense of sight
independent of Edwardas own. Her vagina is likened to an octopus in its
ability to reach out to and thereby pacify the narrators horrified eyes.
The rose tinting of Edwardas genitals might also imply self-awareness,
a blushing embarrassment at their carnality not dissimilar to the blushing displayed by the narrator, or Histoire de lils Marcelle.96 At the same
time, however, the blushes of Edwardas sex are offset by her sourire infini
dabandon, which suggests a saintly forgetting of the body. Though haptic
interaction has been re-established, Edwardas behaviour is suggestive of a
simultaneous physical presence and mental absence on her part. Though
she may claim to be God, the narrator only seeing this is not enough to
satisfy Edwarda: she wishes to incarnate herself. As a result, she will not
allow the narrator to merely gaze at her rags:
elle avait maintenu sa position provocante. Elle ordonna:
Embrasse!
Mais , protestai-je, devant les autres?
Bien sr!
[ J]e magenouillai, je titubai, et je posai mes lvres sur la plaie vive. Sa cuisse nue
caressa mon oreille: [] on entend le mme bruit en appliquant loreille de grandes
coquilles. Dans labsurdit du bordel [] nous tions perdus dans une nuit de vent
devant la mer.97
It seems that even in the brothels permissive environs, Madame Edwardas

narrator feels uncomfortable sharing the sight of his moment of intimate
tactile contact with his peers, much as Marcelle is in Histoire de lil.98
The references to nuit, vent and la mer made by Madame Edwardas
96 Ibid., p.21: jtais rouge, je suais.
97 Ibid.
98 Hollier (La Prise de la Concorde, pp.94, 104) and ffrench (After Bataille, pp.15457,
16567, 190) both address the Bataillean theme of private passions experienced in
communal spaces more or less directly.
79
narrator are also evocative of Marcelle; these nouns remind us of the windswept night that her former attackers first attempted to liberate her from
the cliff-top asylum which had become her sensual prison.
As Madame Edwardas narrator consummates his movement (or
escape?) from a purely optical perception of sexuality to one which is
haptic by kissing Edwardas genitals, his senses become confused by earlier memories. The rushing sound that the narrator hears whilst his ear is
pressed up against Edwardas thigh and he is kissing her sex is the roar of
his own desiring blood. Instead of sexual desire, the sensory experience of
being pressed up against Edwardas naked thigh while kissing her sex makes
the narrator think of sea shells, in which one can hear the sound of ones
own blood as it circulates. The sensory confusion which Edwardas naked
femininity causes the narrator spreads to all of his perceptive faculties. As
he mounts the staircase to her room dans des nues,99 he remarks that la
nudit du bordel appelle le couteau du boucher.100 Twelve and three-quarter
lines of dots follow this observation. When the narrative begins again, midsentence, the first words are: les glaces:101 les glaces qui tapissaient les
murs, et dont le plafond lui-mme tait fait, multipliaient limage animale
dun accouplement: au plus lger mouvement, nos curs rompus souvraient
au vide o nous perdait linfinit de nos reflets.102 Like a ripple on an aqueous surface, the auditory projections which Edwardas skin reflects back at
the narrator while he kisses her sex become a sensual tidal wave. This tidal
wave causes a perceptual whiteout during their intercourse. The narrator
hears his own blood when first his ear is pressed against Edwardas most
intimate areas. It seems reasonable to suggest therefore that the even more
extensive bodily contact required for intercourse means that the narrators
inner sense of desolation is reflected back at him amplified, even through
the haptic interaction of his and Edwardas sexual intercourse.

100 Ibid., p.22.
101 Ibid.
102 Ibid.
80
Chapter 1
During the scenes analysed thus far, Batailles protagonist has moved
from haptic perception alone in the street to optical perception in the
brothel. This visual bias then gives way to haptic perception once more as
the narrator and Edwarda share increasingly intimate sensations with one
another. With the break in the narrative, this oscillation reaches a crescendo
of sorts which effaces (or exscripts) not just their bodies, but all sensory
awareness and expression of it. Having heard his own sensory memories
and experienced his own sense of oblivion through contact with Edwarda,
it is surprisingly logical that Madame Edwardas narrator should break his
silence with the words les glaces. The corollary is that Batailles narrator
is projecting his desires onto Edwardas body, which in turn projects an
altered and amplified image of those desires back at him.
Consummation, Limits and Sense

The question of desire in Batailles prose is a pressing one. Histoire de lil
could be considered an analysis of the destruction wrought upon formerly
distant objects of desire when they are brought nearer the bodies which
desire them. By contrast, Madame Edwarda examines the possibility that
even proximal objects of desire may remain haptically distant to those
who desire them.
Having transgressed the limits of blasphemy by having intercourse
with Edwarda the prostitute Goddess (je suis DIEU!) and having
experienced profound carnal pleasure with her, the narrator is asked to
accompany Edwarda outside. This would not normally have been possible
for prostitutes working in the maisons de tolrance:103
Le plaisir, la fin, nous chavira. [] Le dlire dtre nue la possdait: cette fois encore,
elle carta les jambes et souvrit; lcre nudit de nos deux corps nous jetait dans le
mme puisement du cur. Elle passa un bolro blanc, dissimula sous un domino
103 Mayn calls this fact to our attention (see Georges Bataille, p.129).
81
sa nudit: le capuchon du domino lui couvrait la tte, un loup barbe de dentelles

lui masqua le visage. Ainsi vtue, elle mchappa et dit:
Sortons!
Mais Tu peux sortir? lui demandai-je.
Vite, fifi, rpliqua-t-elle gaiement, tu ne peux pas sortir nu!
Elle me tendit mes vtements, maidant mhabiller, mais, le faisant, son caprice
maintenait parfois, de sa chair la mienne, un change sournois. Nous descendmes
un escalier troit, o nous rencontrmes une soubrette. Dans lobscurit soudaine
de la rue, je mtonnai de trouver Edwarda fuyante, drape de noir. Elle se htait,
mchappant: le loup qui la masquait la faisait animale. Il ne faisait pas froid, pourtant
je frissonnai. Edwarda trangre, un ciel toil, vide et fou, sur nos ttes: je pensai
vaciller mais je marchai.104
Carnal pleasure eventually upsets (chavira) the emotional balance of

both Edwarda and the narrator. She responds to this unbalancing with
strikingly sober behaviour. Edwarda purposefully conceals her nakedness
and then escapes the confines of the brothel, confines which demand that
her nudity be sensuous at all times in exchange for money and lodgings.
The narrator, meanwhile, is thoroughly confused not only by the pleasure
that he experiences with Edwarda, but also by the decisive actions which
she then undertakes to escape the physical, sensual impositions of this
pleasure. (This is not to imply that Edwardas behaviour is entirely rational
at that moment, however.)
Once back on the street this time, with Edwarda the narrator is
more physically and mentally confused than ever as he watches the prostitute run away from him. The sight of Edwardas purposeful flight from the
brothel and the lycanthropy which she appears to undergo whilst fleeing
(le loup qui la masquait la faisait animale) causes the narrator to shiver,
even though it is not cold. He then looks skyward, as if in hope of seeing a
divine sign that will allow him to grasp his present situation both mentally
and physically. Once again, we witness the oscillating physical uncertainties
of the sublime and the abject in haptic effect.105
104 Bataille, Madame Edwarda, pp.2223.

105 As implied by Lozier (De labject et du sublime, p.67): Bataille ne veut pas rconcilier
mais dsorganiser. Si les contraires coexistent, ils sont galement inverss.
82
Chapter 1
We shall return to the motif of shaking in greater detail in the following

subsection. For the moment, let us be mindful of two things. Firstly, the
shaking experienced by the narrator suggests an oscillation or, as above, a
vacillation between two distinct states of being. Secondly, this oscillation
creates haptic illusions or hallucinations. The quotation above ends with
the narrator describing an empty sky which he then says is full of stars. At
the same time, he believes that he is stationary when in fact he is walking.
When finally he catches up with her, Edwarda attacks the narrator
before having an apparent seizure:
Comme un tronon de ver de terre, elle sagita, prise de spasmes respiratoires. Je me
penchai sur elle et dus tirer la dentelle du loup quelle avalait et dchirait dans ses
dents. Le dsordre de ses mouvements lavait dnude jusqu la toison: sa nudit,
maintenant, avait labsence de sens, en mme temps lexcs de sens dun vtement
de morte. [] Les sauts de poisson de son corps, la rage ignoble exprime par son
visage mauvais, calcinaient la vie en moi et la brisaient jusquau dgot. [U]ne incurable blessure, telle que nul nen voulut gurir; et quel homme, bless, accepterait de
mourir dune blessure autre que celle-l?106
Contorting like a severed section of an earthworm, Edwarda consumes

her hood, her outer animal skin (or loup). As she does so, she exposes
her naked, trembling female body amidst metamorphic sauts de poisson.
Through a series of random gestures and the alternation of states that her
body undergoes from severed earthworm to cannibalistic she-wolf, then
from human female to gasping fish, Edwarda appears to have internalised
her earlier confusion of physical direction (sens). This internalisation
not only stops Edwardas bid to escape the brothel in its tracks, but is so
violent that it also threatens to pull her body apart. Edwardas apparent
fit also allows the narrator to regain haptic contact with her (at least in a
proprioceptive sense).
It appears to be the callously chance and partially animalistic element of the corporeal and sensory reshuffle that Edwarda endures during
her fit that so appals the watching narrator. Having intervened tactilely
to stop her consuming her prosthetic (animal) skin, the narrator can do
83
nothing to calm the arhythmical disorder which now ravages Edwardas

body and must watch while it runs its course. The localised intensity of
Edwardas bodily disorder is what lends it its mortal quality; it is as if
Edwardas perceptive faculties and physical form are attempting to shake
themselves apart, perhaps intending to reassemble into some new, monstrous (proto-Nancyan) zonage of physical and perceptual presence, akin
to an Artaudian corps sans organes.107 Edwardas experience is a journey
to the bodys experiential limits commensurate with the Nancyan haptics
self-touching in that the violent re-zoning of Edwardas body exscripts her
awareness of the physical ravages that her brains excessive electrical activity
is inflicting upon the rest of her being.108 The narrator a presence external to the bodily changes that Edwarda is experiencing must intervene
to stop these changes from injuring Edwarda or even killing her outright
through suffocation. For just a moment, Edwardas movements leave the
narrator with the impression that she is transcending the physical confines
of her body, briefly and violently radiating other, multiple forms of being
from her previously solid corporeal shell.
The sight of Edwardas physical anguish as she encounters and briefly
transcends the limits of her perceptual corporeity is as tactilely inviting as it
is visually repellent to the narrator (much as Edwardas genitals are, earlier
in the text). Sa souffrance tait en moi comme la vrit dune flche,109 says
107 Antonin Artaud, the formulator of the corps sans organes, had been an acquaintance of Batailles during the mid-1920s. However, according to Michel Surya, the
pair seldom met and spoke little (see Surya, La Mort luvre, pp.9798). On the
question of zonage, Nancy remarks that these sensory zones [] ne sont pas du tout
seulement des localisations diverses dans un espace homogne. Elles sont en mme
temps, en vertu dun espacement qui nest pas dabord spatial, mais ontologique [],
les diffrences absolues du paratre ou de ltre-au-monde comme tel (Les Muses,
p.39).
108 To justify this assertion, I refer to Nancys presentation of the zone as self-touchinglimite, a se-sentir-sentir (see pp.2425 above for my analysis of his remarks on
this subject). To this, I would add that in Nancys view, le toucher dabord est local,
modal, fractal (Corpus, p.76) and that [i]l ny a pas de totalit du corps, pas dunit
synthtique. Il y a des pices, des zones, des fragments (ibid., p.156).
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the narrator: the visual and tactile data of Edwardas own haptic experience of sensory and bodily re-zoning impose themselves at once upon the
narrators sensory faculties, but do so against his wishes. The narrator is
therefore viscerally unsettled by what he sees before him: son corps, la
rage ignoble exprime par son visage mauvais, calcinaient la vie en moi et
la brisaient jusquau dgot.110
Recovering in a taxi following her episode, Edwarda punishes the narrator for his attempts to recapture her momentarily divine body:
Edwarda dnoua les liens de son domino qui glissa, elle navait plus de loup; elle retira
son bolro et dit pour elle-mme voix basse:
Nue comme une bte.
Elle arrta la voiture en frappant la vitre et descendit. Elle approcha jusqu le
toucher le chauffeur et lui dit:
Tu vois je suis poil viens.
Le chauffeur immobile regarda la bte: scartant elle avait lev haut la jambe,
voulant quil vt la fente. Sans mot dire et sans hte, cet homme descendit du sige. Il
tait solide et grossier. Edwarda lenlaa, lui prit la bouche et fouilla la culotte dune
main. Elle fit tomber le pantalon le long des jambes et lui dit:
Viens dans la voiture.111
What is most striking about the scene described above is Edwardas determination to first show the fertile, desiring gap in her skin (her vagina)
to the taxi driver, so that he may then probe it tactilely. It appears as if
she needs others to interact with her body tactilely, sensually, in order
to establish its perceptible limits for her, to measure its haptic depth. By
doing this, Edwardas partially transcendent being is also able to gauge its
otherwise unknowable material power. In this way, her body becomes a
proving ground of mortal weakness, always probing the same crack or slit
in its haptic integrity from differing perceptual angles.112 Those differing
perceptive angles are provided by the men that Edwarda has intercourse
with. Under these circumstances, the haptic experience becomes a fault
110 Ibid., p.26.

111 Ibid., pp.2829.
112 Fitch makes a similar assertion (Monde a lenvers, texte reversible, p.27).
85
line of sorts between an intellectualised transcendence of bodily experience and Edwardas proprioceptive awareness of the events which give rise
to that transcendence.
Tears, Trembling and Liquefied Limits

Barthes, Fitch and ffrench (among others) emphasise the importance of
trembling in Batailles literary works. More specifically, all of these commentators suggest that the simultaneous sight and sensation of trembling
manifests a shift between two states or polarities of being.113 Citing Hollier,
Lozier suggests that in Madame Edwarda, this oscillation is replaced by a
simultaneous experience of abjection and sublimity, dstabilisant radicalement lorganisation paradigmatique which is apparent in other examples
of Batailles critique and prose par essence distinctive.114 This explains why
Madame Edwardas final lines, a footnote which elaborates upon one of
the narrators earlier comments, should speak of the oscillation between
sublimity and abjection in terms of trembling. Moreover, the note which
concludes the text extols the victory of haptic perception represented
here by trembling fearfully over a metaphysical vide:
Jai dit: Dieu, sil savait, serait un porc. Celui qui (je suppose quil serait, au moment,
mal lav, dcoiff) saisirait lide jusquau bout, mais quaurait-il dhumain? au-del,
et de tout plus loin, et plus loin lui-mme, en extase au-dessus dun vide Et
maintenant? je tremble.115
113 See Barthes, La Mtaphore de lil p.244, Fitch, Monde a lenvers, texte reversible,
pp.1415, 1926, or ffrench, The Cut, p.105, for example.
114 Lozier, De labject et du sublime, pp.6667.
115 Bataille, Madame Edwarda, p.31; emphasis in original. I do not share Holliers
conviction, stated in La Prise de la Concorde (p.284), that this note napporte aucune
lumire supplmentaire au texte sur lequel elle se greffe.
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According to Fitch and Mayn, instances of trembling in Batailles

writing result in a liquefaction and bodily expulsion of some kind a
little like a materialisation of the metaphysical element of the sensory
purge that Bataille claims the il pinal to be capable of providing. As in
the extract above, this liquefaction proclaims a mixing of the oscillatory
poles of abjection (the porc referred to here) and sublimity (represented
above by Dieu). This fusion of the sensory faculties output is simultaneously visible and tangible without being materially fixed.116 We all know
that fluids cannot be grasped any more than fleetingly. The viscosity of
bodily fluids, their heaviness, is such that they are likely to leave only their
residues on skin which comes into contact with them. So it is that the orgy
which follows Edwardas seduction of the taxi driver must be consecrated
through an orgasmic baptism:
Jallumai la lampe intrieure de la voiture. Edwarda, droite, cheval sur le travailleur,
la tte en arrire, sa chevelure pendait. Lui soutenant la nuque, je lui vis les yeux
blancs. Elle se tendit sur la main qui la portait et la tension accrut son rle. Ses yeux
se rtablirent []. Elle me vit [;] les larmes ruisselrent des yeux [,] une transparence
o je lisais la mort. Et tout tait nou dans ce regard de rve: les corps nus, les doigts
qui ouvraient la chair, mon angoisse et le souvenir de la bave aux lvres, il ntait rien
qui ne contribut ce glissement aveugle dans la mort. La jouissance dEdwarda [:]
[l]e corps, le visage extasis, abandonns au roucoulement indicible, elle eut, dans
sa douceur, un sourire bris.117
As Edwarda has intercourse with the driver, the prostitutes eyes become
blancs their irises disappear behind her eyelids and she no longer sees, as
with the urinating father of Histoire de lils second section. Unlike those
of the permanently blinded father figure of Batailles previous work, the
irises of Edwardas temporarily unseeing eyes become visible once more,
only to fill with tears and become unseeing again. [U]ne transparence o
je lisais la mort arises from this outpouring, just as tears of urine pour from
Don Aminados eye when it is inserted into Simones vagina at the close of
116 See for example Mayn, Georges Bataille, p.64 and Fitch, Monde a lenvers, texte
reversible, pp.15, 19.
87
Histoire de lil. The unseeing vision of mortality that Madame Edwardas

narrator observes leads him to feel that tout tait nou dans ce regard de
rve.118 In other words, to hold the body of someone whose eyes cannot
reciprocate the gaze which accompanies that touch creates a perceptual
locus which unifies les corps nus, les doigts qui ouvraient la chair, mon
angoisse et le souvenir de la bave aux lvres into one experiential whole.
This supposed sensory integration is not all-consuming, however. Though
open, Edwardas eyes only emit tears at this stage. They do not see.
Edwardas failure to see which is prompted by the consummation
of sexual difference through intercourse permits the synchrony of her
bodys other major foci of sensual interaction (the fingers, the mouth). This
sensory contiguity is then blessed by a flot de volupt, which narrtait
pas de glorifier son tre, de faire sa nudit plus nue.119 This confluence of
Edwardas perceptual faculties allows an experience of spatial interaction
which is initiated by the absence of sight; her penetrated (female) body
turns its gaze inward when penetrated by masculinity. Still, this inward gaze
coincides with Edwardas tears amd torrential outpouring of sexual liquids.
These liquids are testament to the excessive sensory experience that she
has endured. They are also an ephemerally tangible remnant of Edwardas
inward-looking gaze. The differences between this unseeing liquefaction
and that carried out by the urinating, blinded, sexually diseased father of
Histoire de lils second section could not be more pronounced.
The words that Edwardas sexual encounter prompts her to utter are
unsayable, a roucoulement indicible. However, the male narrator is able
to recount lucidly what he sees. In spite of his haptic involvement in supporting Edwardas neck and watching her being penetrated by the driver,
the narrator is able to speak of the sexual act as it happens. Contrarily,
Edwarda is unable to speak clearly of her actions or those of others, even
when these actions impose haptically upon her body. Compared with the
narrators relative eloquence, Edwardas inability to speak clearly suggests a
118 My emphasis.
119 Bataille, Madame Edwarda, p.29. Fitch too notes this blessing (in Monde a lenvers,
texte reversible, pp.3842).
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Chapter 1
gendered variation, a male/female divide in the ability to articulate haptic

experiences of sexual difference. This appearance is misleading, however,
precisely because at the same moment, Edwarda rejects sight: tears stream
from her eyes and she refuses to look beyond the inner recesses of her
own body while it is being penetrated. Edwarda refuses to dignify what
she does and what she perceives of these actions with the sensorial linkage
that haptic perception of the genre postulated by Riegl, Paterson or Nancy
demands. In other words, Edwarda chooses to divorce action and sensation
by refusing to see their haptic linkage or, at least, to reject it through her
tears. Even if the taxi driver se donnait de tout son corps brutalement,120
we know that Edwarda does not. Her irises look elsewhere: they retreat into
her skull initially and are clouded by tears when they can be seen again.121
In spite of this, Edwardas body expresses its sacrifice outwardly, across all
proprioceptive (and, therefore, haptic) registers.
However this haptic experience is read, it comes with a warning, as all
of those involved in the orgy then fall asleep in the back of the taxi. The sensory faculties of all three characters are anaesthetised by the haptic excesses
of the encounter.122 When the narrator recalls his subsequent awakening, he
finds himself alone among sleepers: Jai fini. Du sommeil qui nous laissa,
peu de temps, dans le fond du taxi, je me suis veill malade, le premier
Le reste est ironie, longue attente de la mort 123
Though it is a relatively short piece of prose, Madame Edwarda charts
a lengthy oscillation between haptic and optical forms of perception. The
nameless narrator begins on his own, walking through Paris without
trousers, holding his erect penis in his hand. The haptic dimension of this
experience is proprioceptive in nature because it is at once visual, tactile
and requires Batailles protagonist to be spatially aware (he puts his trousers back on when he hears a noise). The narrator then visits Les Glaces,
121 Edwardas apparent refusal to acknowledge sexual difference fully in this scene poses
difficulties for a Nancyan reading of it ([i]l ny a pas de corps unisexe comme on le
dit aujourdhui de certains vtements (Nancy, Corpus, p.161)).
122 As implied by Fitch, Monde a lenvers, texte reversible, p.87.
89
where he chooses the naked Edwarda after she provides him with an
optical cue by poking her tongue out at him. This incident could also be
considered exemplary of the haptic visuality postulated by Marks insofar
as the mere sight of Edwardas naked flesh draws the narrator closer to her.
The coital intimacy which ensues is haptic in a proprioceptive, Patersonian
sense.
When Edwarda flees the brothel and then the narrator, she becomes
a purely optical presence once more. The narrator feels compelled to give
chase and lay his hands (as well as his eyes) upon Edwarda again. Her escape
is halted by her apparent fit in front of the narrator. In haptic terms, the
incident is most evocative of the continual sensory re-zoning that Nancys
subsequent theories of touch and vision would demand. Edwardas fit is
haptically alluring for the narrator. However, due to the optical hints of
the tactile violence that Edwardas body endures, he is reluctant to interact with her any more than he must. Following her episode, the narrator
regains his haptic contact with Edwarda and carries her to a taxi. She
then recovers, steps out of the taxi, seduces the driver with the sight of
her sex and returns to the back seat of the vehicle with him. The narrator
supports Edwardas body whilst she has intercourse with the driver and
thereby remains in haptic contact with her. During intercourse, Edwarda
rejects haptic sensation, refusing to look at what she is doing. All involved
then fall asleep, with the narrator waking up first and ending the narrative
with the haptic (specifically, proprioceptive) sensation of trembling
before God.
What is most apparent from this brief summary is the manner in which
oscillations between optical and haptic perception increase in regularity as
Batailles narrative progresses. These oscillations culminate with Edwarda
and the men in proximal contact with her falling asleep. Their senses are
deadened by their unconsciousness. While the others sleep on, the narrator
wakes and refuses to say any more about the situation, preferring to hark
back to an off-the-cuff remark he made earlier in the text which leaves him
trembling at the notion of a transcendental God. What Batailles protagonist appears to suggest is that even sublime transcendence must be thought
about in terms of what abject corporeal sensation cannot be, in terms of
the perceptual impossibilities that define the human condition.
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Chapter 1
Interaction between haptic perception, social convention and the

fleeting transcendence of this interaction itself are central themes in
Madame Edwarda. They are also major underlying themes of Le Bleu du
ciel, the final of the three prose works by Bataille that I shall be analysing
in this chapter.
Le Bleu du ciel
Though Le Bleu du ciel was written in 1935, it remained unpublished until
1957.124 Barring a significant reworking of La Haine de la posie which was
published in 1962 under the new title LImpossible,125 Le Bleu du ciel proved
to be the last piece of new literary writing by Bataille to be published
during his lifetime.
In Le Bleu du ciel, as with the other examples of Batailles prose studied
in this chapter, haptic experience is at once there and not there. The word
haptic is never apparent: only descriptions of sight and touch are present.
Le Bleu du ciels narrative sways wilfully between revelling in the psychological impact of simultaneously visual and tactile sensation and exploring
what happens to its protagonists when one or other of these constitutive
elements of haptic perception cannot be felt. As we shall see, this situation
leaves us with the impossible and thereby, never fully explicable literary illustration of a perceptual theory which oscillates between embracing
and rejecting the notion of haptic perception without giving itself fully to
either philosophical position.
124 Le Bleu du ciel is reprinted in Bataille, uvres compltes, III, pp.377487. All subsequent quotations will be taken from this edition.
125 LImpossible is also reprinted in Bataille, uvres compltes, III, pp.97223.
91
Hands (and Tears) in the Basement

Le Bleu du ciels introduction is in fact the beginning of a narrative. Within
its opening lines, we are confronted by the earthiest of human suffering.
However, we also learn that this suffering results from alcohols supposedly
numbing physical effects:
Dans un bouge de quartier de Londres, [] au sous-sol, Dirty tait ivre. Elle ltait
au dernier degr, jtais prs delle (ma main avait encore un pansement, suite dune
blessure de verre cass). [] Elle tirait ses longues jambes, entre dans une convulsion violente. [] Dirty treignait ses cuisses nues deux mains. Elle gmissait en
mordant un rideau sale. Elle tait aussi saoule quelle tait belle: elle roulait des yeux
ronds et furibonds.126
As we can see, the rcit of Le Bleu du ciel begins with both visual and
tangible forms of physical anguish. The narrator, who we learn subsequently
is named Henri Troppmann, sees his partners pain but does not intervene
tactilely in it, perhaps because he has injured his hand. Dirty seeks to diminish her own agonies by tugging at her misbehaving body and expressing
her pain visually (by rolling her eyes) rather than linguistically (she chews
on a curtain as she suffers). This abject state of affairs is not pleasant for
either character, yet it is Dirty, the individual in the most pain, who initiates the first truly haptic contact between the two. Having recovered from
her convulsion, she reaches out to Troppmann. As Dirtys eyes grow wider,
so her touch grows ever closer to her male companions fevered brow:
Elle me regardait en ouvrant des yeux de plus en plus grands. De ses longues mains sales elle caressa ma tte de bless. Mon front tait humide de
fivre. Elle pleurait comme on vomit, avec une folle supplication.127 It is
noticeable that the widening of Dirtys eyes precedes her reaching out for
her companion: sight comes before touch, even in a state of relative infirmity. Yet it is Dirtys hand which tells the story of her male companions
126 Bataille, Le Bleu du ciel, p.385.

127 Ibid.
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Chapter 1
fever, rather than a visual description of the pallid or sweaty complexion

which we would expect to see anyone with a fever exhibit. Moreover, her
tears suggest that she rejects some element of her haptic interaction with
Troppmann (or perhaps her earlier fit). In either case, Dirtys visual and
tactile interaction with her male partner coincides with her eyes being
clouded by tears. It should not be forgotten that Batailles titular character
has obscured eyes whilst having intercourse with a taxi driver at the end
of Madame Edwarda. The suggestion there, as here, is that some form of
transcendence is heralded by the interruption of haptic contact between
bodies and/or surfaces.
Hands Shaking, Bodies Moving, Minds Frozen

Just as a drunken Dirty trembles violently, moving between the extremes
of a London hovel, an opulent London hotel, the city of Paris and later,
Barcelona, Trier and Frankfurt, so Madame Edwarda oscillates between
divine transcendence and wretched carnality. Even Histoire de lils Simone
has a fit in the period following Marcelles death, her condition fluctuating
momentarily between the human and the bestial.128
Such oscillation between extremes also exists in the world of
sober intellectualism. At one point in Le Bleu du ciel, Troppmann pays an
unexpected visit to the home of Lazare, a political activist whose monthly
magazine he funds. There he finds not only Lazare, but also her stepfather,
M. Melou, who is a provincial philosophy teacher. The pair are discussing the mouvement dmancipation ouvrire. After a brief introduction,
M. Melou continues their conversation:
128 Simone se dchana par terre comme une volaille gorge, se blessant avec un bruit
terrible contre les ferrures de la porte. [E]lle avait le visage souill par la salive etpar
le sang (Bataille, Histoire de lil, p.49).
93
Permettez-moi donc de poser ce problme provisoirement (il me regarda sur ces

mots avec un sourire fin; il sarrta longuement, il donnait limpression dun couturier
qui, pour mieux juger de leffet, recule un peu) dans le vide, oui, cest bien l ce quil
faut dire, (il se prit les mains lune dans lautre et, trs doucement, les frotta) dans le
vide Comme si nous nous trouvions devant les donnes dun problme arbitraire.129
What is striking about the ensuing scene in general and the above quotation
in particular is the manner in which supposedly empty words (or data) are
interposed with Melous tangible gestures. He is able to convey the impression of standing back from his words without actually doing anything other
than ceasing to move his lips while smiling. As he then speaks of le vide,
Melou joins his hands and gently rubs them together. This gesture is haptic
to him, but purely optical to the other characters present.
The obvious conclusion to be drawn from these few sentences is
that what Melou says and what he in fact does are diametrically opposed.
However, there is the additional possibility that the ideological paralysis
that he voices also expresses itself outwardly, forcing its way into his gestures
and, thereby, moving from the theoretical realm into the empirical. So it is,
for example, that as Melou muses over his ideological powerlessness to help
the workers he wishes to represent, he looks blindly at his hands: Oh ,
fit M. Melou, les yeux perdus dans la contemplation de ses maigres doigts,
je ne comprends que trop votre perplexit. Je suis perplexe moi-mme,
ter-ri-ble-ment perplexe.130
Similarly, when Troppmann asks Melou what he thinks will become
of the workers movement, the abstract problem incites bodily movements
on Melous part:
Aprs un silence gnant, il ouvrit dinterminables bras et, tristement, il les leva:
Les choses en arrivent l, nous ressemblons au paysan qui travaillerait sa terre
pour lorage [.] [I]l se tient devant sa rcolte et, comme je le fais maintenant moimme (sans transition, labsurde, le risible personnage devint sublime, tout coup
sa voix fluette, sa voix suave avait pris quelque chose de glaant) il lvera pour rien
ses bras vers le ciel en attendant que la foudre le frappe lui et ses bras
129 Bataille, Le Bleu du ciel, pp.42223.

130 Ibid., p.424.
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Chapter 1
Il laissa, sur ces mots, tomber ses propres bras. Il tait devenu la parfaite image
dun dsespoir affreux.
Je le compris. Si je ne men allais pas, je recommencerais pleurer: moi-mme,
par contagion, jeus un geste dcourag, je suis parti []. Il pleuvait verse []. Je
marchai pendant presque une heure, incapable de marrter, glac par leau qui avait
tremp mes cheveux et mes vtements.131
The dsespoir affreux of which Melou becomes the image is the ability
to act out words and doctrines, without putting them into useful practice.
Melous behaviour implies that the haptic experience has the ability to make
itself appear communal or shared when, in fact, it amounts to nothing more
than individualised mental masturbation. However, M. Melou still reaches
for the skies when faced with the physical effects of ideological problems. As
can be seen above, Troppmanns final response to this idealised impotence
is entirely haptic and non-intellectual: he walks through freezing rain in
order to diminish his upset and agitation. It is this walk which gives him
shivers of the kind experienced earlier by Dirty.
Haptic Rhythm and Optical Repulsion

Let us now turn to three further incidents in Le Bleu du ciel which cast a
rather different light upon the notion or in two cases, the suggestion
that haptic perception is merely a form of mental masturbation. Shortly
before Troppmanns impromptu visit to Lazares house, he finds himself
walking into a burlesque club. Having insisted on sitting right next to the
runway, the only seat remaining is unbalanced because the clubs floorboards
are bowing under the weight of clients:
Jtais rouge, il faisait trs chaud []. [M]on existence en quilibre instable sur une
chaise devenait la personnification du malheur: au contraire, les danseuses sur la piste
inonde de lumire taient limage dun bonheur inaccessible.
131 Ibid., pp.42425.
95
Lune des danseuses tait plus lance et plus belle que les autres: elle arrivait avec
un sourire de desse, vtue dune robe de soire qui la rendait majestueuse. la fin
de la danse, elle tait entirement nue, mais, ce moment, dune lgance et dune
dlicatesse peu croyables [,] son long corps nacr une merveille dune pleur spectrale.
[] La seconde fois que le jeu de la robe dgrafe se produisit, il me coupa le souffle
tel point que je me retins ma chaise, vid. Je quittai la salle. Jerrai.132
As in Madame Edwarda and Histoire de lil, the abundant exposure of

sexually attractive female skin causes physical and mental imbalance in the
minds of the males that behold it. Once more, blushing is also apparent as
a prelude to an outpouring of inner desires. In this instance, the sight of
women (and one woman in particular) undressing before his eyes focusses
Troppmanns attention. When his favourite dancer completes her second
strip-tease, Troppmann is pushed back into his seat by the sight of her
naked body. The dancer is almost but alas, not quite close enough to
satisfy Troppmanns expressly haptic desire to at once see and touch her skin.
As if to heighten the intensity of the irresistible tide or rhythm of haptic
attraction and repulsion that Troppmann experiences, the floorboards of
the club vibrate under his chair. The number and behaviour of other customers in the club determines the see-sawing of Troppmanns seat, as he
watches the women that he desires pass him by. In this sense, an element
of chance enhances the intensity of the oscillation between attractive and
potentially haptic gestures (the dancers movements as she undresses) and
a similarly haptic reinforcement of the impossibility of moving beyond
optical interaction with the source of these gestures (Troppmann is pushed
back into his seat by the dancers eventual and total nudity). Unfortunately,
sight alone is insufficient to satisfy Troppmanns urges, here: the woman
he desires becomes a haptic image before his eyes.
Markss association of visible movement and tactile solicitation through
haptic visuality finds an early precedent here.133 However, rather than
132 Ibid., p.413.
133 Marks: While optical perception privileges the representational power of the image,
haptic perception privileges the material presence of the image. Drawing from other
forms of sense experience, primarily touch and kinaesthetics, haptic visuality involves
the body more than is the case with optical visuality (The Skin of the Film, p.163).
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Chapter 1
enticing him ever closer, the dancing vision of beauty that Troppmann
beholds eventually robs him of his breath. In the end, he cannot even bear
to remain in the same room as the visible yet intangible image of his carnal
desires. In this regard, the dancers power is optical, not tactile. Troppmann
responds to the impossibility of touching the dancer by attempting to dull
the erotic stimulation of his haptic senses. He achieves this by engaging
in another haptic experience which is within his reach and to which he
can give over his mind and body the act of walking aimlessly. However
aimless his walk may be, it requires a repetitive series of actions from his
body. Troppmann seems to hope that these mindless repetitions will banish
the lingering physical and mental effects of the purposely titillating haptic
rhythms to which he lost his breath in the club.
Some time later, Troppmann finds his experience of another ostensibly
aimless pastime (swimming alone off a deserted Badalona beach) to be at
once numbing and erotically stimulating of his haptic faculties. The scene
in question unfolds as the first salvos of the Spanish Civil War of 1936 to
1939 are being fired in Barcelona and Troppmanns two mistresses (Dirty
and Xnie) wend their way towards an unplanned and tragic meeting at a
hotel in the Catalan capital:
jentrai en courant dans la mer. Je cessai de nager et je regardai le ciel bleu. [] Debout,
javais de leau jusqu lestomac. Je voyais mes jambes jauntres dans leau, les deux pieds
dans le sable, le tronc, les bras et la tte au-dessus de leau. Javais la curiosit ironique de
me voir, de voir ce qutait, la surface de la terre (ou de la mer), ce personnage peu
prs nu, attendant quaprs quelques heures lavion sortt du fond du ciel. Je recommenai nager. Le ciel tait immense, il tait pur, et jaurais voulu rire dans leau.134
Whilst in the sea, Troppmann is at once grounded and airborne.

Lonesome and alternating between standing in and floating on the tide,
he stares at the sky. As he does so, Troppmanns self-awareness threatens to drift beyond his bodily confines.135 In these moments, his physical
135 The tranquility of Troppmanns experience here is in marked contrast to the bodily
violence endured by Edwarda during her moment of failed transcendence in Batailles
earlier work.
97
presence becomes as fluid as the water which envelops his body: jeus un
instant la sensation que le corps de Dirty se confondait avec la lumire,
surtout avec la chaleur: je me raidis comme un bton. Javais envie de
chanter. Mais rien ne me semblait solide. Je me sentais aussi faible quun
vagissement.136
Alternately standing and swimming in a space between the paradoxically earthbound weightlessness offered by the sea and the empty skys
vastness, Troppmann perceives that his physical presence is disintegrating.
In spite of him at once seeing and feeling the spreading dissolution of his
body and its perceptive faculties, Troppmann is still able to sense his faible
state. At this moment, the visual and tactile evidence of Troppmanns sexuality remains. Lost in a confusion of sensations which is far less apparent
in Histoire de lil, Troppmann imagines Dirtys presence. His imaginings
of her are at once visual (sunlit) and tactile (warming and hardening of
his skin). In spite of this, Troppmanns carnal reveries conflate the simultaneously visual and tactile indices of sexual difference between male and
female, turning them into a form of fantasy (jeus un instant la sensation
que le corps de Dirty se confondait avec la lumire, surtout avec la chaleur:
je me raidis comme un bton). This fantasising keeps Troppmann in the
sea and makes him aware of the convergent visual and tactile sensations
of disintegration which then occur within his own body. Relying upon
his haptic sensory memories to fuel his sensual imaginings in a manner
which at once foreshadows and contradicts aspects of Laura Markss postulation of haptic visuality,137 Troppmann enjoys a brief moment of equilibrium between sight and touch, as well as haptically perceptible presence
and absence.
This equilibrium does not equate with rational clarity, however: the
ebb and flow of the sea dulls Troppmanns senses of sight and touch to
such an extent that he confuses Dirtys imagined physical presence with
the sunlight that he sees and feels upon his skin. Simultaneously and in

137 As I stated earlier, Marks claims that, [t]he haptic is a form of visuality that muddies
intersubjective boundaries (The Skin of the Film, p.188).
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Chapter 1
spite of suffering frequently from impotence when in Dirtys company (elle

me faisait mme absolument perdre la tte, mais au lit, jtais impuissant
avec elle) Troppmann is conscious of having an erection.138 His erection
remains the one solid point of reference for his perceptive faculties at this
moment, yet Troppmanns erection is a product of his highly volatile emotions. Troppmann is nonetheless confronted with tactile and visual evidence
of his sexuality whilst the rest of his perceptible body disintegrates. As this
paradox occurs, Troppmann also half-stands and half-floats in a physically
impossible median space between earth and sky, between a simultaneously
saintly forgetting of the body and a sinful embrace of carnality. Troppmann
moves seamlessly, fluidly and impossibly between labject and le sublime,
between the baseness of earthly life and the lightness of transcendental
being which is evoked by the empty blue skies above him.
Unfortunately, Troppmanns moment of sensory equilibrium does not
last. Some weeks later, he stands alone under the canopy of a Frankfurt
theatre entrance, sheltering from a rainstorm. A band of Nazi youths perform nearby. Their leader directs the group with a cane, the music dchirant les oreilles [,] une exultation de cataclysme [,] dune saccade de sale
petite brute.139 Troppmann describes the group as being immobiles, mais
en transe, cette mare montante du meurtre.140 Entranced by their leaders
gestures and using their instruments, the youths unquestioningly interpret
the sight of his actions into personalised patterns of tactile behaviour.
Oppressive waves of sound result.141 Like a shockwave, the band leaders
violent comportment first dominates the eyes of his band members before
consuming their collective sense of touch and finally, their auditory senses.
The sounds that result from the groups mimetic behaviour then assail and
occupy the perceptual faculties of passers-by as well.
139 Ibid., p.486.
140 Ibid., p.487. This suspension of perception is commented upon at length by Fitch
in Monde a lenvers, texte reversible, pp.1926, 30. Fitch however considers it an
parpillement, rather than an experience of convergence between the classically
defined senses of sight, touch, hearing, taste and smell.
141 As is implied by Fitch in ibid., p.157.
99
The youths in the band are caught in the same tide of simultaneously
tactile and visual interaction which envelops and threatens to disintegrate Troppmanns self-awareness during his swim at Badalona. The individual identities of the Nazi band members who play in the rainsoaked
Frankfurt square have, however, been overpowered entirely. These future
soldiers, who will lay waste to so much life during World War II, are intellectually and uniformly suspended in, sacrificed to and swept along by the
rhythmic tide of almost simultaneous sight and tactility which oscillates
between themselves and their leader.142 The impossibly absolute suspension of individual thought and sensation to which their behaviour attests
is immediately apparent to Troppmann, as is its destructive potentiality.
His simultaneously aural and visual experience of the bands unquestioningly and barely sublimated violence is at once prophetic and revelatory.
Troppmann responds to this tragic moment of sensory clarity by leaving
Frankfurt immediately.143
Conclusion
At the beginning of this chapter, I demonstrated how Batailles critical
writings expose a number of significant barriers to any haptic reading of
his prose works.
Initially, I showed that Batailles theoretical writings on the body
published prior to 1945 tend towards a dismantling of corporeal and sensory contiguity. Documents articles such as Bouche, il and Le Gros
orteil all demonstrate this tendency. Other theoretical articles of that era
such as Espace and Informe disavow any notion of spatial continuity or
142 As Fitch remarks, Ltre suspendu nest [] pas tout fait entr dans lautre monde.
Il se trouve plutt sur le seuil de ce dernier, de passage en quelque sorte, entre les deux
dimensions de ltre quil pressent mais ne connat pas encore (ibid., p.14; emphasis
in original. See also ibid., pp.1926).
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Chapter 1
solidity. Batailles unpublished essays of the time, on topics as diverse as

the speculative il pinal and the excretive anti-perception of htrologie,
insist upon a violent rejection of the concept of proprioception if it is to be
treated as a bastion of haptic perception or rationalist sens. Though it was
published almost fifteen years after many of the articles just mentioned,
I demonstrated that LExprience intrieure exhibits a similar distrust of
philosophies of perception on Batailles part, instead embracing the physical exploration of non-savoir.
Taken together, these works suggest an understanding of physical experience which would nullify any interpretation of the events which occur
in Histoire de lil, Madame Edwarda and Le Bleu du ciel as being haptic.
This is a strange situation, since there are numerous instances of synergy
between tactile and visual perception in all three of these works, even if
Bataille never alludes to haptic perception by name in any of his writings.
Through close readings of the unpublished il pinal dossier, Batailles
1938 article La Chance and excerpts from LExprience intrieure, I illustrated how Batailles intellectual position on corporeal perception was far
from unequivocal or definitive. These texts all suggest an (albeit grudging and partial) acceptance that some form of sense must be derivable
from corporeal sensation, however limited it may be. I also showed that in
LExprience intrieure, Bataille refers directly to a point of conscious convergence between the bodily senses which is to be found outside the body.
Though this floating point in space invites synergy between our perceptual
faculties, it guarantees that little if any rationalist sense may be derived
from any such interaction. It promises only a raw perceptive experience.
Whether this solicitous (and intermittently haptic) point in space involves
the presence of another object, person or anything else is of only partial
significance: it is external to, yet demanding of, the momentarily unified
attentions of our senses.
I suggested that this point of perceptual convergence, if it is considered in conjunction with the Nancyan notion of exscriptive logic, may be
understood as haptic. According to Nancy, the exscriptive experience is a
visceral rejection of rationalist sense which bases itself upon the bodys perceptive faculties. It is a self-effacing literary and artistic remnant of bodily
sensation. Nancyan excription attempts to reject all sensorial evidence of
101
the bodily trace, but never fully succeeds in doing so, precisely because it
is never entirely aware of its physically, perceptively and rationally excretive characteristics.
In this context, I posited ffrenchs understanding of the act of reading
as an informe praxis; the reader excretes his or her prior haptic experiences
onto the pages that he or she reads, often unaware that he or she does so.
This readerly action occurs in a perceptual blind spot. As his critical works
show, Bataille consistently rejects the idea that sens is a concept which may
be perceived at (or through) the limits of bodily sensation. However, he
alters the emphasis of this rejection every so often. These changing perspectives call to mind an evolving shadow that the sun might cast over a fixed
object during the course of a day. In less metaphorical terms, this moving
shadow or blind spot in Batailles critical and literary explorations of the
perceiving human body relates to haptic perception. From article to article
and from book to book, this haptic blind spot shifts from one aspect of
Batailles writing to another, threatening to blind our senses to that which
is patently before us. Our attempts to grasp at haptic meaning in Batailles
literary works unbalance us intellectually. When we read Batailles texts,
our own memories of haptic perception lead us to believe that the experiences he writes about should be tenuously familiar to us, even if we are
only reading of them for the first time. The inevitable hesitation between
(rational) intellect and (haptic) instinct which results from this attempt
to grasp perceptible reality from textual evocations of sensation creates a
mental impression of teetering on the readers part. Crucially, both elements
in this hesitation subsist upon sens in all meanings of the words English
equivalent, and that of physical direction, which the French word offers
us additionally whether as a presence, an absence or a hybrid of the two.
My subsequent close readings of Histoire de lil, Madame Edwarda
and Le Bleu du ciel demonstrate that Batailles literary writing is conceptually haptic. The principles of haptic theory are present in these texts, even
if they are not expressed in a consistent manner. This is not to suggest that
Batailles prose is conceptually orientated: it is far more preoccupied with
combatting the philosophical and experiential impossibilities that are
imposed upon us by the physical limits of our bodies. Every sentence of
Batailles prose oscillates between the physically possible (the potentially
102
Chapter 1
haptic) and the impossible (the simultaneously optical and haptic). No

rapprochement between the haptically possible and impossible will ever
be complete in Batailles literary writing because neither of these elements
is permitted to recognise the opposing force with which it is met.144 There
is merely an ebb and flow between them.
Thus it is that the three prose works by Bataille that I have analysed in
this chapter exhibit vestiges of the fixed, incisive, proximal hapticity posited
by Riegl and the mobile, ghostly, yet tactilely inviting haptic experience that
Marks advocates. The heightened haptic sensitivities of Simone, Marcelle,
Edwarda and Dirty appear to validate the distinctly feminine quality that
Marks seeks to dissociate from the haptic invitation to touch and in the
process, be touched. Nevertheless, Markss insistence that haptic visuality is
not specifically feminine is vindicated in part by the fact that instances of
haptic interaction in Batailles prose works occur most frequently between
men and women. In fact, when women are seen to interact haptically with
women (particularly in the case of Simone and Marcelle), the results of
such interaction prove mortally damaging to at least one party (Marcelle),
while they are not for the other (Simone). Sustained haptic interaction
between males is rare in any of the three prose works studied. Such contact
does prove destructive in Histoire de lil. The narrator of that texts rcit
and Sir Edmond beat and then hold down Don Aminado while Simone
throttles him to death.145 Le Bleu du ciel makes fleeting reference to deux
vieillards pdrastes qui tournoyaient en dansant, rellement, et non dans
un rve,146 but says no more on the subject.
144 In LExprience intrieure, Bataille makes the following observation: Ce que tu es

tient lactivit qui lie les lments sans nombre qui te composent, lintense communication de ces lments entre eux. Ce sont des contagions dnergie, de mouvement, de chaleur ou des transferts dlments, qui constituent intrieurement la vie
de ton tre organique. La vie nest jamais situe en un point particulier: elle passe
rapidement dun point lautre (ou de multiples points dautres points), comme
un courant ou comme une sorte de ruissellement lectrique (Bataille, LExprience
intrieure, p.111).
145 In Bataille, Histoire de lil, pp.6467.
103
Where does all of this leave our haptic reading of Batailles works?
Quite simply, Nancys understanding of haptic perception as being somewhat involved in all forms of human sensation is the most closely related
to Batailles critical theories.147 The synergy between sensory faculties that
is integral to Patersons proprioceptive understanding of the haptic experience is also apparent in all three of the works of prose by Bataille that
I have analysed. This synergy between sensory faculties which extends into
aspects of all five of the classically defined senses (sight, touch, hearing, taste
and smell), is equally evocative of the eternally re-zoning sensory faculties
that Nancys understanding of haptic sensation requires.
With these observations in mind, let us move on. The next chapter
of my investigation concerns Maurice Blanchot, a critic, philosopher and
literary writer whose works address proprioceptive experiences directly only
occasionally. Blanchot first met Bataille in 1940, the year before his debut
novel Thomas lobscur was printed.148 The pair would remain friends and
intellectual sparring partners until Batailles death. In the coming chapter,
I shall be examining how their intellectual closeness manifests itself in
Blanchots critical and literary approaches to interactions between sight
and touch, the primary sensory elements of haptic perception. As with
this chapter, the texts by Blanchot that I shall study span the beginning,
middle and end of the writers career.
In common with Bataille, neither Blanchots critical writings nor his
literary works refer to haptic perception specifically. In spite of this, I shall
demonstrate that Blanchots prose works manifest a particular interest in
descriptions of physical experience. Intriguingly, however, these same works
do not revel in the overt carnality apparent in Batailles prose works. Indeed,
Blanchots critical accounts of physical perception are more reminiscent of
the senseless opacity that Bataille denounces in La Chance.
147 Nancy acknowledges this thematic debt. La Pense drobe (Paris: Galile, 2000), a
compilation of articles by Nancy, begins with Batailles quip that [j]e pense comme
une fille enlve sa robe (p.9).
148 This meeting is discussed in Christophe Bident, Maurice Blanchot: partenaire
invisible (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 2008), p.166.
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Chapter 1
In light of these facts, I intend to discover whether, in common with

Batailles literary writing, there is an identifiable (if equivocal) haptic sensibility discernable in Blanchots prose works. As part of this task, I shall
also assess how, if at all, the haptic theories of Riegl, Marks, Paterson and
Nancy might interact with Blanchots critical writings.
Though he seldom wrote about the human body directly, Blanchot
did write at considerable length on the issue of how shared experiences
can create or dissolve communities. These writings led him into textual
exchanges with Nancy on more than one occasion. Might this mean that,
like Bataille, Blanchots critiques and prose display a greater disposition
towards Nancys understanding of hapticity than the haptic models posited
by Riegl, Marks or Paterson?
Chapter 2
In the previous chapter, I demonstrated that Georges Batailles writings

on perception exhibit a particular interest in sensory interactions between
sight and touch. I also showed that Batailles interest in these constitutive
elements of haptic perception is apparent in his works of critical theory
and literary prose. However, my analysis proved that there is an appreciable
difference between the critical and literary approaches that Bataille adopts
when he explores the issues of sight, touch and how these two senses may
or may not interact.
Like his friend Georges Bataille, Blanchot does not use the word haptique in any of his works. If we are to establish Blanchots attitude to haptic
perception, we must therefore analyse his literary and critical treatment of
tactile perception and his treatment of visual perception simultaneously.
I contend that Blanchots critical theories and works of literary prose explore
the constitutive elements of haptic perception with specific (though often
tacit) reference to Batailles critical and literary treatments of these topics.
In Lautramont et Sade (1963), Blanchot tells us that [l]a littrature reste
bien lobjet de la critique, mais la critique ne manifeste pas la littrature.1
I will contradict this stance by showing how Blanchots portrayals of haptic
perception suggest there to be at least some reciprocity between critique
and prose in his writing.
There are however pronounced differences between the manner
in which the frequently silent engagement with haptic perception just
mentioned manifests itself in Blanchot and Batailles writings. In particular, Blanchot engages far more with Husserlian, Heideggerian and
1
Maurice Blanchot, Lautramont et Sade (Paris: Minuit, 1963; repr. UG/10/18,

1967), p.7.
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Chapter 2
Merleau-Pontyan phenomenology than Bataille ever does. This is unsurprising when we recall that Merleau-Ponty was an acquaintance of Blanchot.2
In spite of these facts, phenomenologys interest in examining the
psychological relationship between a perceiver and the object of his or
her perception is given relatively short shrift in Blanchots works of critical theory and literary prose. Even the ontological perspectives upon this
relation proffered by Emmanuel Levinas, another of Blanchots friends, are
rarely exposed in the latters oeuvre.3 Instead, Blanchot casts the interaction
between the perceiver and the perceived as being one in which the perceiver
knows something to be absent from his or her perception of a given object
or situation, but cannot express this absence linguistically. This paradox
presents itself in nearly every work of theory or literary prose produced by
Blanchot and is postulated and repostulated in many different ways over
his lengthy career.
In the next subsection, I shall be analysing a selection of Blanchots
critical writings. The works to be analysed cover the majority of Blanchots
active years between 1943 (Faux pas) and 1969 (LEntretien infini). This
is not to suggest that Blanchots critical thinking ceases with the dawn
of the 1970s. I have chosen not to address Blanchots subsequent critical
works (such as Le Pas au-del (1973), Lcriture du dsastre (1980) and La
Communaut inavouable (1983)) in any great depth for several reasons.
Firstly, Blanchots critical works of 1943 to 1969 establish many key
parameters of his approach to corporeal perception, even if his subsequent
critical works expand upon some of these ideas.
My second reason for not addressing Blanchots critical theories
beyond 1969 to any great extent is much simpler: many of his critical works
from the early 1970s onwards analyse the expressly political connotations
of the term communaut. In Blanchovian texts such as Le Pas au-del and
La Communaut inavouable, these analyses generally treat the concept
of community as more of a function of language and of speech than as a
2
3
See Bident, Maurice Blanchot: partenaire invisible, p.504.

Patrick ffrenchs After Bataille offers a concise overview of the points of confluence
between Bataille and Blanchots theoretical approaches and their friendship (see in
particular pp.10716).
107
phenomenon that might be perceptible through shared bodily sensations.

There is not sufficient space here to address these more politically orientated
analyses in the critical depth that they merit.
My final reason for not dwelling on Blanchots critical writings from
1970 onwards is that two of the three works of prose by Blanchot that I
shall be analysing were first published between 1941 (the original version of
Thomas lobscur) and 1949. (La Folie du jour, which was first printed under
that title in 1973, is otherwise identical to an earlier work by Blanchot entitled Un rcit?, which appeared in a short-lived literary periodical, Empdocle,
in 1949.) LInstant de ma mort (1994) is the final piece of prose by Blanchot
that I shall be considering in this chapter.
In my analyses of Blanchots critical writings and literary works, I
shall explore his evolving portrayals of coincidences of touch and vision
in potentially haptic situations. How do these portrayals interact with the
perceptible yet ineffable absence which all of Blanchots writings attempt
to describe?
In the coming chapter, I shall demonstrate that, as with his critical
works, each example of Blanchots narrative prose that I analyse follows
a thematic trajectory from haptic perception to solely optical perception,
before concluding with the impossibility of unifying these two modes of
perception into one. I shall also suggest that, as Blanchots critical works
reject rationalist notions of cause and effect with increasing vehemence,
so his literary works concentrate less and less on a conflict between haptic
and optical modes of perception. Simultaneously, however, these pieces of
prose place an ever greater emphasis upon the impossibility of reconciling
haptic and optical perception within one experiential whole.
Why is this emphasis so significant? In the previous chapter, I showed
that Georges Batailles works of literary prose proceed from the physical damage that haptic proximity can wreak in sexually violent situations
(Histoire de lil). The arc of Batailles prose then travels into an experiential
realm which is simultaneously haptic and optical (Madame Edwarda). The
impossibility of these two forms of perception cohabiting within the same
experiential realm is underlined by the conclusion of Madame Edwardas
narrative and by several incidents in Le Bleu du ciel. In both of these texts,
oblivion can present itself on haptic and optical sensory registers. However,
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Chapter 2
the ways in which this oblivion might affect its perceiver cannot be predicted purely on the basis of which sensory register it is perceived through.
For example, the death and destruction which takes place in Histoire de lil
occurs on a mostly haptic level, whereas the enduring sense of desolation
in Le Bleu du ciel relies far more upon visions of apocalypse than expressly
haptic (visual and cutaneous) interactions with such visions. In what
follows, I intend to discover whether a similarly destructive arc from haptic
to optical perception can be traced across Blanchots critical writings and
literary prose.
Blanchot, Haptic Theories and Some Initial Difficulties

In this subsection, I shall show that as Blanchots critical works engage
increasingly with issues of temporality and cause and effect, his references
to sight and touch diminish appreciably.
As I stated above, Blanchots critical works and literary prose span
more than half a century. What follows is a necessarily truncated account
of the changing roles played by sight and touch in some of Blanchots most
often used textual motifs relating to perception. As we shall see, one constant in Blanchots theorisations is the impossibility of writing about sight
and touch in a constructive or informative manner. Each of the concepts
itemised during the following subsections describes different facets of this
underlying (and unnamed) problem.
Let us begin by assessing the first theoretical stumbling blocks that
might prevent us from analysing Blanchots theories in haptic terms. In Faux
pas, a collection of articles written for newspapers and journals between
1941 and 1943, Blanchot writes that [i]l faut que le langage renonce
tre en mme temps expression de la certitude sensible et expression de
luniversel; il ny a pas de continuit entre la sensation et les mots.4 Why
4
Maurice Blanchot, Faux pas (Paris: NRF/Gallimard, 1943; repr. 2009), p.106.
109
might Blanchot make this statement? Part of his reasoning stems from what
Blanchot understands the very notion of communication between beings
and objects to be. As the following quotation demonstrates, Blanchots
stance on the issue of communication is a highly nuanced mixture of critical theorisation and poetic sensibility:
La communication ne commence [] tre authentique que lorsque lexprience
a dnud lexistence, lui a retir ce qui la liait au discours et laction []. Elle nest
pas plus participation dun sujet un objet quunion par le langage. [L]orsque le
sujet et lobjet ont t dessaisis, labandon pur et simple devient perte nue dans la
nuit [] par hasard. [I]l faudrait imaginer une quation qui, tandis quon la formulerait, modifierait le flux et le reflux, la fonction dans le temps et la nature de lorgane
quelle voudrait dterminer.5
Blanchot demands here that there be a disconnection between perceived

experience and the physical actions which form part of it. This reductive
experience eradicates the difference between its subject and object: these
distinctions are let go of (dessaisis). The erstwhile subject and object of
experience coalesce into a form expressible only in linguistic terms. This
change of circumstance creates a wilful wastage of any instructive sens which
might otherwise have been derived from a perceived experience. As Gerald
L. Bruns puts it, Blanchots [l]iterature is language turning into something
that is no longer language, that is, no longer a productive system.6 Blanchots
use of the term nuit designates a consciously unfathomable perception of
otherness or difference, an experience of opacity so dense that our senses
cannot penetrate it; they are only able to discern its presence. As in Batailles
works, this discernment, which is ostensibly arrived at through corporeal
sensation, is in fact no more than a matter of hasard.
The quotation above also shows that the ebb and flow of perception
that I linked with Batailles writing whilst concluding the previous chapter is present in Blanchots critical works. In Blanchots case, however, this
sensory flow is one of temporal and experiential otherness. The fleeting
5
6
Ibid., pp.5152.
Gerald L. Bruns, Maurice Blanchot: The Refusal of Philosophy (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins, 2005), p.54.
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Chapter 2
sensory interaction between subject and object is an equation, a working

out or likening. As Blanchot remarks, however, this resolution or likening of subject and object has a decisive effect upon the manner in which
the sensory organs whose discerning sensations enable this resolution or
likening actually function. Attempting to clarify this proposition, Bruns
suggests that for Blanchot, it is [a]s if language were outside our concepts,
inaccessible to subjectivity as an instrument of meditations, but not outside
our passive, porous corporeality.7
In Faux pas, Blanchot tells us that the ability of the bodys sensory
organs to discern the passage of time is altered by une quation qui,
tandis quon la formulerait, modifierait le flux et le reflux, la fonction
dans le temps et la nature de lorgane quelle voudrait dterminer.8 He also
states that the very nature of these sensory organs their parameters of
discernment can also be altered by the equation of subject and object.
Yet until this temporal distortion and/or functional metamorphosis of
the sense organs occurs or is allowed to occur, Blanchot states that no
authentique, revealing, (dnud[e]) communication concerning an
object can take place between two subjects. Therefore, even if temporal
distortion and/or functional metamorphosis come to pass, bodily sensation loses any instructive value that might be attributable to it. Equally,
if the same temporal distortion and/or functional metamorphosis do not
occur, then the perceptual experience which is constituted and described
by the bodys sensory data cannot, according to Blanchot, be considered
authentique.
This impasse brings us back to Blanchots insistence that [i]l faut que
le langage renonce tre en mme temps expression de la certitude sensible
et expression de luniversel; il ny a pas de continuit entre la sensation et les
mots.9 Language (Blanchot is referring to both written and spoken language
here) must give up any claim to be an expression of discernible certainty.
Language must also be purged of any pretence that it is simultaneously
7
8
9
Ibid., p.37.
Blanchot, Faux pas, p.52.
Ibid., p.106.
111
able to make absolutely comprehensible and evoke with unerring

accuracy any instance of sensory information gleaned by corporeal means.
These demands appear to break any possible linkage between bodily sensation and the language used to describe or otherwise designate such
perception.
A haptic interpretation of Blanchots prose therefore seems problematic. The rejection of subjectivity and objectivity that Blanchot postulates
above renders Riegls schematisation of haptic perception impossible to
apply. This is because although Riegl understands the haptic surface or plane
to be objective, this objectivity requires the enquiring gaze of a subjective
individual in order to manifest itself. In fact, Riegl associates the haptic
with objectivism because haptic detail should, in his opinion, provide the
same perceptible information to all of its subjective observers.10 The difference between subject and object is what attracts the viewers glance. This
attraction in turn creates a conscious desire within the subjects mind to
touch the object that he or she beholds.
The same can be said of Laura U. Markss theorisation of haptic
visuality. In the case of Markss theories, however, it could be argued that the
subjects desire to touch the object or projected images surface, whether this
desire is realised or not, amounts to a sensory interaction which borders on
a fusion of sorts between subject and object. Nevertheless, Markss theories
imply that there is no absolute guarantee that looking at and touching an
objects surface simultaneously will grant the viewer a better understanding of what they are looking at: such comprehension is a matter of chance,
or hasard.
The model of haptic perception put forward by Mark Paterson
allows for chance interactions between the facets of the various forms
of bodily sensation that he deems to be haptic (such as proprioception,
kinaesthesia and cutaneous perception, for example). However, the reliance of this sensory framework upon cause and effect (that is, sensory
stimulus being followed inevitably by sensory reaction) is a problem
10
See Riegl, ber antike und moderne Kunstfreunde, p.202 and p.5, n. 8 above for
my transcription and English translation of the relevant passage.
112
Chapter 2
shared by the theorisations of haptic interaction postulated by Riegl

and Marks.
We therefore find ourselves turning once more towards Jean-Luc
Nancys postulation of haptic interaction in order to understand Blanchots
theorisation of communication from a haptic perspective. As I stated earlier, Nancys understanding of perception is one of chance interactions
between sensory zones which all contain a variable quantity of visual and
tactile data (which are the requisite sensory components of haptic perception). The clearest example of this understanding is provided by Nancys
reference to a speculative
sur-voir []qui est une prise et pour finir un toucher: labsolu mme du toucher,
le toucher-lautre comme se-toucher, lun dans lautre absorb, dvor. [L]a vue elle
mme sy distend, sy espace, elle nembrasse pas la totalit des aspects [] qui inscrivent et qui excrivent un corps [,] voyant aussi par touches dautres sens, odeurs,
gots, timbres, et mme, avec les sons, les sens des mots.11
While Nancy unlike Blanchot seems to advocate a form of continuity

between sensations and words, this continuity occurs through the apparent
absence of rational sense in the words which refer to these sensations. Nor
does Nancy believe the potentially haptic striations of a surface (in this case,
those of human skin) to be capable of revealing anything to their beholder
by tactile or visual means. In addition to these observations, we must be
mindful that the ultimate lack of incisive power that Nancy attributes to
vision in the quotation above contradicts the caressing and self-consuming
potentiality with which he endows the human gaze only a sentence before.
All of the paradoxical characteristics of vision just itemised are apparent
in Blanchots conceptions of image and fascination.
11 Nancy, Corpus, pp.4142; emphasis in original.
113
LImage or Getting to Grips with the Intangible

Blanchot states in LEspace littraire (1955) that, crire, cest briser le lien
qui unit la parole moi-mme, [] laction et le temps.12 One of his theoretical means to this literary end is his conception of the literary image.
This formulation trades on languages ability to conjure up in vivid sensory
detail the very world that it seeks to destroy through abstraction:
Limage, dans le pome, nest pas la dsignation dune chose, mais la manire dont
saccomplit la possession de cette chose ou sa destruction, [] pour venir son
contact substantiel et matriel et la toucher dans une unit de sympathie ou une unit
de dgot. [E]lle est labsence de ce quelle nous donne et elle nous le fait atteindre
comme la prsence dune absence, appelant, par l en nous, le mouvement le plus vif
pour le possder []. Mais, en mme temps, limage potique, dans cette absence
mme de la chose, prtend nous restituer le fond de sa prsence, non pas sa forme
qui est ce quon voit, mais le dessous qui est ce quon pntre, sa ralit de terre, sa
matire-motion.13
Blanchots speculative poetic and literary image exhibits the characteristic schisms between reality, perceptibility and absence that he attributes
to language more generally (as I explained in the previous subsection).
However, Blanchot posits his notion of image in noticeably more haptic
terms than he does his general understandings of language (pour venir
son contact substantiel et matriel et la toucher [] dans une unit de
sympathie).14 The Blanchovian image is a lexically constructed edifice
with an unambiguously visible outer veneer. The words which form the
linguistic images visible outer veneer suggest (misleadingly) that there is
an earthy, empirical basis upon which they and the textual edifice which
they construct might rest. We are presented with the notion of a series
12 Blanchot, LEspace littraire (Paris: Folio/Gallimard, 1955; repr. 2009), pp.2021.

13 Blanchot, La Part du feu (Paris: NRF/Gallimard, 1949; repr. 2009), p.112.
14 It is interesting to note the haptic characteristics of these descriptions of the
Blanchovian image, given that the first recorded uses of the term haptique in French
date from 1950, a year after La Part du feu was published (see above, p.1).
114
Chapter 2
of indices necessarily derived from corporeal perception (the image as

Blanchot explains it). These sensory indices invite us to gaze at them, much
as the striations of a haptic objects surface impose themselves upon our
vision, according to the theorisations of Riegl or Marks. Yet it is distance
rather than proximity that is at the heart of the Blanchovian images visually impressive yet tactilely absent nature:
Limage, daprs lanalyse commune, est auprs lobjet: elle en estla suite; nous voyons,
puis nous imaginons. [] Lloignement est ici au cur de la chose. La chose tait
l, que nous saisissions dans le mouvement vivant dune action comprhensive, et,
devenue image, instantanment la voil devenue linsaisissable, linactuelle, limpossible, non pas la mme chose loigne, mais cette chose comme loignement, la
prsente dans son absence, la saisissable parce quinsaisissable, apparaissant en tant
que disparue, le retour de ce qui ne revient pas, le cur trange du lointain comme
vie et cur unique de la chose.15
Of particular significance in the extract above is the linkage between

cause and effect that Blanchot establishes between objet and image: when
the object is perceived (seen, in this case) as being present or absent, this
perception gives rise to the images literary construct. The images destruction of that which it designates functions on abstractive and temporal bases.
When translated into words, the formerly present (and corporeally perceptible) object becomes linsaisissable, linactuelle, limpossible, non pas la
mme chose loigne, mais cette chose comme loignement. Through its
translation into words, the perceptible objects potentially haptic proximity becomes an indistinguishable distance. (As Joseph Libertson remarks
of Blanchots theories, [p]roximity, in the region of manifestation, is the
impossible.)16 The impossible element of the distance to which I have just
referred is not optical but rather temporal. The beholders memories of
the object that they perceive presently rush in to fill the sensory gap or lag
discerned by his or her bodys perceptive faculties. When memory fills
in sensory gaps apparent in the present moment, the formerly proximal
15
16
Blanchot, LEspace littraire, p.343.

Joseph Libertson, Proximity: Levinas, Blanchot, Bataille and Communication (The
Hague/Boston/London: Nijhoff, 1982), p.211.
115
object becomes image. This temporal distance, inherent to the Blanchovian

formulations of image, distorts the proximal object-become-images discernible characteristics.
To explain this in another way, the images temporal distortion is a
function of the sensory memory that must recall perceptions in order to
designate them linguistically. Our reliance upon memories of comparable
sensations in order to comprehend the textual image perverts our present
perceptions of the object-become-image to such an extent that the supposedly proximal object from which the image proceeds becomes a sensory
impossibility. Our earlier awareness of the objects presence endures in one
regard, yet at the same time, it is no longer present to us. This is to say that,
according to Blanchot, an object perceived in the present moment cannot
contain simultaneously the abstractive tendencies of the spatially or objectively differentiating word and indices of corporeal sensation informed by
memory. By committing our perceptions of an object or a space to languages
abstractive processes, we necessitate the destruction of those perceptive
indices by designatory language. This destructive process also has temporal
implications. As one unidentified voice remarks in Le Pas au-del, [s]oit un
pass, soit un avenir, sans rien qui permettrait de lun lautre le passage [].
Seule, alors, du temps resterait cette ligne franchir, toujours dj franchie,
cependant infranchissable, et, par rapport moi, non situable.17
Without points of material reference such as the concepts of presence or absence, of visibility or invisibility, of tangibility or intangibility,
languages evocative power is lost. Language no longer serves any expressive purpose for us. Thus, even as language attempts to overwrite and
overdetermine corporeal sensory indices with its own inscriptive presence, it relies upon bodily sensations of presence or absence so to do. As
Emmanuelle Ravel reminds us, however, the literary images constitutive
words are not a form of perception in themselves or even a faithful relation
of sensory indices (lexprience de luvre pour Blanchot rvle la contradiction. Limage impose sa duplicit, apparence et apparition, phmre
17
Blanchot, Le Pas au-del (Paris: NRF/Gallimard, 1973; repr. 2008), p.22.
116
Chapter 2
et immuable, simulacre mais prsence relle de labsence).18 These words

are perverted by their reliance upon memory and materially descriptive
allusion: they cannot hope to evoke any more than the material absence
of that which they seek to evoke.
Through the memories solicited by the supposedly abstractive word,
time therefore intervenes in and further distorts languages already destructive attempts to articulate experiences of bodily sensation with any form of
fidelity to reality. At this moment, the laws of cause and effect, of sensory
stimulus and perceptive reaction, disintegrate because the chronologies
which sustain these laws are themselves suspended.19 At the same moment,
haptic or optical vision as they are postulated by Riegl, Marks or Paterson
are also suspended because all rely upon a chronology of sensory stimulus
being inexorably followed by perceptive reaction.20 As the following quotation implies, we would therefore struggle to consider Blanchots accounts
of corporeal sensation and its textual relation to be haptic in the sense that
Riegl, Marks or Paterson might suggest:
Limage na rien voir avec la signification, le sens, tel que limpliquent lexistence du
monde, leffort de la vrit,la loi et la clart du jour. Limage dun objet non seulement
nest pas le sens de cet objet et naide pas sa comprhension, mais tend ly soustraire
en le maintenant dans limmobilit dune ressemblance qui na rien quoi ressembler.21
Emmanuelle Ravel, Maurice Blanchot et lart au vingtime sicle: une esthtique du

dsuvrement (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007), pp.5657.
19 An observation made by Jean-Luc Nancy in his text Les Muses seems apposite here:
ni lart nest imitatif, ni la vie lui fournit de modle. Pour dpasser cette antinomie,
on peut seulement viser [] une autre intgration sensible, [] un sixime sens, []
un sens outrepassant les sens (suprasensible), un tel sens est forcment un sens de
lassomption des sens cest--dire de leur dissolution ou de leur sublimation
(pp.2930; emphasis in original).
20 In making this statement, I refer to Ravels comment that [p]arce quelle nous offre
limmdiat, la vision, elle oublie de nous dire [] quelle est mdiatrice. [] La vision
donne bien immdiatement le monde, mais cest quelle nen donne que le reflet,
point le vcu, le sensible, qui serait de lordre du toucher (Maurice Blanchot et lart
au vingtime sicle, p.54).
21 Blanchot, LEspace littraire, p.350; emphasis in original.
18
117
However, on the evidence of the following quotation from Blanchots

LEntretien infini, Nancys vision of haptic interaction (and the excription
which attests to it) owes much to Blanchots conception of the literary
image:
Limage est la duplicit de la rvlation. Ce qui voile en rvlant, le voile qui rvle
en revoilant dans lindcision ambigu du mot rvler, cest limage. [N]on pas le
double de lobjet, mais le ddoublement initial qui permet ensuite la chose dtre
figure [,] cette version toujours en train de sinvertir et portant en elle le de-ci de-l
dune divergence. [] Rien nest expliqu, ni dploy.22
Noting the material ddoublement and indcision which Blanchot

attributes to the literary image in the quotation above, I shall now address
his understanding of the textual effects of the images temporal distortions
and neutralisations of sensory indices.
A Fascinating (Haptic?) Time

The Blanchovian term fascination describes the interruption of temporal
continuity wrought by the literary image. As I have just stated, Blanchots
postulation of the image and the characteristics which he attributes to it
do not permit a straightforward haptic interpretation of his theories of
perception at least in terms of the variants of haptic perception posited by
Riegl, Marks or Paterson. If we refer to one of Blanchots earliest accounts of
fascination in LEspace littraire, however, a rather different picture emerges:
22
Blanchot, LEntretien infini (Paris: NRF/Gallimard, 1969), p.42. Compare Blanchots

words above with the following remark from Nancy concerning excription, in which
he describes [l]excription de notre corps, [] sa mise hors-texte comme le plus propre
mouvement de son texte: le texte mme abandonn, laiss sur sa limite. [I]l ny a plus
quune ligne in-finie, le trait de lcriture elle-mme excrite, [] bris, partag travers
la multitude des corps (Corpus, p.14; emphasis in original).
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Chapter 2
Mais quarrive-t-il quand ce quon voit, quoique distance, semble vous toucher par
un contact saisissant, quand la manire de voir est une sorte de touche, quand voir
est un contact distance? Quand ce qui est vu simpose au regard, comme si le regard
tait saisi, touch, mis en contact avec lapparence? Non pas un contact actif, ce quil y
a encore dinitiative et daction dans un toucher vritable, mais le regard est entran,
absorb dans un mouvement immobile et un fond sans profondeur. Ce qui nous est
donn par un contact distance est limage, et la fascination est la passion de limage.23
It is clear from this quotation that Blanchot believes a form of sight imbued
with characteristics reminiscent of the tactilely attractive and imposing
haptic visions posited by Riegl or Marks to be possible. Indeed, Blanchot
asks what occurs when ce qui est vu simpose au regard, comme si le regard
tait saisi, touch, mis en contact avec lapparence in the extract above.
Yet this form of visual perception is not truly comparable with that of the
haptic: it is merely a form of vision evocative of the haptics constitutive
sensory elements. As is the case with the Nancyan variant of haptic interaction, le regard est extran, absorb dans un mouvement immobile et
un fond sans profondeur. In short, this vision does not enable a decisive
differentiation of spaces and objects in the manner that the forms of haptic
perception posited by Riegl, Marks or Paterson do. Instead, the fascinated
form of vision postulated by Blanchot in the quotation above is one which
is allusive of interactions between the senses of sight and touch. This allusion is, however, static: it has none of the volatile, dynamic exchange and
interchange of sensory data implied by the models of haptic perception
put forward by Riegl, Marks, Paterson (or even Nancy, whose understanding of haptic perception requires that while le corps est secou au dehors
de lui-mme, [c]hacune de ses zones, jouissant pour soi-mme, met au
dehors le mme clat).24
In the textually mediated confusion of perceptible proximity and distance that Blanchovian fascination designates, the sensory indices which
the text communicates (in spite of itself ) to its reader are petrified, ossified:
23 Blanchot, LEspace littraire, pp.2829.

119
Ce qui nous fascine, nous enlve notre pouvoir de donner un sens, abandonne sa
nature sensible, abandonne le monde, se retire en de du monde et nous y attire,
ne se rvle plus nous et cependant saffirme dans une prsence trangre au prsent du temps et la prsence dans lespace. La scission, de possibilit de voir quelle
tait, se fige, au sein mme du regard, en impossibilit. Le regard trouve ainsi dans
ce qui le rend possible la puissance qui le neutralise, qui ne le suspend ni ne larrte,
mais au contraire lempche den jamais finir, le coupe de tout commencement, fait
de lui une lueur neutre gare qui ne steint pas, qui nclaire pas, le cercle, referm
sur soi, du regard.25
As can be seen from the quotation above, fascination channels but also
neutralises the tactilely enquiring gaze required by the forms of haptic
perception posited by Riegl and Marks. This neutralisation of vision as a
valuable source of sensory information occurs through the use of spoken
or inscribed language.26 With fascination no longer permitting us to learn
anything of the people, objects or spaces that we behold or imagine, the
resultant simultaneity of proximity and distance, of presence and absence
is also neutralised. In this situation, a further, more generalised remoteness
between sensory relation and the interrelation of subject and object arises.
From all of this comes a model of sensory interaction the description of
which exhibits a number of characteristics that I identified with Nancys
subsequent understanding of haptic interaction earlier in this chapter.
Writing cannot refer to the body without effacing rationalist explanations
of the act of writing and the body to which that action refers. According
to Blanchot, however, the neutralisation of instructive vision which results
from the fascination which is in turn inspired by the interaction of language and image, also provides an allusive link with tactile perception, a
profondeur non vivante, non maniable, prsente absolument.27 In spite
of this, the mesmerising text (dis)places temporality into a never-ending
loop and neutralises the distinction between subjectivity and objectivity,
perceptible proximity and distance. These indistinguishable characteristics
25 Blanchot, LEspace littraire, p.29.
26 This assertion comes with the proviso that Blanchot does not differentiate readily
between these two forms of language here.
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Chapter 2
become the perceptible (visible) symptoms of a vision that is no longer

treated as the pre-eminent medium of sensory instruction by the language
which speaks of it. Blanchot adds that
[q]uiconque est fascin, ce quil voit, il ne le voit pas proprement parler, mais cela le
touche dans une proximit immdiate, cela le saisit et laccapare, bien que cela le laisse
absolument distance. La fascination est fondamentalement lie la prsence neutre,
impersonnelle []. Elle est la relation que le regard entretient, relation elle-mme
neutre et impersonnelle, avec la profondeur sans regard et sans contour, labsence
quon voit parce quaveuglante.28
These qualities of linguistic fascination prove longstanding in Blanchots

critical theories. In LEntretien infini, a further compilation of critical
articles published fourteen years after LEspace littraire, Blanchot writes
that [d]ans la vue, non seulement nous touchons la chose grce un intervalle qui nous en dsencombre, mais nous la touchons sans tre encombrs
de cet intervalle. Dans la fascination, nous sommes peut-tre dj hors du
visible-invisible.29 As may be discerned from this quotation, the realm of
fascination is one fraught with equivocation, but equation is also possible.
Through visual references, we touch upon objects whose nature has been
fundamentally altered by language to such an extent that the very acts of
looking and touching are also perverted by language. These acts are themselves mediated by an intervalle, an element which is at once temporal
and spatial, simultaneously present and not present (and which cannot
therefore be designated haptic).30 This non-haptic equivalence of time and
space, of presence and absence neuters the sensory indices through which
designatory language establishes and demonstrates its material usefulness.
28 Ibid., pp.3031.
29 Blanchot, LEntretien infini, pp.4142.
30 This non-haptic potentiality is made obliquely apparent by Martin Crowleys conference paper Touche-l (in Blanchot dans son sicle, ed. by Monique Antelme and
others (Lyon: Paragon/Vs, 2009), pp.16676). In Crowleys opinion, Blanchots
perceptual theorisations serve one purpose: ninscrivant le toucher que comme
fractur, interrompu par un espacement, un intervalle irrductibles; interrompant
cet espacement par le surgissement dun immdiat excessif (p.167).
121
The neutering of language as an informative means of expressing sensation occurs precisely because the sensory allusions upon which language
relies are drawn from human memory. Human memory functions on the
basis of temporal, spatial and experiential differentiation. In thrall to the
text, we do not sense the perceptive, spatial and temporal alterations that
its words impose upon us. The laws of causality and empiricism as we
know them are affected without our conscious knowledge, comme si
limpossibilit, cela en quoi nous ne pouvons plus pouvoir, nous attendait
derrire tout ce que nous vivons, pensons et disons []. Lexprience nest
pas lissue.31 Inescapable in all of this is an increasingly negative correlation
between corporeal sensations and the language that we employ to articulate them. As is the case with language, dans lobjet usuel, [] la matire
elle-mme nest pas lobjet dintrt [.] [] la limite, tout objet est devenu
immatriel [] dans le circuit rapide de lchange.32
A Third Dimension
The confusion of space, time and perceptible experience outlined above
is at the centre of what Blanchot terms le rapport du troisime genre. He
characterises this rapport as le pur intervalle entre lhomme et lhomme, ce
rapport du troisime genre, [] ce qui [] ne me rapporte cependant en
rien moi-mme.33 This rapport ne snonce pas en termes de pouvoir, yet
allows a rapport avec ce qui est radicalement hors de ma porte, et cette
relation mesure lvnement mme du Dehors [,] affirmant une relation
sans unit, sans galit [,] une relation qui ne serait pas de sujet sujet, ni
de sujet objet.34
31
32
33
34
Blanchot, LEntretien infini, p.308.

Ibid., pp.9899.
122
Chapter 2
The manner in which Blanchot explains this third relation merits

our attention because it renders explicit an approach to the components
of haptic perception (the senses of sight and touch, in particular) which,
as we shall see later, he had already been employing in his prose works for
more than two decades.
For Blanchot, the perceptible experience of the rapport du troisime
genre is an
[e]xprience [] o les dmls du mdiat et de limmdiat, du sujet et de lobjet, de
la connaissance intuitive et de la connaissance discursive, de la relation cognitive et
de la relation amoureuse, sont, non pas dpasss, mais laisss de ct. La question la
plus profonde est cette exprience du dtournement sur le mode dun questionnement antrieur ou tranger ou postrieur toute question.35
In other words, any potentially instructive content obtainable from a given

experience and discernible through corporeal sensory data is to be acknowledged and then put aside. The list of considerations which should be put
aside in order to attain the rapport du troisime genre itemised in the above
quotation renders that experience an impossibility because the sensory
data which would enable us to discern this rapport are invalidated by it.
The rapport du troisime genre leaves the perceiver in a netherworld
of sensory information which cannot be schematised by language or even
science. This is because science relies upon the observation and articulation of praxes and their results. Blanchot suggests that, under the aegis
of the rapport du troisime genre, all that the perceiver can sense with any
certainty is the fractured nature of his or her perceptions and the absence
of rationalist sense which results from that fracture: Lhomme veut lunit,
il constate la sparation.36 In this regard, there is a clear rapprochement
between Blanchots theorisations of literature and perceptible experience
35
36
Ibid., p.32.
Ibid., p.94. Martin Crowley adds that any piece of writing that presents itself comme
lieu dun contact fusionnel [], dun accs corporel ltre des choses, dune piste
linguistique is inherently misleading because [i]l nen est rien (Touche-l, p.169).
As shall become apparent, my position differs somewhat from Crowleys presentation of corporeity in Blanchots writing.
123
and those of Georges Bataille in his articles of 1929 to 1939. Both writers
explore the idea that corporeal perception can create an illusory impression
that our senses are functionally interconnected.
Sight, Writing and a Recurrent Haptic Limit

As we have seen, one key property of Blanchots postulation of literary
fascination (with which the rapport du troisime genre shares many characteristics) is its almost infinite ability to neutralise or otherwise suspend
chronology: crire, cest se livrer la fascination de labsence de temps.
[] Cest le temps o rien ne commence.37 This literary turn leaves us in
a linguistically indescribable no-mans-land. Its characteristics are simultaneously evocative of a tactile tremblement and a form of vision which
denies itself without acknowledging the possibility that this state equates
with blindness: Les mots sont suspendus; ce suspens est une oscillation trs
dlicate, un tremblement qui ne les laisse jamais en place. [C]est comme si
nous avions franchi la ligne [,] comme si nous tions dtourns du visible,
sans tre retourns vers linvisible.38 This implies that the lexical expressions
of tactile perception (and the distinctly Bataillean oscillation inherent to
words which is mentioned in the quotation above) constitute an inverted
form of sight in the realm of Blanchots rapport du troisime genre. However,
the very abstraction towards which Blanchots descriptions of this rapport
tend also recalls his earlier postulations of image, of literary constructs
that evoke the corporeal sensations that they claim to efface. Blanchot is
therefore able to write in Le Livre venir (1959) that
[l]e rcit commence o le roman ne va pas [,] rcit dun vnement exceptionnel qui
chappe aux formes du temps quotidien et au monde de la vrit habituelle, peut-tre
de toute vrit. [L]e roman, au contraire, qui ne dit rien que de croyable et de familier,
37
38

124
Chapter 2
tient beaucoup passer pour fictif. [] Le rcit nest pas la relation de lvnement,
mais cet vnement mme, lapproche de cet vnement, le lieu o celui-ci est appel
se produire, vnement encore venir et par la puissance attirante duquel le rcit
peut esprer, lui, aussi, se raliser.39
In this context, Blanchots earlier remark that [l]ire, ce nest donc pas
obtenir communication de luvre, cest faire que luvre se communique
makes more sense: the perceptible chronology of events to which the text
gives voice must be assembled by its reader.40 Blanchots insistence that
this process should not be taken to imply an antagonisme [] de ples
fixes [] appels lire et crire also reminds us that whether critical text or
prose, his writings should not be construed as inscriptive enactments of an
opposition between (pre-) defined and opposing theoretical viewpoints.41
This remains the case whether the opposing viewpoints in question are
temporal disruption and chronological order or concepts such as haptic
and optical perception.
Blanchots committed rejection of binary oppositions remains apparent in LEntretien infini; visible distance is portrayed as being capable of
delivering proximal contact precisely because such vision evokes perceptible
sensations of absence:
Voir ne suppose quune sparation mesure et mesurable: voir, cest certes toujours
voir distance, mais en laissant la distance nous rendre ce quelle nous enlve. La
vie sexerce invisiblement dans une pause o tout se retient. Nous ne voyons que ce
qui dabord nous chappe, en vertu dune privation initiale, ne voyant pas les choses
trop prsentes ni si notre prsence aux choses est pressante. [] Il y a une privation,
il y a une absence, grce laquelle prcisment saccomplit le contact. Lintervalle
39 Blanchot, Le Livre venir (Paris: Folio/Gallimard, 1959; repr. 2008), pp.1314.

41 Ibid. As Michel Foucault says of Blanchots writings, en ce pouvoir de dissimulation
qui efface toute signification dtermine et lexistence mme de celui qui parle, []
lespace de limage, le langage nest ni la vrit ni le temps, ni lternit ni lhomme,
mais la forme toujours dfaite du dehors; il faut communiquer, ou plutt laisser voir
dans lclair de leur oscillation indfinie, [] leur contact maintenu dans un espace
dmesur (Foucault, La Pense du dehors, Critique, 229 (1966), 52346 (p.545).
125
nempche pas ici et, au contraire, permet le rapport direct. Toute relation de lumire
est relation immdiate.42
A further quotation from LEntretien infini clarifies Blanchots critical

interest in the abolition of experiential distance implied above. This clarification also presages many of the themes relating to political notions of
community and social dialogue that his critical writings of the 1970s and
thereafter address more directly (often in dialogue with Jean-Luc Nancys
writings on these subjects):43
Nous ne voyons plus des hommes, nous ne manions plus des choses, nous ne parlons
pas par mots particuliers ou par figures singulires: l o nous voyons des hommes,
cest la question densemble qui nous dvisage; cest elle que nous manions et qui
nous manie; cest elle qui nous atteint dans chaque parole, nous faisant parler pour
mettre en question tout le langage et ne nous laissant rien dire que pour tout dire
et tout ensemble.44
Even here, allusions to tactility are apparent in Blanchots writing. A presentation of the expressly intellectual aspects of communal interaction coaxes
two references to the primary sensory components of haptic perception
from Blanchot within the space of one sentence. (Specifically, questions of
collectivity nous dvisage; cest elle que nous manions et qui nous manie.)
By rejecting the distinction between subject and object integral to the versions of haptic interaction postulated by Riegl, Marks or Paterson, these
vestiges of haptic perception reveal their simultaneously visual and tactile
fragments in the collective (that is, the impersonal) experience of the rapport
du troisime genre. It is no accident that this rapport affirmsune relation
sans unit, sans galit [;] une relation qui ne serait pas de sujet sujet,
ni de sujet objet.45 Thus, according to Blanchot, the haptic experience
42 Blanchot, LEntretien infini, p.39; emphasis in original.
43 For example, Blanchots La Communaut inavouable (Paris: Minuit, 1983; repr. 2009)
was written in response to La Communaut dsuvre, a journal article by Jean-Luc
Nancy that was published earlier the same year (and was subsequently reprinted as
a standalone text (Paris: Bourgois, 1986)).
44 Blanchot, LEntretien infini, p.19.
45 Ibid., pp.9899.
126
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is not a personal experience but a collective one in which the distinction

between subject and object is hazy. At the same time, Blanchot displays
an increasingly evident preference for structuring his critical works as if
they were dialogues between nameless and innumerable speakers rather
than as pieces of continuous prose (especially in texts such as LEntretien
infini and Le Pas au-del). This proclivity suggests that for Blanchot,
(haptic) experience is rooted in perceptions of language, rather than any
attempt to explore perceptive experience by means of language. Later in
this chapter, I shall consider whether the same philosophy is apparent in
Blanchots prose.
I shall pause at this juncture to remark that over the course of Blanchots
critical writings, there is an appreciable arc from haptic to optical. A language increasingly detached from material perception is embraced at the
particular expense of haptic sensation. Because language so often refers to
material perceptions, this new version of language postulated by Blanchot
is divorced from haptically perceptible experience and defines itself through
the silence or absence of such perceptive experience as subject-to-object or
subject-to-subject rapport. This silence in turn becomes a language unable
to express anything other than its inability to articulate the absence of
haptically discernible referents.46 As the quotation from LEntretien infini
cited above demonstrates, though flawed, the optical realm continues to
play a significant role in establishing languages detachment from perceptible experience because, for Blanchot, sight allows us to perceive material
distance (l o nous voyons des hommes, cest la question densemble qui
nous dvisage; cest elle que nous manions et qui nous manie; cest elle
qui nous atteint dans chaque parole, nous faisant parler pour mettre en
46 Blanchot explores such silence in Le Pas au-del (see pp.10116, 18287, for example).
More often than not, he portrays it in terms of le neutre. On one occasion, Blanchot
goes further and explains the link between silence, the neutre and bodily sensation
as follows: Le Neutre, la douce interdiction du mourir, l o, de seuil en seuil, il
sans regard, le silence nous porte dans la proximit du lointain. Parole encore dire
au-del des vivants et des morts, tmoignant pour labsence dattestation (p.107;
emphasis in original).
127
question tout le langage).47 By contrast, Blanchot treats the cutaneously

gleaned element of haptic sensation with increasing distrust.
As we digest this summary, let us remember that in the previous
chapter, I showed how, prior to World War II, Batailles critical works do
not suggest an arc of thought comparable with that of Blanchot. Indeed,
from his earliest articles in the late 1920s until 1939, Bataille avows his
unswerving mistrust of all forms of perception especially those which
are nonvisual.
This is not to imply that Blanchots critical approach to corporeal perception is dynamic, however: it is clear that Blanchovian constructs such
as la nuit, limage, la fascination, le rapport du troisime genre and le neutre
all express different facets of a belief that perception is a flawed, indecisive
process. To paraphrase Bruns, Blanchots critical stance concerning sensory
perception can be summarised albeit reductively as follows: language
which purports to be capable of articulating faithfully one persons experiences of bodily sensation to those of another is inherently corrupt.48 As
Franoise Collin reminds us in her text Maurice Blanchot et la question
de lcriture, this corruption arises from languages seemingly omniscient
power to mediate (and discriminate) when it is used to express sensory
memories. With appreciable irony, Collin states that [l]e Verbe nest pas ici
ce qui met en relation et qui unit, mais ce qui dsassemble.49 Unavoidably,
these linguistic qualities skew any human attempt at objective description.
However, this summary ignores the fact that la nuit, limage, la fascination,
le rapport du troisime genre and le neutre are all elaborations of the same
silent presence which is perceptible only as absence.50 Perception that grants
47 Blanchot, LEntretien infini, p.19.

48 Blanchot supplements his texts [] by emphasising how speech for example, the
everyday speech of conversation exposes experience to what it cannot locate or
grasp (Bruns, Maurice Blanchot: The Refusal of Philosophy, p.141).
49 Franoise Collin, Maurice Blanchot et la question de lcriture (Paris: Gallimard, 1986),
p.74.
50 There is an empirical aspect to this underlying, unknowable element, but one which
appears almost exscriptive in nature. As Collin puts it in her initial summary of
Blanchots theoretical stance on perception, [l]exprience nest pas lexprience
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haptic and optical sensations simultaneous and equal standing is impossible. Libertson adds that it is similarly impossible for language to embrace
any form of expressive totality.51
As with the theorisations of corporeally centred perception put forward by Blanchot or Bataille, the formulations of language advocated
by both writers are localised. Neither of their theoretical constructs is
capable of providing universally comprehensible explanation under any
circumstance, yet they continue to solicit our attention. As Patrick ffrench
observes,
Blanchot proposes that the response to Bataille must leave the experience aside,
withdraw from the convention of commentary and impose a discretion or a silence
with regard to it. The authentic response is not to respond, not directly, in any case.
[] In Blanchots meditations on Batailles exprience, the constant emphasis is that
contestation, being experienced as a question without answer or arrest, demands
communication.52
I would add to this summary that where Blanchots critical works remain
favourably disposed towards the visual, Batailles critiques never move
beyond an initial, profound mistrust of all forms of perception. Moreover,
while Blanchots theories assert that our perception of the world is distorted
or even neutralised by our intellectual relationship with language, Bataille
claims that perception is inherently irrational and adds that linguistic
attempts to articulate sensory experience merely reflect this lack of reason.
dune certaine chose et certes pas de la littrature comme chose, elle nest donc pas
une exprience, mais la pure preuve qui ouvre et vhicule en elle-mme son propre
champ (ibid., pp.2930).
51 I refer here to Libertsons summary of Blanchots treatment of language in relation to
perception: In the world but not of the world, literature will point to the insistence
of an arrire-monde, behind the accomplishments which are brought to existence
by power in the dimension of action. This world behind the world is the economy
of proximity, in which totalisation gives way to impossibility, and in which action
is replaced by the contamination of [] exigency (Proximity, p.112; emphasis in
original).
52 ffrench, After Bataille, pp.13031; emphasis in original.
129
Having acknowledged these similarities and differences between Bataille

and Blanchots critical works which I will return to in my conclusion ,
I now turn my attention to three literary works penned by Blanchot. Are the
conflicts and confluences between the senses of sight and touch identified
in his critical works as apparent in Blanchots romans and rcits?
Thomas lobscur (premire version)

Though he had been writing newspaper and magazine articles since the early
1930s, Blanchots first full-length piece of prose, Thomas lobscur (which is
designated as a roman in its first edition), was only published in 1941. The
texts sheer size hints at its nine years of gestation. Blanchot apparently
considered even this period of work insufficient: a second, heavily abridged
version of Thomas lobscur would be published in 1950. With the arrival
of this new version, Blanchot withdrew the previous edition of Thomas
lobscur from publication. It only came back into print against Blanchots
wishes in 2005, two years after his death.53 In deference to Blanchots
injunctions against une vue subrepticement corrige, hypocritiquement
tendue, mensongre, I shall focus upon the original, 1941 version of Thomas
lobscur.54 This choice also enables me to establish a baseline of sorts by
which to consider Blanchots subsequent prose works.
Thomas lobscur begins with a description of a lone male swimming
at sea which is comparable with the scenes which occur on the Badalona
shoreline near the finale of Batailles Le Bleu du ciel. This similarity of
circumstance offers us the perfect opportunity to begin to assess the ways
in which the writers descriptions of these scenes converge and diverge in
relation to each other. In turn, we can begin to consider how if at all the
All subsequent allusions to the 1941 version of Thomas lobscur will refer to the pagination of the 2005 reprint (Paris: NRF/Gallimard), which differs from that of the
original 1941 edition.
54 Blanchot, LEntretien Infini, p.40.
53
130
Chapter 2
similarities and differences apparent in these literary texts by Blanchot and

Bataille manifest themselves in the writers critical works.
A Swimming Sensation
During Le Bleu du ciels beach scene, Troppmanns floating body becomes
numb. The only features it can perceive of itself below the waterline are
visible and sexual. As he fantasises about his mistresses imminent arrivals in Barcelona, Troppmanns limbs appear to him as scattered, rippling
shards of colour. Floating alone on the tides, his only nonvisual perceptions
of his body are simultaneously tactile and gender-specific. He is aware of
maintaining an erection whilst the rest of his body becomes increasingly
indistinguishable from the azure waters and blue skies which surround him.
In Batailles text, the seas currents dismantle and dissociate interactions
between sight and cutaneously gleaned sensation, the two key perceptive
faculties which, according to Riegl and Marks, haptic interaction requires.
Even the models of haptic perception postulated by Paterson and Nancy
require some input from these two sensory faculties.
Mindful of these details, we should not forget that, while it is disintegrative of any simultaneous sensory interaction between sight and
cutaneously gleaned sensation, the corporeally perceptible experience of
swimming described by Bataille is immersive. That is to say that when
Troppmanns skin and eyes come into contact with the sea in which he
swims, this interaction consumes those sense organs to such an extent that
his body becomes almost indistinguishable from the waters which engulf it.
It is only the tangible sensation of sexuality provided by Troppmanns erection that stops his bodys sensory disintegration becoming all-consuming.
Though Thomass experience of swimming in the sea shares some of the
confusion between body and water experienced by Batailles protagonist,
it is more forceful and markedly less sexual in nature.
Thomass first encounter with the sea begins Blanchots debut roman.
As we see from the texts opening lines (quoted below), the mere sight
131
of swimmers is insufficient to lure Thomas into the water. He remains

rooted on dry land, fascinated by their image (immobile comme sil tait
venu l pour suivre les mouvements des autres nageurs). It is only when
Thomas at once sees and feels the waves touch his skin that he begins to
move towards them:
Thomas sassit et regarda la mer. Pendant quelque temps, il resta immobile comme
sil tait venu l pour suivre les mouvements des autres nageurs [,] les yeux fixs sur
les corps qui avanaient difficilement dans leau. Puis, une vague plus forte que les
autres layant touch, il descendit son tour sur la pente de sable et il glissa au milieu
des remous qui le submergrent rapidement.55
The primary form of haptic perception at play in the above quotation

is most reminiscent of the Marksian model (with the obvious caveats
that this variant of haptic perception was not theorised by Marks until
circa 2000 and is cinematically orientated). Nevertheless, the parallels
between Markss haptic visuality and what occurs in the extract above are
noteworthy. Before Thomass eyes, the swimmers form a series of visible,
peripatetic details on the seas mobile but tactilely distant backdrop. This
image focuses Thomass attention upon the sea, breaking the sensory
fascination which had kept him rooted to dry land. The fluidity and
breadth of sensation that the sea offers Thomas is so intense that he
cannot resist its tides when they come into momentary contact with his
skin. It is only when the sea touches him that Thomas is enticed into a more
fully engaged sensory interaction with it. Though these waves have already
made contact with his visual faculties, Thomass skin is almost entirely
submerged within the fluidity of sensation that the ocean tides bring him.
Having chosen to envelop himself in the waves visually and tactilely inviting characteristics, it is Thomass sense of hearing (in conjunction with that
of his sight) which is the next to be engaged directly:
Non loin de lui, [] il aperut un nageur dont les mouvements le surprirent par leur
rapidit et leur aisance. [I]l aurait voulu avoir assez de force pour crier et obtenir un autre
cri en rponse. [L]e cri distinct et vibrant [] jaillit parmi les sifflements du vent [].
55
Blanchot, Thomas lobscur (premire version), p.23.
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Chapter 2
Nanmoins le nageur ngligea lappel [] comme sil avait t ray de la ralit.
Nager devint alors pour Thomas une activit dont limportance ne cessa de grandir.56
Thus far, three of Thomass five senses (sight, touch and hearing) have
been engaged. In spite of this, the simultaneous interaction of these sensory
faculties does not provide Thomas with any form of perceptual satisfaction. The object of Thomass desire to communicate with others will not
respond with anything other than an indecipherable silence. This silence
allows itself to be penetrated by Thomass sensory faculties, but will not
yield any intellectually useful information to them. Not even the swimmers gender or age are apparent to Thomas. The entire situation seems
unreal to him, yet it takes place amidst the ebbing and flowing reality of
the tides perceptible fluidity.
Perhaps attempting to mimic the other swimmers apparent sensory
isolation from other people, Thomas turns away from the auditory realm
and rededicates himself to the act of swimming and the expressly cutaneous interaction that such activity demands. Once again, Thomass sensory
investiture in his immediate environment is diminished and the seas currents begin to overpower his body, as well as his ability to discern what is
happening to it with any certainty:
Des remous trs violents secourent le corps de Thomas, attirant ses bras et ses jambes
dans des directions diffrentes, sans pourtant lui donner le sentiment dtre au milieu
des vagues et de rouler dans des lments quil connaissait. La certitude que leau
manquait imposait mme son effort pour nager le caractre dun exercice tragique.57
It is unsurprising that Thomass perceptive experience should be described

as an exercice tragique. The act of swimming is an ostensibly empirical
undertaking which relies upon the laws of physics in order to proceed.
Unfortunately, these positivist requirements are defeated by Thomass
inability to be certain of the existence of the water in which he swims. The
empirical, positivist act of perception as rational discernment is thereby
56 Ibid., p.24.
57 Ibid.
133
rendered a tragique and, hence, distinctly Nietzschean exercise in

impossibility.58
With his cutaneous and auditory faculties becoming increasingly
redundant in the tidal swirl, Thomas returns to the visual realm which first
solicited his potentially haptic interaction with the sea. On solid ground,
Thomass sense of sight allowed him to discern the potential pleasures and
difficulties of the ocean tides sensory ebb and flow: the struggling swimmers were the indicator of these material difficulties. As can be seen from
the above quotation, however, when Thomas is enveloped by the tides, his
vision proves just as unreliable and intellectually unsatisfying as his senses
of touch or hearing did shortly before (leau manquait). This lack of satisfaction prompts Thomas to consciously disregard (or become selectively
deaf to) the senses that he no longer considers rewarding of his attention.
Realising that his primary sensory (and haptic) faculties (sight and
touch) are equally useless to him at this juncture, Thomas chooses to suspend his intellectual interaction with bodily sensation and the laws of
physics to which these interactions must submit in order to be rational.
This wilful neutralisation of sensory logos is illusory, and in fact gives rise
to the experience of an even more perceptible and violent law of cause and
effect. This new law is simple: treating the realm of bodily sensation as
being entirely distinct from the realm of rationalism is a recipe for physical oblivion because it breeds indifference to both domains. This indifference renders everything the same: subject and object become dead to
one another. Only silence fills the experiential void left behind by the
obliteration of these constructs. Rapidly, Thomas falls foul of this new
laws brutal application:
58
As Nietzsche says, science, spurred on by its powerful delusions, is hurrying unstoppably to its limits, where the optimism hidden in the essence of logic will founder and
break up. [T]hen a new form of knowledge breaks through, tragic knowledge, []
turning suddenly into tragic resignation (Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy,
in The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings, ed. and trans. by Raymond Geuss and
Ronald Spiers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp.13116 (p.75;
emphasis in original)).
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Chapter 2
Thomas chercha avancer en se dgageant du flot fade qui lenvahissait de tous cts.
Un froid trs vif [] paralysa ses bras qui lui semblrent lourds et trangers. Leau
tourna autour de lui en tourbillons. [] Tantt lcume voltigeait devant ses yeux
comme des flocons blanchtres, tantt ctait labsence de leau qui prenait son corps
et ses jambes et les entranait violemment.59
At this moment, Thomass very life is menaced by his bodys sudden

inability to decipher its surroundings haptically. The water which threatens to drown him acts upon his body with such violence that it bludgeons
his conscious perceptive faculties into numbness. The pleasurable sensory
suspension that Troppmann experiences on the Badalona coast is nowhere
to be found in Thomass ordeal. Blanchots protagonist is so battered by
the waves that his arms are reduced to heavy and indistinct masses at his
sides that will not comply with his wishes. While Thomas apparently perceives the waves sensory effects cutaneously, his sight is so impeded that he
cannot be certain that they are even there. The seas foam looks to Thomas
as if it were snow while the waves themselves vanish from his perception,
threatening to take not only his conscious sensations but his very existence
with them. It is the absence of reliable sensory indices which creates the
haptic sensations within Thomass mind that his body is being engulfed
by the sea. Yet Blanchots protagonist finds the most perplexing element
of his sensory obliteration to be the fact that its trickery, the mechanisms
of the enticing illusion from which this perceptible oblivion derives, will
not reveal themselves:
Il eut donc rapidement limpression dsagrable dtre enchan une illusion dont
le caractre lui chappait. Il respira plus lentement et garda quelques instants dans la
bouche le liquide que les rafales poussaient contre sa tte; mais ce ntait [] quune
douceur tide, le breuvage trange dun homme priv de got. Puis il saperut que
ses membres, soit cause de la fatigue, soit pour une raison inconnue, lui donnaient
la mme sensation dtranget que leau dans laquelle ils roulaient.60
59 Blanchot, Thomas lobscur (premire version), p.25.

60 Ibid., p.26.
135
Even the engagement of the senses of taste and smell in Thomass mortal
battle with the ebbing tides proves insufficient to counter their overpowering of his senses of sight, touch and hearing. Though all five areas of
Thomass sensory faculties have now been fully engaged (and partially
immersed) by the sea, he remains powerless to act against the water. The
mighty oceans force extends beyond the grasp of Thomass sensory registers. Though he remains un homme in the quotation above, Thomas has
no sexual stimulation with which to identify. Unlike Batailles Troppmann
during his swim at Badalona, Blanchots protagonist is increasingly unable
to preserve even the merest hint of individual identity from the environment which threatens to engulf and extinguish his being entirely.
Natures ability to overpower Thomass sensory faculties derives from
the same sense of abandonment that reinforces Troppmanns perceptive
singularity in Batailles Le Bleu du ciel. The sensation of his own erection
is enough to stop Batailles protagonist from becoming one with the sea,
which he perceives haptically whilst swimming. At the same time, the autoerotic sensations of his erection also prove sufficient to stop Troppmanns
body dissolving into the skys purely optical space. By contrast, even as the
waves batter Thomass head to and fro, he is so estranged from his perceiving body and its corporeally discernible environs that he cannot determine which of the two elements is integral to his physical being. What he
perceives the sea becomes an equally useless part of the dysfunctional
sensory apparatus that his body now is.
In this respect, Thomas attains a state which Blanchot would subsequently term a rapport du troisime genre in LEntretien infini. Amidst the
waves, Thomas achieves a synergy between his sensory faculties which
cannot be described by the rationalist categorisations of subject-to-subject
or subject-to-object.61 But as Thomas arrives at this state, his body is neutralised by his paradoxical (haptic) perception of the sea as being simultaneously present and absent. This misconception which is impossible
61
In making this observation, I acknowledge its debt to Jean Starobinski, who describes
the sea as a matire aveugle et hostile du monde (Thomas lobscur, chapitre premier,
Critique, 229 (1966), 498513 (p.503)).
136
Chapter 2
in purely rational terms due to the physical effects it has upon Thomass
body creates a fascination of sorts within Blanchots protagonist. This
enchantment or fascination and the consuming engagement of the senses
that it demands in turn creates what Blanchot would term an image in La
Part du feu. Unable to grasp the mechanics of these illusions either physically or mentally, Thomas is left to ponder the vision of his body acting
against its presently hostile environment from an experiential distance; it
is as if he were watching a filmed chronicle of another persons actions:62
il rflchissait sur la manire dont ses mains disparaissaient puis reparaissaient dans
un tat dindiffrence totale lgard de lavenir, avec une sorte dirralit dont il
navait pas le droit de prendre conscience, il tait tout prt croire quil prouverait
bien des difficults impossibles prvoir pour se tirer de laffaire.63
At this moment, Thomas finds himself transported beyond the physical

confines of his own perceiving body. As he swims, he watches his own
hands enter and exit the water without remarking on any of the haptic sensations which may be derivable from these actions. The tides drive haptic
sensation out of Thomass perceiving body. The enforced absence of these
sensations also entails the neutralisation of the rationalist laws of cause and
effect. The actions of Thomass hands, which he can still perceive visually,
have no overpowering relation with the chronologies of past, present and
future. Instead, his hand actions occur dans un tat dindiffrence totale
lgard de lavenir. In other words, Thomass visual perceptions of his bodily
comportment overrule the cutaneous sensations that his gestures generate.
As vision triumphs over all other bodily sensation, so the chronology of
physical stimulus leading to physical response is neutralised. Only Thomass
visual faculties are able to perceive this neutralisation because his skin is
now numb to all sensation. Moreover, whilst Thomas perceives the mortal
62 In a further filmic parallel, Thomass involvement with Irne, a female character
edited out of the 1950 version of Blanchots text, is consummated when she takes
his hand whilst they watch a film in a darkened cinema auditorium (see Blanchot,
Thomas lobscur (premire version), pp.17579). This scene will be analysed in detail
shortly.
137
situation in which he finds himself as une sorte dirralit dont il navait

pas le droit de prendre conscience, he is still intellectualising his visual
perceptions of the event. Sensory detail can be derived from the mortal
struggle with nature in which Thomas finds himself, but this information
does not permeate his skin.64 It is instead provided by his vision. Thomass
visual faculties remain able to attest to his bodys powerlessness against
the tides at a stage when his faculties of cutaneous perception have been
so brutalised that they can no longer even be certain of the forces which
overpower them.
As I stated above, Thomass vision of his hands fighting against the
ocean tide attests to the neutralisation of the rationalised chronology which
dictates that physical cause must lead to physical effect. But this neutralisation of perceptible chronology proves to be of limited value to Thomas: his
visions of it only leave him with the impression that il prouverait bien des
difficults impossibles prvoir pour se tirer de laffaire. In other words, the
reified vision of his hands moving into and out of cutaneous interaction
with the waves only demonstrates to Thomas the impossibility of predicting the physical actions that might save him from being drowned by those
waves. The vision of his hands entering and exiting the water, momentarily entering into and then exiting the physically enchanting rapport du
troisime genre and the unsatisfying image brought forth by this rapport,
gives Thomas no comprehensible indication of what physical actions he
should undertake next. There is therefore no sense of inevitability in what
sensations or actions (if any) should follow Thomass disembodied visions of
his own bodys actions. As the inevitability of visual and cutaneous modes
of perception fusing into one experiential whole or even interacting recedes,
so Thomass conscious perception of the events befalling him becomes une
sorte de rverie in which livresse de [] glisser dans le vide [,] la pense
64 In this regard, my opinion diverges somewhat from that of Starobinski. He claims

that though Thomas is sortant de lui-mme, this occurs because the protagonists
body is tout entier pntr par la puissance extrieure de la mer (Starobinski, Thomas
lobscur, chapitre premier, p.504).
138
Chapter 2
de leau lui faisait oublier limpression pnible contre laquelle il luttait et

qui avait pris possession de lui comme une nause.65
Thomas now finds himself experiencing a sensory paradox: he is at
once imperceptibly yet physically linked with the waves that threaten to
end his life. The imperceptibility of this bond creates an emptiness which
is discernible only by the absence of corporeally perceptible sensations that
it inspires in Thomass mind as he experiences it. In this regard, Thomas
endures a physical experience of the literary image which would be formalised by Blanchot over the following years in critical works such as Faux pas
and La Part du feu. Through being overpowered by its own perceptions
of physical alterity, Thomass body threatens to sacrifice itself to the waves
and thereby efface its abilities to perceive or even live.
In spite of this, Thomas eventually manages to swim back to dry land
with surprisingly few difficulties (le rivage tait tout proche, contrairement
ce quil pensait []. Il prit pied sans peine [] une sorte de falaise),66
yet il garda encore limpression dun bourdonnement dans les oreilles et
des brlures dans les yeux.67 Thomas struggles to understand these lingering
sensory imprints in a haptic manner. Looking back at the suns reflections
upon the sea, il tait tout prt distinguer nimporte quoi dans ce vide
trouble que ses regards cherchaient fivreusement percer.68
During his swim, Thomass perceptive engagement with the sea makes
use of all of his sensory faculties at some stage. The resultant sensations
rarely interact with each other in any manner that proves materially useful
to him, however. In making this observation, we should not forget that
in a comparable situation in Batailles Le Bleu du ciel, Troppmann never
experiences a total sensory disintegration into air and water (or sublime and
abject) because his sexuality (in the form of an erection) halts the process.
While Thomass encounter with the seas image of a matire mme au-del
de la matire is brief, he manages to sy engager totalement.69 This means
65 Blanchot, Thomas lobscur (premire version), pp.2627.
66 Ibid., p.28.
67 Ibid.
68 Ibid., p.29.
69 Ibid., p.28.
139
that, however short-lived and illusory it eventually proves to be, Thomas

unlike Troppmann does appear to undergo a complete sensory disintegration whilst in the sea. In the next subsection, I shall address what influence
this moment of sensory oblivion exerts upon Thomass perceptive faculties
subsequently.
Caving in to Haptic Perception

After Thomass watery ordeal, night begins to close in and he moves inland
to shelter in dense woodland. With the light fading rapidly, he stumbles
into a dark, cave-like space. Having appeared to reject haptic methods of
perception consistently whilst in the sea, the darkness and apparent solidity
of the cave force Thomas to perceive in a different manner:
Il descendit dans une sorte de cave o lobscurit tait complte. [] Dans cette
incertitude il chercha ttons les limites de la fosse vote et, tendant les bras, il
plaa son corps tout contre le mur, son corps qui nexistait pas comme corps et qui
dans ce lieu noffrait pas plus de traits observables que son esprit mme.70
When his visual faculties cease to function, Thomas must adopt an overtly
tactile method of discerning his surroundings. In the absence of sight, his
first instinct is to counteract the perceptive uncertainty which this absence
creates by establishing the tactile boundaries of his unfamiliar environs
(Dans cette incertitude il chercha ttons les limites de la fosse vote).
To this end, Thomas places as much of his cutaneous surface as possible
into proximal contact with the cave walls. Stretching out his arms as he
does so, Thomas begins to establish not only his physical dimensions within
this unfamiliar space, but also the ability of its stone walls to imprison him
perceptually. It is worthy of note that no reference is made to any sensation
70 Ibid., pp.3031.
140
Chapter 2
of coldness or warmth upon Thomass skin as he attempts to imbed himself

in the caves wall.
In the midst of the caves dermally perceptible environment, however,
Thomass body nexistait pas comme corps precisely because it noffrait
pas plus de traits observables que son esprit mme. This suggests that when
Thomass sight is disrupted, the rest of his sensory faculties are also impinged
upon to such an extent that they cease to operate in an obviously human
fashion, reverting to prehensile methods of perception.71 This should not
be taken to mean that Blanchot is implying that visual perception should
dominate all other perceptive faculties without question. Thomass virtual
blindness following his first swim and the complete absence of light in the
cave subsequently demonstrates this point.
By extension, the generalised sensory interruption which is first
detected by Thomass eyes and then interferes with the rest of his sensory
faculties whilst he is in the cave suggests a proprioceptively derived form of
haptic perception similar to that which Paterson postulates. (In Patersons
version of haptic sensation, the aggregated sensory interactions implied
by kinaesthetic, vestibular and cutaneous perception form the building
blocks of proprioception, which Paterson in turn classifies as a substratum
of haptic perception.)72
While or rather, because only the comportment of his mind (rather
than his bodily comportment) is observable in the caves total darkness,
Thomass sensory organs engage in a form of phantom perception. The
primordial nature of this phantasm is emphasised by the caves womb-like
characteristics. Thomass sensations do not yield to rationalist penchants
71
Thomas suddenly imagines that he is being attacked by un rat gigantesque while

reading in his hotel room some time later (ibid., p.48).
72 As I showed in the introduction, Paterson defines and subdivides haptic perception
as follows:
Haptic: Relating to the sense of touch in all its forms, including those below.
Proprioception: Perception of the position, state and movement of the body and
limbs in space. Includes cutaneous, kinaesthetic and vestibular sensation (Paterson,
The Senses of Touch: Haptics, Affects and Technologies, p. ix; emphasis in original).
141
for observation or to the assumption that perceptible stimulus must give

rise to perceptible reaction:
ce ntait pas quil vt quelque chose, mais ce quil regardait ddaignait ses regards sans
lui permettre de les dtourner. Cela suffit la longue pour le faire entrer en rapport
avec une masse nocturne quil percevait vaguement comme tant lui-mme [].
Comme il navait aucun moyen pour mesurer le temps, il se passa probablement des
heures avant quil acceptt cette faon de voir [].73
Thomas has employed an essentially haptic form of perception in order

to define the perimeters of the sensory prison in which he now finds himself. He cannot however resist his dermal sensations becoming intertwined
with his eyes functionality (or lack thereof, in this instance). A similar
pathology is apparent in several of Batailles key protagonists. In Histoire de
lil, for example, though insane, Marcelle is able to look from her barred
asylum window and establish the physical and emotional distance which
exists between her, Simone and the texts first narrator by masturbating
to the sight of Simone pleasuring herself.74 The insanity that Blanchots
Thomas experiences is based on a lack of rationalist points of reference. In
the cave, nothing corporeal or chronological can be observed by uniquely
visual means. The illusory objectivity that sight claims to bring with it as
a tool of (scientific or temporal) observation should thus be absent. But
this cave is haunted, possessed (vote)75 by Thomass perceptions of his
previous out-of-body experience. He cannot exorcise that experiences proprioceptive (and following Patersons rationale, therefore, haptic) imprint
from his mind. Because Thomass mind is the only observable element of
his presence within the darkened cave, the cave becomes populated by
the sensory image that he experienced fleetingly whilst at the mercy of
the oceans potentially fatal currents. The images imprint upon Thomass
senses is indelible precisely because it results from the seas overwhelming

74 In Bataille, Histoire de lil, p.31.
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of both Thomass body and his sensory faculties. As Marie-Laure Hurault

says of the images manifestations in Blanchots literary works,
limage [] est indispensable pour engager une acceptation de la fiction entendue
non plus dans son rapport au rel mais linverse comme la ralit de tout rapport.
[C]ette ralit est essentiellement paradoxale. [] Elle manifeste le retour un temps
archaque o nexiste pas encore la distinction entre moi et mon image [] et met
en doute la recherche dune synthse fusionnelle.76
Still, faced with the indelibility of the images haptic trace, the caves
surface with which Thomas has been in proximal cutaneous contact
continues to impose itself upon his visual faculties, much as the haptic
surface postulated by Riegl might (ce quil regardait ddaignait ses regards
sans lui permettre de les dtourner).77
It is significant that whether he is surrounded by stone or immersed in
oceanic currents, Thomas is confronted with the effects of sensory failure.
On both occasions, he must endure the emotional rigours of a perceptible
gap between what his senses tell him is happening to him and what in fact
is happening to him. In their clamour to seal this breach, which is physically and mentally painful to endure, Thomass afflicted perceptive faculties
(in this case, his eyes) project phantom images, which only in fact exist
within his conscious mind, into the perceptible world beyond it. Because
that which Thomas cannot see sets this process in motion, his eyes create
an image of being penetrated by this invisibility in an essentially (Rieglesque) haptic manner: il eut [] le sentiment que quelque chose de rel
lavait heurt et cherchait se glisser en lui. Ctait une sensation absurde
quil aurait pu interprter dune manire moins fantastique.78
The result of this wilful sensory trickery, however irrational it seems to
him, is to calm Thomass anxieties and furnish him with an illusory, visually led understanding of his environment. In the cave, this illusion stills
Thomass troubled mind albeit briefly by neutralising his awareness
76 Marie-Laure Hurault, Maurice Blanchot: le principe de la fiction (St. Denis: PUV,
1999), pp.19697.
78 Ibid., p.33.
143
that his senses have failed him. Thomas wants to understand where he
is and what is happening to him, so his perceptive faculties do all they
can to provide him with any form of meaning to attribute to the events
which befall him. These events occur in the realms of the image and of
fascination. These events therefore have no perceptible rationality or
chronology to them. In order to counter the frightening and painful
perceptual gaps that the rational constructs of image and fascination unintentionally revive whilst trying to efface themselves, Thomass perceptive
faculties create sensory constructs on a grandiose scale. Thus, the caves
darkened, stony walls are replaced for a short time by villes relles faites
de vide et de milliers de pierres entasses.79 Thomass desire to understand
his environment causes him to project his mental world outwards through
his sensory organs, to adopt the pathologies of chronic psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia. This projection creates a stream of perceptive
consciousness that inverts Riegls haptic chronology of proximal tactile
details being seen and then touched. However, the impossible image before
Thomass eyes cannot endure. The dearth of tactile sensory data available
to corroborate it ensures that the image dissipates eventually.
When this constructive sensory fabulation disperses and its empty
urban architecture vanishes, they leave the fearful, destructive elements of
Thomass consciousness to play with the perceptual building blocks just
relinquished. The results are terrifying for Blanchots protagonist. When
considering the following quotation, it should not escape our attention that
Thomass fears are mostly expressed in terms of violent contact between his
skin and other potentially tactile surfaces. Crucially, none of these other
surfaces is seen or can be identified by sight alone: all are described with
some reference to (Thomass own) contact with his skin. His whole body is
ravaged by these phantom images, which are in reality intermittently perceptible and localised facets of the same illusory projection of sensation:80
79 Ibid., p.34.
80 Huraults explanation of how the image manifests itself in Blanchots literary works
offers us a valuable critical perspective upon this scene: Les images tiennent par
leur capacit se laisser submerger et disparatre au moment o elles sexposent
(Maurice Blanchot: le principe de fiction, p.193). The corollary of this is that when
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Chapter 2
La peur sempara de lui []. Le dsir tait [un] cadavre qui ouvrait les yeux []. Les
sentiments lhabitrent puis le dvorrent. Il tait press dans chaque partie de sa
chair par mille mains qui ntaient que sa main. [] Il savait quautour de son corps sa
pense, confondue avec la nuit, veillait. [L]e corps de Thomas subsista priv de sens.81
Thomass now nonsensical reliance upon perception of spaces external to his body stems from the fact that all of his sensory experiences are
perceived with reference to the presence or absence of sight as a materially
informative medium at the given moment. This use of vision as a temporal
referent is unwise precisely because of its temporal qualification. In the
midst of the temporal and chronological disruption caused to his senses
by Thomass perceptible experiences of the literary image and its attendant
fascination, the given moment mentioned above may be of an infinite
duration or may never even begin.82 Thus, the presence or absence of sight
as a functional or materially informative medium may be eternal or may
never commence. Due to this temporal disruption of his senses, Thomas
can never be certain as to which of the possibilities just itemised is nearest to actuality (or the authentique, as Blanchot terms it in Faux pas).83
What does all of this mean for the manifestations of haptic perception
that occur whilst Thomas is on the beach, in the sea or in the cave? The first
thing to notice is that however fleetingly, instances of haptic perception
are apparent in each section of Thomass initial exploits. Whether these
haptic occurrences take place on dry land, in the sea or somewhere between
these two extremes (that is, on the beach), each incident occurs in relation to sight being a present or absent perceptive faculty at that moment.
Thomass sensory faculties allow him to localise one of their phantom images, they
create another elsewhere upon his body. This distracts Thomas from consciously
analysing any image that he perceives in any depth, meaning that he remains unaware
of his sensory faculties devious trickery and continues to believe that all he perceives
is real.
82 Bruns: For Blanchot, temporality does not coincide with history but exceeds it,
interminably, as if at the end of history (Maurice Blanchot: The Refusal of Philosophy,
p.139).
83 Blanchot, Faux pas, pp.5152.
145
When Thomas does resort to uniquely cutaneous methods of perception

(as when he is in the cave), he only appears willing to resort to these perceptual measures if all other sensory possibilities have escaped him. This
reticence seems odd when we realise that haptic forms of perception prove
no more reliable or unreliable for Thomas than any other during Thomas
lobscurs opening chapters.
Be this as it may, Thomas is first depicted standing immobile on a
beach, staring at swimmers moving around amidst the waves. It is only
when Thomas sees and feels these waves touch his skin that he moves,
diving into the space that stimulates his visual and cutaneous sensory faculties simultaneously. Though there is much oscillation between haptic and
optical perception during the incidents which befall Thomas subsequently,
all such oscillation occurs in relation to the functioning or inoperability
of Thomass visual perception. Indeed, visual perception appears to be the
faulty yardstick against which all of Thomass other sensory faculties are
measured. We can go further and state that the ever more consuming sensory malfunctions that Thomas experiences subsequently all result from
this initial fallibility. This is because these shortcomings are betrayed by
Thomass awareness of perceptible gaps in the information provided to him
by his visual faculties. What he does not discern is the manner in which
his senses attempt to manipulate his awareness of their flawed nature by
creating perceptual hallucinations of the kind he experiences whilst alone
in the cave.
The Feminine Touch

Aside from Thomas, Anne and Irne are the only other major characters in
the 1941 version of Blanchots text. The latter of these female protagonists is
removed entirely from the heavily abridged 1950 version of Thomas lobscur.
Anne and Irne are both attracted to Thomas to some extent and both
women die partly as a result of the indifferent manner in which he responds
to them. Though they scarcely interact with each other at all during the
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Chapter 2
text, the two womens experiences are the keystones of Thomas lobscurs
sensory arc. As I stated above, Blanchots literary prose, like his critical
works, begins by exploring facets of haptic perception before interrogating certain characteristics of optical perception. This literary and inquisitive arc invariably terminates with an investigation of the impossibility
of incorporating haptic and optical perception into one all-encompassing
form of perception and the impotence of language when attempting to
describe or quantify this impossibility.
As we have seen, Thomas lobscur begins with Thomass masculine perceptions of corporeality; the prose ends with his obliteration of these perceptions. The roles played by Anne and Irne in bridging this gap merit our
attention. Are these women the mediators of sensation that their appearances in the middle of Blanchots text imply? This question becomes important when we realise that by dying, Anne and Irne succeed in effacing their
perceptions permanently and rapidly, while Thomas struggles to.
Anne
Anne is the character with whom Thomas shares the most physical contact.
As I noted above, however, this contact does not equate with intimacy in
Thomass thinking. Anne first expresses her attraction to Thomas as they
walk through a wood. As he looks at Anne, Thomas becomes aveugle
de ses mains, de ses lvres, tant quil restait sourd de tout son corps:84 no
spatial discernment can be arrived at in Annes presence, whether or not
it is cutaneously derived. As with Patersons proprioceptively orientated
version of haptic interaction, the sharing of sensory data between discrete
sensory faculties is possible, but as he faces Anne, the sensation transmitted between Thomass proprioceptive faculties does not resonate with his
living environs.
147
As we shall see, questions remain as to how much of the spatial unawareness that Thomas (somewhat paradoxically) discerns whilst looking
at Anne is attributable to Thomass misfiring haptic senses. One reason for
these questions is the manner in which Annes perceptible presence seems
to exist outside the laws of chronology. As he looks at her closely, Thomas
cherchait rendre dactualit pour chacun de ses sens le mot sensuel.85
In other words, Thomas struggles to actualise (to make physically and
temporally present to his perceptive faculties) the concept of the sensual
by purely visual means. This difficulty could be a lingering effect of the
vritable brouillard devant les yeux that he experiences after returning to
the beach from his troubled swim.86
As Thomas touches Anne apparently without sensing any more than
her visible presence she shivers (elle frissonnait en devinant le contact de la
main).87 During the previous chapter, I demonstrated that when characters
in Georges Batailles works of prose begin shivering, this indicates that they
are experiencing a change of physical state. In most cases for example the
titular Madame Edwarda and Le Bleu du ciels Troppmann or Dirty this
shaking is an outward manifestation of a characters oscillation between
abjection and sublimity. This is not the case in Blanchots text. Instead,
Annes shaking is a prelude to her body and her consciousness rigidifying
under Thomass simultaneous glare and touch, as if she were experiencing
the effects of a paradoxically masculine yet Medusa-like stare. Though
none of Thomass perceptive organs appear to function around Anne
only his near-fatal immersion in the sea or the sensory deprivation of the
cave have managed to create a similar situation up until this moment
Annes visual proximity is sufficient to make him blush:
Une vive rougeur montra ses joues []. Ses yeux perants pour lesquels il ny avait plus
dhorizon devinrent des yeux de myope: ctait pour Anne comme sils allaient pleurer. Elle regarda avec stupeur cette figure [] ruisselante et en fusion []. Elle nosait
plus bouger. Elle tait saisie deffroi [,] statue craintive enfonce dans la verdure [.]
85 Ibid.
86 Ibid., p.29.
87 Ibid., p.85.
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Elle le voyait posant sur elle une main morte [:] plus de mots prfrs comme lilas,
crpuscule ou Anne.88
The appearance of a blush (another physical motif recurrent in Batailles

prose) is particularly intriguing given the frequent sexual subtext that it
betrays in Batailles rcits. For example, following their initial attack upon
her, Marcelle develops a habit of blushing deeply when in the presence of
Simone and Histoire de lils first narrator. In addition to these Bataillean
parallels, as Anne looks into Thomass newly myopic eyes, she senses that
he is about to cry. As I underlined in the previous chapter, tears are also
a recurrent motif in Batailles prose; they equate with the crying partys
unspoken desire to reject physically a mental image which troubles them
(as is the case with Marcelle in Histoire de lil or Troppmann in Le Bleu
du ciel). In this context, Annes shudder when touched, Thomass blush
and her perception that he is about to cry suggest that his very proximity to her causes him to project his rejection of corporeal sensation onto
her, thereby attaining the pathogenic and physically petrifying fusion
described in the quotation above. Caught in the reflected, empty visions
that Thomass body radiates, Anne becomes just another feature of his
proximal world that he has difficulty perceiving, let alone designating.
Even Annes visually discernible qualities begin to vanish before Thomass
withering stare and touch. She becomes a statue craintive enfonce dans
la verdure, pushed back into the woods fertile surroundings by the touch
of a hand which has not yet realised that it is dead: Elle le voyait posant
sur elle une main morte et touffant tout ce qui lui restait de tendresse [:]
plus de mots prfrs comme lilas, crpuscule ou Anne.89
As is apparent from this scene, petrifying sensations not only take
hold of Annes senses, but also deprive her of her linguistic preferences.
The suffocating cutaneous contact which so frightens Anne that it stops
her from moving (and exhibiting any physical traits that might distinguish
her from the surrounding greenery) is also sufficient to neutralise her linguistic faculties. More precisely, Annes linguistic preferences her most
88 Ibid.
89 Ibid.
149
intimate relationships with language are neutralised by the same hand

gesture that deprives her of her motor functions. After just a moment of
cutaneous interaction with Anne, Thomas succeeds in transmitting to her
the captivating impossibility of living and perceiving the literary image and
the fascination which heralds it. Because Thomas experiences different forms
of this impossibility whilst in proximal visual and cutaneous contact with
absolutely fluid environments (the sea), semi-fluid environments (the beach)
and the caves solid rock, its influence when communicated to another
human being is so absolute that it too is impossible. The communication
of this impossibility occurs only when Annes individualised relationship
with language dissipates and her favourite words cease to be her favourite
words.90 Therefore, the impossibility of living the literary image as it is
experienced by Anne occurs in spite of language and not because of it.
Whilst these changes take place within Annes mind and body, she
closes her eyes. Only the blinding sun, a most Bataillean textual motif, can
force Anne to open her eyes again. When she does so, Anne immediately
seeks haptic (and proprioceptive) interaction with Thomas by running to
him, embracing him and holding his hand:
Alors un rayon de soleil la frappa au visage, [] la fit frmir. Elle ouvrit les yeux sur le
soleil. Puis se tournant, elle aperut Thomas immobile []. Elle courut lui, lui prit
la main []. Et jouissant de son abandon quil ne savait attribuer lanantissement
ou lindiffrence, il garda Anne contre lui.91
As I explained in the previous chapter, Batailles Madame Edwarda offers

her body to a taxi driver at one stage. When she has intercourse with the
driver, Edwardas eyes roll back in her head, such that her irises are no longer
visible. When they become visible again, they are shrouded by her tears. In
Batailles Histoire de lil, the male character Don Aminado first loses his
life and then an eye in a ritualistic act of violence. In addition, the second
narrators father, blinded and crippled by syphilis, betrays the fact that he
90 Ibid.
91 Ibid., p.88.
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is urinating by allowing his eyes to roll back in his head to such a degree
that his irises are no longer visible.
By contrast, when Blanchots Anne offers her body to Thomas through
their physical proximity, there is little outward evidence of any of the obvious, self-explanatory (and often physically violent) corporeal behaviour so
apparent in the literary works by Bataille analysed earlier:
Il lattirait, et elle senfonait dans le visage dont elle pensait encore caresser les
contours []. Ses regards sattachrent lui, [s]es paroles shumectrent. Ses mouvements mme imperceptibles taient destins la coller contre lui. [] Elle ntait
lintrieur et lextrieur que plaies cherchant se cicatriser, que chair en voie de
greffe. [M]algr un tel changement [], elle continuait [] jouer et rire.92
As Anne begins to share in the same solar-induced blindness experienced

by Thomas since his swim, she feels their skins begin to mesh. In spite of
this, Thomass paradoxical sensations of proximal distance persist. Anne
meanwhile draws herself ever closer to Thomas, lured in by her visions of
him. Her skin becomes no more than a series of open wounds, masked by
her proximal physical contact with Thomas. It is noticeable that the grafting of Thomass skin onto Annes own also moistens her use of language
in his presence (Ses paroles shumectrent). It is as if proximal visual and
cutaneous contact between the male and female protagonists imbues the
language used by Anne with haptically discernible characteristics.
The error of this impression soon becomes evident. As Annes skin
comes into proximal contact with Thomass, so she begins to perceive the
spatio-temporal distortions that affect him. Some time later, she finds herself seeking the same haptically derived solace that Thomas had sought previously whilst sheltering in the cave. As she repeats this formerly masculine
quest, Anne metamorphoses from being a dryade (wood nymph)93 into a
sorte de nant sans sexe with no haptically functional organs or physiology:
soude son mur dans une immobilit insupportable, elle mlangeait son corps avec
le vide pur, les cuisses et le ventre unis une sorte de nant sans sexe et sans organe,
92 Ibid., pp.9192.
93 Ibid., p.86.
151
les mains serrant convulsivement une absence de main, la figure buvant ce qui ntait
ni souffle, ni bouche. [] Son vritable tre devenait [] la totalit de ce quelle ne
pouvait devenir.94
The parallels between Annes situation and Thomass alternately

haptic, optical and proprioceptive experiences in the ocean, on the beach
and then in the cave are clear to see. Even Annes perceptions of the sensory totalit de ce quelle ne pouvait devenir are reminiscent of Thomass
earlier ordeals (and Batailles musings on the impossibility of attaining an
all-encompassing perception of ourselves and our environs in LExprience
intrieure).95 Moreover, Anne has evolved from being the wood nymph who
was previously indiscernible from the foliage she enchanted;96 she is now
an entity which cannot even be designated through observable or tangible sexual difference. As she spends more time in proximal contact with
Thomas, Annes existence becomes one which is pathologically incapable
of recognising itself or the space in which it functions by haptic means. In
this, she mimics Thomas, whose body betrays no visible haptic detail, yet
is haptically perceptible ([s]ur le front, Thomas exhibits pas une ride pour
faire voir ses penses and his face is lisse, sans une de ces empreintes que
laissent le malheur et lhistoire).97 This circumstance is, however, derived
from a sensory paradox that has been passed on to Anne through human
contact (specifically, her tactile interaction with Thomas). This violent
paradox is the haptically perceived indifference to (gendered) corporeal
presence that Anne now experiences when she beholds her body: elle
tait corps sans tte, tte sans corps, corps hideux sunissant dans un effort
94 Ibid., pp.13132.
95 See also Brunss discussion of the similarities and differences apparent between
Bataille and Blanchots understandings of the impossible in Bruns, Maurice Blanchot:
The Refusal of Philosophy, pp.6670 and 12531. ffrench too discusses the influences
of LExprience intrieure and the 1941 version of Thomas lobscur upon each other
in detail in After Bataille, pp.11520.
97 Ibid., p.100.
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insens une figure corporelle toute de reprsentation et dide. Rien ntait

videmment chang dans lapparence ou la profondeur de sa personne.98
Annes perception of her plight, her sensation of being headless when
faced with the prospect of being unable to discern either herself or her
environment from one another by optical or haptic means, is remarkably
similar to Batailles descriptions of the Acphale (which I detailed earlier).99
In any event, the sensory disjuncture that Anne begins to experience proves
fatal for her. Her inability to distinguish space from time and life from
death infects all of her perceptual faculties and she grows physically frailer.
Within a short time, she is bedridden and dying of an unspecified illness.
No longer haptically or even linguistically responsive to corporeally perceptible reality, Anne rejects the mortal plane and dies uttering a final,
silent word to herself: Dormons.100 After infecting Anne with the same
spatio-temporal confusions with which he suffers through proximal contact
with her, Thomas then outlives her.
Irne and the Cinema

Thomas also survives the second female with whom he comes into proximal
dermal contact. His involvement with Irne begins when Anne invites her
to join them both to watch a film in a cinema. Haptic perception plays a
major rule in what follows. These events pre-figure several key characteristics
of the haptic visuality formulated much later by Laura U. Marks. (Indeed,
I contend that Blanchots writings on perception establish a number of the
haptic postulates subsequently formalised in Markss theories.)
98 Ibid., p.132.
99 See above, p.60.
153
At first glance, Irne seems far from approachable (Nulle femme ne

paraissait aussi distante, aussi intouchable).101 Yet in the darkened auditorium, it is Irne who initiates skin-to-skin contact with Thomas in thoroughly nonchalant fashion:
Ds quelle fut prs de Thomas, elle lui prit machinalement la main. Lobscurit lui
cachait entirement ltre avec lequel elle tait []. Elle croyait reconnatre la pression rude et ingale des doigts dont lun porte lalliance, la peau dont la douceur sest
vapore avec le temps et qui reste pourtant la plus douce: il tait sans doute quelle
avait pous ce bras depuis des annes.102
In this instance, casual haptic (or at least, tactile) perception affords Irne
the misleading impression of being in her husbands presence. Just like her
friend Anne and the man whose hand she now holds, Irne perceives a distortion in the laws of sensory stimulus and response when she comes into
dermal contact with another. This realisation coincides with the moment
when Irne projects something of her own life (the sensation of holding
her spouses hand) onto the unfamiliar tactile surface with which she now
interacts (Thomass hand). In turn, Irne is left with the impression that
touch might be capable of creating some form of spatio-temporal short
circuit through psychic projection. That is to say that for Irne, touching
Thomas whilst remembering something of her past allows her to mould
those memories to fit her present-day perceptions and sensual needs:
Elle le sentait souple, mallable []. Toutes les coches qui servent marquer les souvenirs dune vie commune, elle les retrouvait sur elle et sur lui, sur elle comme une
peau plus tendre et sur lui comme un durillon. [] Cest une absence de corps quelle
sappropriait comme son propre corps dlicieux et dont la douceur, bouleversante et
dchirante, la grisait. Elle demeurait confondue auprs de ce silence.103
The communication of Irnes desires occurs in silence, beyond the

aegis of language. In an act which mimics their cinematic surroundings,
101 Ibid., p.175.

102 Ibid., p.176.
103 Ibid.
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she projects her carnal desires onto the skin of the man whose hand she
holds. The marks of her projected desires are manifested haptically both
on Thomass skin and her own. Yet these marks are described differently.
Irnes skin softens as she projects (or filters?) her desires through it in
order to appropriate Thomass body, much as Annes words shumectrent
in Thomass presence.104 Simultaneously, Thomass dermal layer hardens
itself to Irnes projected desires, resists their haptic imprint and thereby
repels her attempts to impose her consciousness and its symptoms upon
his own being.
Crucially, this oscillation between haptic attraction and repulsion,
an oscillation that is also discernible in Batailles prose works,105 occurs
simultaneously with the expressly optical experience of Irne, Thomas and
Anne watching a film in a darkened cinema. Irnes initial and machinal (unthinking) desire to grasp Thomass hand appears to be the result
of her finding the celluloid images she beholds on the cinema screen to
be materially or emotionally unsatisfying. With this possibility comes
the likelihood that a visual detail which she notices on the screen incites
a conscious desire within her to touch that object. As I pointed out in
the introduction, a situation of this nature characterises what Laura U.
Marks and before her, Alos Riegl, would term haptic vision. Of these
two models of haptic perception, however, it is Markss theories which
are most applicable to this moment of Blanchots roman. Realising that
she will only touch a canvas screen and thin air if she reaches out to the
cinematic image before her, Irne engages Thomas in expressly cutaneous
interaction as a form of sensual surrogacy, as compensation for the lack of
sensual satisfaction offered by the cinematic medium. It is at this juncture
that we must pause to consider in greater detail how this scene relates to
the concept of haptic visuality posited by Marks. As she says, [t]he viewer
is called upon to fill in the gaps in the image, to engage with the traces the
104 Ibid., p.91.
105 Bruns also suggests that Blanchot and Batailles writings share an oscillatory quality. Bruns however borrows a line from Batailles LExprience intrieure (p.111) and
postulates this oscillation in terms of a pathogenic lectricit that flickers between
two points (see Bruns, Maurice Blanchot: The Refusal of Philosophy, p.53).
155
image leaves [,] to give herself up to her desire for it.106 As a result, [t]he
subjects identity comes to be distributed between the self and the object
when we watch these filmed images.107
If we apply Markss postulation here, then what occurs in the cinema
between Irne and Thomas is haptic, in certain respects. However, Irne
only attains a sense of completeness through her subjectively affecting
interaction with Thomas when the filmed images that she watches fail to
satisfy her desires. Moreover, Irne sublimates the visual element of her
interaction with Thomas (which occurs in a darkened cinema salon) into
a mental vision rather than an ocular one.
In other words, Irnes haptic experience of part of Thomass body
(his hand) turns the physically impossible literary image that has infected
his being into a physically impossible cinematic image within her own mind
and body, une absence de corps quelle sappropriait comme son propre
corps dlicieux.108 But this hallucinatory state of perception dont la douceur, bouleversante et dchirante, la grisait only offers Irne the sensation
of being physically and emotionally complete by obliterating her physical
individuality and its corporeally perceptible presence.109 Later in Blanchots
roman, Anne chooses a similar oblivion in order to achieve what she deems
to be perceptible completeness. This mortal fate is something she desires.
Irnes time in the cinema with Thomas is also marked by her desires.
But these desires are initially haptic in nature (if by haptic we mean the
model of haptic perception recently postulated by Marks). Indeed, a semiconscious desire to at once see and touch is a key ingredient of the Marksian
haptic experience (just as it is for Riegl).110 When Irne takes Thomass hand
in the cinema, what she initially believes to be a casual gesture gradually
reveals differences in cutaneous pressure and dermal striations. Within a
107 Ibid., p.123.
109 Ibid. This is a far more violent experience than the haptic visuality posited by Marks,
which merely encourages us to give [] up to our desire (see Marks, The Skin of
the Film, p.183).
110 See pp.317 above for my discussion of the haptic theories of Riegl and Marks.
156
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short time, she has projected all of her inner desires onto the male hand
she grasps and this cutaneous contact has begun to erode every aspect
of her haptic perceptions of her own body. All of this occurs under the
glare of the artificial light that is generated by the cinema projector and
is then reflected off the screen. Significantly for any reading of the scene
using Riegls haptic theorisations, these visible reflections exert a subjective
influence rather than an objective influence. These reflections are also twodimensional, whereas the filmed movements which create them occurred
in three dimensions originally:
Pendant la premire partie du spectacle, comme si la fantasmagorie des images let
projete en dehors delle-mme, [e]lle narrivait pas savoir [] quil y avait en elle
des organes [,] ombres dune tragique duret. Ce nest quaprs un coulement trs
long du temps quelle commena de sentir une diffrence de temprature et de tension
entre les deux corps, jusque-l parfaitement identiques, quelle avait.111
It appears as if Irne projects her perceptions of selfhood outwards during

the early stages of her haptic interaction with Thomas, inspired by the
optical trickery taking place on the screen before her. We have no way of
specifying the inspirational role played by cinema in this passage because
what appears on the screen is never described. It is nevertheless clear that
the shift in perception that Irne experiences during the films running time
disseminates from the illusory three dimensions which are projected onto
and reflected off the cinema screen that she beholds.
I suggested above that Irne grasps Thomass hand in order to compensate for the inability of filmed images to satisfy her desire for proximal
cutaneous interaction. This haptic gesture, an interaction of the individuals
dermal layers, leaves Irne with the erroneous (and fleeting) impression of
being at once physically and mentally complete. As we see in the quotation
above, however, her haptic perception of Thomass physically discernible
presence tells her nothing about him and therefore offers her no solace.
Irne learns only that there is a schism developing between her physical
body and the mental image she has of it. As this realisation dawns on her,
157
her perceptions of her surroundings and the chronology that informs them
also begin to disintegrate. Irne has entered the realm of fascination.112
The neutralisation of Irnes senses is an affliction transmitted to her
haptically by Thomas. What makes Thomas infectious in this situation
and in his earlier contact with Anne is a desire seemingly unique to his
female companions to project and thereby perceive physical (and possibly,
emotional) closeness in a manner that is haptic, rather than optical. The
pathogenic sensory transmission that Irne receives in the cinema salon
is aided and abetted by the peripatetic images that she sees on the screen
before her while she is in physical contact with Thomas (On et dit que
les rayons inconnus, la vie inassimilable qui convenait aux figures dj
moiti consumes de lcran russissaient le toucher et lembrasaient
silencieusement).113 However, while Irne wishes to assimilate something
of Thomass being into her own by haptic means and her skin therefore
becomes softer, Thomass skin hardens to the point of feeling blistered
to her and will not permit such assimilation. His body has become as
inassimilable as the cinematic images that the two protagonists behold.
Moreover, it is only in this haptically inassimilable state comparable with
the projected images that they watch on the cinema screen that Thomas
appears haptically complete to Irne:
Tout de Thomas tait visible. Il rayonnait parfaitement une dernire fois [,] dtre
pour Irne, aprs dix ans de mariage, aprs une heure de cinma, un corps glorieux.
Il se sparait delle, il devenait un corps tranger, un corps ami, il mourait. Le film
tait fini. Les lumires clairrent la salle.114
The consequences of the cutaneous contact that occurs between Irne

and Thomas and the mental images of this haptic interaction that she
subsequently endures reach far beyond the scope of the haptic visuality
112 Collin tells us that [v]oir, dans luvre de Blanchot, cest toujours entrer dans lespace
de la fascination (Maurice Blanchot et la question de lcriture, p.109). While I question the rather sweeping nature of this generalisation, it is certainly true of this scene.
114 Ibid., pp.17980.
158
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postulated by Marks.115 This is not only because Irnes haptic visions contain an optical dimension of the kind postulated by Riegl.116 These visions
are also influenced by the cinematic image that Irne has internalised as
well as a fourth perceptual dimension: time. As I demonstrated earlier in
this chapter, the temporal disruption wrought by fascination goes hand
in hand with the image in its literary guise. In the previous and following
quotations, Irnes visions act not only upon her outer dermal layers, but
also within her body. The oscillation between haptic and optical modes of
perception that she endures an indecision between remembrance and
forgetting of the perceiving body which is mirrored by the impossible
alternation between abjection and sublimity in Batailles critical and prose
works begins to pull apart Irnes sense of being:
dans une apothose pathtique [l]es doigts, contact tour tour froid et brlant,
lui apportaient limpression nouvelle []. Irne se sentait malade, dlicieusement
malade, se sentait sensible dans les organes mme rputs insensibles. []La peau
tait inerte, mais la moelle vibrait doucement []. Dj un par un les organes que la
maladie avait clairs steignaient. Un rve les remplaait.117
Though the potential liberation from corporeity that the cinematic

image offers Irne appears to be a pleasant dream to her initially, the perceptual flux between corporeity and disembodiment that she endures proves
highly erosive of her ability to reason. Within a short time, she becomes
so mentally unstable that she is no longer able to function in the world
of rationality or empiricism and rejects the continued influence of either
115 For evidence of this, compare any of the quotations given above relating to Irnes
experience in the cinema with Markss contention that haptic perception privileges
the material presence of the image. Drawing from other forms of sense experience,
primarily touch and kinaesthetics, haptic visuality involves the body more than is the
case with optical visuality. Touch is a sense located on the surface of the body [].
The difference between haptic and optical visuality is a matter of degree. In most
processes of seeing, both are involved, in a dialectical movement from far to near
(The Skin of the Film, p.163).
116 As is evidenced by Riegl, ber antike und moderne Kunstfreunde, pp.20203. See
p.7, n. 12 above for my transcription and translation of this extract.
117 Blanchot, Thomas lobscur (premire version), pp.17779.
159
concept upon her perceptive faculties by committing suicide: Des images

la ptrissaient, lenfantaient, la produisaient. Il lui vint un corps, un []
cadavre, [] sa gorge traverse dun stylet, son sang noir, Irne qui existait
encore et qui nexistait plus.118
Irnes perceptions of the literary image (and of Thomas as its avatar)
lead her to slit her throat with a dagger. She inscribes (or writes) her desire
to die into her skin with such force that it kills her. In this regard, Irnes
corporeal existence and its self-destruction foreshadow the exscriptive experience of writing about our perceptive experiences described decades later
by Jean-Luc Nancy.119 Blanchots Irne actively seeks the sensory concentration of her haptic faculties. She mistakenly believes the literary/cinematic
image and the various hallucinations it provokes to have revealed every
facet of her physical being and the world that she perceives through her
sensory organs. She is unable to cope with the lack of rationality in what
she is able to perceive of herself and her environs under the images distorting linguistic and designatory influence. When indeed Irne does commit
suicide, however, she slits her throat, thereby also severing her body from
any possibility of being governed by rational thought or of expressing such
thoughts again. She is thus left in a netherworld in which rationality and
irrationality become one and the same thing because neither concept is
able to express itself corporeally or, by extension, linguistically.120
118 Ibid., pp.26263.

119 As Nancy remarks of excription, [l]e sens a besoin dune paisseur, dune densit,
dune masse, et donc dune opacit, dune obscurit par lesquelles il donne prise, il
se laisse toucher comme sens prcisment l o il sabsente comme discours. Or ce l
est un point matriel, un point pesant: la chair dune lvre, la pointe dune plume ou
dun style, toute criture en tant quelle trace le bord et le dbord du langage. Cest le
point o toute criture sexcrit, se dpose hors du sens quelle inscrit, dans les choses
dont ce sens est cens former linscription (Le Poids dune pense, p.15; emphasis in
original).
120 In making this observation, I also wish to acknowledge Brunss comment concerning
Blanchots theorisations of a mad language in which writing begins with the gaze of
Orpheus [] because this gaze no longer reveals what it sees; it is outside the realm
of the visible-invisible [,] in a region of existence without being (Bruns, Maurice
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Chapter 2
Another Tide
Following the deaths of the two women, Thomass haptic perception of
the world around him disintegrates to such a degree that he finds himself
living in a uniquely optical space, devoid of any tangible corporeity and
bereft of all female presence. The text concludes with Thomas and a group
of seemingly spectral male comrades succumbing to sensory temptation.
Seduced by images of the sense organs that once defined their perceptive
experiences of themselves and of their environs, the group throw themselves
into a sea of illusory, sensory tides. Thomas follows them reluctantly, unable
to finally divorce his sense of being from his visual faculties. He returns
to the waves which overpowered all of his perceptive faculties (to such an
extent that they endangered his very life) at the start of the text:
ils se grouprent sur le rivage, cherchant modeler dans le sable [] une main, [] un
il [,] une bouche []. Ils redevinrent pour un instant des hommes et, voyant dans
linfini une image dont ils jouissaient, ils se laissrent aller une affreuse tentation et
se dnudrent voluptueusement pour entrer dans leau. Thomas regarda [] ce flot
dimages grossires, puis il sy prcipita tristement, dsesprment.121
Thomas finally surrenders his sensory faculties to the seas image-led

fascination of his perceptual faculties. His choice is socially motivated in
that he watches his male comrades undress in preparation to swim before
he runs reluctantly to the sea himself. The social aspect of this surrender is
in marked contrast to the actions and fates of Thomass female associates.
Anne and Irne willingly and unilaterally sacrifice their sensory faculties
in order to be rid of the anguished physical and mental (haptic) sensations
that they experience. In both instances, the female characters make their
own choices as to what they wish to perceive or not, and act accordingly.
Blanchot: The Refusal of Philosophy, p.73). Brunss words offer us a tidy summation
of Irnes fate.
161
By contrast, Thomas allows himself to be swept along by the visual

fetishes of his male comrades. This fetish leads to them and to him
succumbing to the illusory pleasures of corporeal sensation. This double
(and appreciably haptic) seduction is followed by an inevitable effacement
of all of the groups sensory faculties. Haptic perception as it is postulated
by Riegl, Marks or Paterson lures Thomas into the illusory world of a language which deems itself capable of describing his sensations but which
promptly eradicates itself and drowns his individual consciousness.
In spite of all he has perceived, Thomas cannot resist being swept away
by his haptic sensations of the image as a construct of language and the
perceptual constructs which result from it. This wilful confusion of literary
cause with perceptible haptic effect (and affect) consumes Thomass sensory faculties through fascination. The rest of his comrades suffer a similar
fate. Contrarily, in all three of the works of literary prose by Bataille that
I analysed in the previous chapter, the male characters remain unswervingly lucid in their descriptions of what they see and how they feel in their
skin, even if they are unable to make any rational sense of these pieces of
perceptual data.
At any rate, while the literary image and its attendant fascination appear
to outlive the physical existences of all three of Thomas lobscurs main protagonists whether they are female or male, the females seem more able to
transcend their bodies than Thomas is.
The pronounced difference in sensory experiences between the genders described in Thomas lobscur is markedly less apparent in La Folie du
jour. This brief work, first published in 1949 under the title Un rcit? in
a short-lived literary journal entitled Empdocle, was reprinted as a standalone text identical to its predecessor in all but name in 1973.122 What
differences exist between the portrayals of haptic perception in this rcit
(that Blanchot decided against referring to as such when it was reprinted)
and the first, roman-length version of Thomas lobscur?
122 I shall be referring to a reprint of La Folie du jour (Paris: Fata Morgana, 1980).
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Chapter 2
La Folie du jour: Haptic Feelings of Madness

The first version of Thomas lobscur is preoccupied with the concept of
proximal sensory interaction and the psychological damage that it can do.
Blanchots text illustrates how such interaction may only serve to amplify
the differing sensations experienced by two people engaged in a supposedly
shared situation. In Thomas lobscur, this perceptible difference develops
into a form of violence which expresses itself mentally and physically. The
accounts of ostensibly shared incidences in which Thomas and Anne or
Thomas and Irne are involved are exemplary of this characteristic.
La Folie du jour is a rather different prospect: it is a lone male narrators brief account of a chronologically discontinuous series of events. If
other people are involved in any of these events, none are given names or
described in any more than cursory detail. Yet the text is vivid in its descriptions of the narrators troubling bodily sensations:
Puis-je dcrire mes preuves? Je ne pouvais ni marcher, ni respirer, ni me nourrir.
Mon souffle tait de la pierre, mon corps de leau, et pourtant je mourais de soif.
Un jour, on menfona dans le sol, les mdecins me couvrirent de boue. Quel travail
au fond de cette terre. Qui la dit froide? Cest du feu, cest un buisson de ronces. Je
me relevai tout fait insensible. Mon tact errait deux mtres: si lon entrait dans
ma chambre, je criais, mais le couteau me dcoupait tranquillement. Oui, je devins
un squelette. Ma maigreur, la nuit, se dressait devant moi pour mpouvanter. Elle
minjuriait, me fatiguait aller et venir; ah, jtais bien fatigu.123
In the previous chapter, I demonstrated the significant differences

discerned by Bataille between earth and sky particularly in terms of his
understandings of abjection and sublimity, of corporeality and transcendence. The ailments from which Blanchots nameless narrator suffers in the
quotation above all have earthly, elemental symptoms. These symptoms
cause him to suffer because they are inversions of the similes that we would
normally associate with the sensory faculties to which they relate. Instead
123 Ibid., pp.1314.
163
of being light or intangible, the narrators breath tait de la pierre one of

the most solid objects on earth. Far from feeling solid (as stone), his body
was de leau, yet still he felt an extreme thirst.124 When doctors attempt to
cure Blanchots narrator of his elemental ailments by burying him in earth
or soil which we might consider a middle ground between the tactile
solidity of stone and the fluidity of water he experiences an intense burning sensation (Cest du feu). The immersion of almost all of the narrators
dermal layer in earth sharpens his cutaneous perception to such an extent
that it becomes agonising for him. Nevertheless, the very intensity of this
sensation confuses his visual and cutaneous receptors. Indeed, the narrators
physical pain distorts his spatial discernment such that proximal and even
dermally incisive stimuli (such as a surgeons knife) feel physically distant
to him. Conversely, people entering the narrators hospital room who,
unlike him, are capable of seeing the narrator and all of the room around
him exert an agonising pressure upon the phantom skin that his sensory
faculties project around him.
There is a precedent for such phantasms in Blanchots prose. In the
midst of the tactile interactions that occur in the darkened cinema salon
between Thomas and Irne in the first version of Thomas lobscur, it is noted
in the narrative that [o]n et dit que les rayons inconnus, la vie inassimilable
qui convenait aux figures dj moiti consumes de lcran russissaient
le toucher et lembrasaient silencieusement.125 In both this scene and La
Folie du jours first passages concerning a hospital room, there is a possibility that another, somehow inassimilable vision of alterity may impose itself
upon human skin without actually coming into tactile contact with it.
But there is a further dimension to the suffering endured by La Folie du
jours narrator. His sensory and spatial confusion begins when he is briefly
124 Starobinski detects a similar inversion of concrete and abstractive similes in the
opening chapter of Thomas lobscur (see Thomas lobscur, chapitre premier, p.504).
Ironically, the sensation of liquidity endured by Blanchots narrator is scientifically
accurate: we have known the human body to be composed almost entirely of liquids
for a long time. See Franois Dagognet, Le Corps (Paris: PUF, 2008) pp.2627, 3233
for further discussion of the history surrounding this discovery.
164
Chapter 2
rooted in soil. While partially buried in this earth, he becomes part of it.
The doctors appear to hope that by immersing the narrator in a space which
seems rigidly solid when it is in fact formed of a vast number of movable
soil particles, the sensory inversions that afflict him will be neutralised.
Following his immersion in the soil, the narrators sensory faculties
oscillate. At one moment, he is subject to the acute responsiveness to atmosphere exhibited by water through phenomena such as erosion and evaporation. On other occasions, he is as indifferent and perceptually unresponsive
to his environment as a stone might be (Elle minjuriait, me fatiguait aller
et venir; ah, jtais bien fatigu).126
In his subsequent litany of sensory contradictions, the narrator
describes walking down the street one day and witnessing a man holding
a door open for a woman who then wheels a pram through it. Intrigued,
the narrator cannot resist crossing the road to inspect the now vacant space
more closely:
Jallai cette maison, mais sans y entrer. Par lorifice, je voyais le commencement
noir dune cour. Je mappuyai au mur du dehors, javais certes trs froid; le froid
menveloppant des pieds la tte, je sentais lentement mon norme stature prendre
les dimensions de ce froid immense, elle slevait tranquillement selon les droits de
sa nature vritable et je demeurais dans la joie et la perfection de ce bonheur, un
instant la tte aussi haut que la pierre du ciel et les pieds sur le macadam. Tout cela
tait rel, notez-le.127
As the narrator comes into contact with the house wall, he perceives cutaneously the chilling lack of haptic contact exchanged between the man and
the young mother; until this moment, he had only been able to observe
it from a distance. Moreover, by moving from distant optical space into
proximal haptic space (and thereby conforming with the haptic models
postulated by Riegl or Marks), Blanchots narrator is able to discern what
he believes to be the nature vritable of the chill he feels running through
his skin and bones. He is able to gauge not only his emotions but also his
bodys relationship with its physical environs by means of this cutaneously
126 Blanchot, La Folie du jour, p.14.
127 Ibid., p.20.
165
gleaned information (la perfection de ce bonheur, un instant la tte aussi

haut que la pierre du ciel et les pieds sur le macadam. Tout cela tait rel).
Such gleaning of knowledge by cutaneous means runs contrary to the
non-savoir that Blanchots theoretical works associate with corporeal
perception (as in the passages from Faux pas or LEntretien infini analysed
earlier in this chapter).
Just as significantly, the narrators ability to discern perfection in the
quotation from La Folie du jour given above directly contradicts Batailles
stance on human perception in texts such as LExprience intrieure (Ne
plus se vouloir tout est tout mettre en cause;128 [l]exprience atteint pour
finir la fusion de lobjet et du sujet, tant comme sujet non-savoir, comme
objet linconnu).129
The experience of La Folie du jours narrator when he presses himself against the houses external wall proves to be more enjoyable for him
than the ordeal that Thomas endures while in contact with a cave wall
in Blanchots earlier work. Following his paradoxical moment of haptic
interaction with an area of space which actively numbs haptic perception
through its chilliness (another motif shared with Thomas lobscur), the
sensations experienced subsequently by the narrator of La Folie du jour
appear sharper, even though he loses his sight for a time:
Quelquefois dans ma tte se crait une vaste solitude o le monde disparaissait tout
entier, mais il sortait de l intact, sans une gratignure, rien ny manquait. Je faillis
perdre la vue, quelquun ayant cras du verre sur mes yeux. Ce coup mbranla, je le
reconnais. Jeus limpression de rentrer dans le mur, de divaguer dans un buisson de
silex. Le pire, ctait la brusque, laffreuse cruaut du jour; je ne pouvais ni regarder
ni ne pas regarder; voir ctait lpouvante, et cesser de voir me dchirait du front la
gorge. En outre, jentendais des cris dhyne qui me mettaient sous la menace dune
bte sauvage (ces cris, je crois, taient les miens).130
In spite of the acuity of his skin in detecting his inwardly and outwardly
discernible sensations of physical pain, the narrators spatial perception is
129 Ibid., p.21.
166
Chapter 2
scrambled. At the epicentre of this scrambling are his neither seeing nor
unseeing eyes and the haptic properties of the suns rays, their ability to
penetrate his bandaged irises. (Once more, the sun appears as an avatar of
the absence of rationalist sense.) The narrators bandaged eyes and the suns
burning rays incite an overcompensation in his cutaneous sensory faculties.
He is no longer able to distinguish his bodys outer limits from the perceptible space that surrounds him. On this evidence, the narrators sense of
touch proves far from able to discern space in its own right. Without visual
reference, his sense of touch in fact becomes so confused that it creates a
disjuncture between his other senses. This disjuncture proves sufficient to
leave him uncertain as to whether or not he is screaming. As the narrators
treatment continues, this confusion spreads from anguished cries into
the realm of coherent, nuanced language, but does so only as a result of
the painful tactile sensations that he must suffer in as much silence as
possible to ensure his recovery:
Le verre t, on glissa sous les paupires une pellicule et sur les paupires des murailles
douate. Je ne devais pas parler, car la parole tirait sur les clous du pansement. [] la
longue, je fus convaincu que je voyais face face la folie du jour; telle tait la vrit: la
lumire devenait folle, la clart avait perdu tout bon sens; elle massaillait draisonnablement, sans rgle, sans but. Cette dcouverte fut un coup de dent travers ma vie.131
In the depths of his sensory confusion, Blanchots narrator finds himself assailed haptically. He perceives a coup de dent caused by his sensory
faculties being unable to penetrate the sensations that they perceive. Not
only are his eyes burned by the sun, but even expressing the anguish that
he experiences as this occurs in language of any kind could well impede
the recovery of his sight. Deprived of his vision and of his ability to speak
of this anguished loss, the narrators skin is capable only of adding further
senseless hurt to his already acute pain (thereby falling in line with Batailles
stance on physical perceptions correlations with angoisse).132 Yet following
131 Ibid., pp.2223.
132 This link is evidenced by Batailles Madame Edwarda (pp.2930) and is theorised
in Batailles LExprience intrieure (especially the chapter entitled Le Supplice
(pp.4376)).
167
his discharge from hospital and the healing of his ocular injuries, Blanchots
narrator remains unable to function without being in proximal contact
with his immediate surroundings:
Bien que la vue peine diminue, je marchais dans la rue comme un crabe, me tenant
fermement aux murs et, ds que je les avais lchs, le vertige autour de mes pas. Sur
ces murs, je voyais souvent la mme affiche [] avec des lettres assez grandes: Toi
aussi, tu le veux. Certainement, je le voulais, et chaque fois que je rencontrais ces
mots considrables, je le voulais.133
The situation that Blanchots narrator describes above offers us a rather different perspective on Markss postulation of haptic visuality. As I stated in
the introductory chapter, the Marksian variant of haptic perception is particularly driven by the subjects barely conscious desire to touch particular
tactile details of an otherwise unidentifiable surface. These details are made
apparent by the moving (cinematic) images that he or she beholds. In La
Folie du jour, however, it is the narrators very desire to move that provokes
his need to interact haptically with his proximal environment. Taking
hold of his immediate surroundings allows him to ground and thereby
guard his perceptive faculties against vertige. It could therefore be
argued that by rooting himself in the earthly (and the haptic), Blanchots
narrator consciously avoids oscillation between this state and the outof-body sublimity solicited by the behaviour of a number of Batailles
protagonists.
Unfortunately, by conducting himself as he does, Blanchots narrator
finds that recueillant une part excessive du dlabrement anonyme, jattirais
ensuite dautant plus les regards quelle ntait pas faite pour moi et quelle
faisait de moi quelque chose dun peu vague et informe; aussi paraissait-elle
affecte, ostensible.134 By avoiding one characteristic exhibited by many of
Batailles literary characters (the oscillation between the sublime and the
abject), La Folie du jours narrator falls prey to one of Batailles theoretical
postulates: the informe.
133 Blanchot, La Folie du jour, pp.2425; emphasis in original.

134 Ibid., p.26.
168
Chapter 2
In order to explain the inescapable move towards decorporealisation

that he perceives, the narrator harks back to his convalescence in hospital
following the operation that saved his sight. It is then that we learn that
the reduction of the narrators body to the linguistic and numeric recording of its most basic and intangible inner components blood cells
diminishes his haptically discernible presence to such an extent that doctors
no longer seem able to conceive of him as being haptically present:
Jaimais assez les mdecins []. Lennui, cest que leur autorit grandissait []. En
hte, je me dpouillais de moi-mme. Je leur distribuais mon sang []. Sous leurs
yeux en rien tonns, je devenais une goutte deau, une tache dencre. [ J]e passais
tout entier sous leur vue, et quand enfin, nayant plus prsente que ma parfait nullit
et nayant plus rien voir, ils cessaient aussi de me voir.135
At the same time that the body of Blanchots narrator has become informe,
it has also undergone an experience which Jean-Luc Nancy would qualify
as exscriptive some years later (la vision ne pntre pas, elle glisse le long
des carts []. Elle est toucher qui nabsorbe pas, qui se dplace le long
des traits et des retraits qui inscrivent et qui excrivent un corps).136 Much
as with Nancys subsequent postulation of excription, the effacement of
haptic presence that Blanchots narrator suffers in La Folie du jour is one
which purges not only his spatial understandings but also his linguistic
relationship with them.
In Shadow: Le rapport du troisime genre

While convalescing in hospital after his operation, the narrator makes a
new acquaintance: japercevais la silhouette de la loi. Non pas la loi que
lon connat, qui est rigoureuse et peu agrable: celle-ci tait autre. []
135 Ibid., pp.2829.

169
la croire, mon regard tait la foudre et mes mainsdes occasions de prir.137

This laws motives are knowable: Je savais quun de ses buts, ctait de me
faire rendre justice. Elle me disait: Maintenant, tu es un tre part; []
tes actes demeurent sans consquence.138 Whether this is a hallucination or not, the image of the law and the justesse that it demands of the
narrator play out in the perceptible though scrambled haptic space of his
hospital room:139
Voici un de ses jeux. Elle me montrait une portion de lespace, entre le haut de la
fentre et le plafond: Vous tes l, disait-elle. Je regardais ce point avec intensit.
Y tes-vous? [] Je sentais bondir les cicatrices de mon regard, ma vue devenait
une plaie, ma tte un trou, un taureau ventr. Soudain, elle scriait:Ah, je vois le
jour, ah, Dieu, etc. Je protestais que ce jeu me fatiguait normment, mais elle tait
insatiable de ma gloire.140
The scene quoted above and that which precedes it (in which the narrator claims that a feminised, shadowy vision of the other law mavait une
fois fait toucher son genou: une bizarre impression)141 are based upon a
momentary, almost ghostly haptic interaction between the sexes (because
the narrator only ever sees and touches a small part of the silhouettes entire
form).142 Most significant in the game described above is the manner in
which justesse may be derived from the narrators skewed perception of
the (haptic) space around him. This new, somewhat crazed logic of spatial
138 Ibid., p.30.
139 This is not without precedent. As I demonstrated earlier in this chapter, Thomass
brutally numbing encounter with the new law that obliterates subject and object
occurs in the midst of a similar haptic confusion (which on that occasion is created
by his initial swim in the sea).
141 Ibid.
142 Hurault considers this ghostliness to be a defining characteristic of Blanchots literary
works: figure dexil, dtache, [] abstraite comme lest ltre o il est priv de sa
dpouille, ni tre ni non-tre, quelque chose qui serait hors de tout rapport ltre.
[] Le vide de la figure [] proccupe Blanchot (Maurice Blanchot: le principe de
la fiction, pp.3132).
170
Chapter 2
perception and the words uttered by the silhouette to validate it form the
basis of a new (troisime) rapport between the narrator and that space as he
now perceives it (rather than fostering a subject-to-subject or subject-toobject interrelation between the two). The new, irrational rules of justesse
imparted to Blanchots narrator by the hallucination or image which is in
turn born of the daylight that so taunts his sanity insist that he is perceptibly present in an area of space in which he cannot be (entre le haut de
la fentre et le plafond).143 Crucially, this space which is impossible for
the narrator to inhabit and almost as impossible for him to see or touch
in his convalescent state is essentially haptic (by the standards of Riegl,
Marks or Paterson). That is to say that the space is relatively proximal and
could be seen and touched at once with the aid of a ladder. Additionally,
this space imposes itself upon the narrators vision and forms a small, tactilely detailed section of a much larger, imperceptible whole (the hospital
room in its entirety).144
So, what in fact attests to the narrators new rapport du troisime genre
with physical space, abstractive reason and his own perceptive consciousness
is the designation of space that has the potential to be haptic. This haptic
potentiality cannot be realised at present, however, given the beholding
narrators infirmity (which is itself a form of fascination).145
The impossibly haptic space with which the narrator is confronted is
designated by the image of a previously unknown silhouette de la loi. This
silhouette which would be a non-haptic presence, according to Riegls
144 Blanchot himself says in LEntretien infini that limpossible [] faut entendre que
la possibilit nest pas la seule dimension de notre existence (p.307; emphasis in
original). To this, Ravel adds that [l]a littrature blanchotienne se destitue en permanence dun objet potentiel. De ce qui pourrait laisser trace (Maurice Blanchot
et lart au vingtime sicle, p.40). I therefore think it justifiable to insist upon this
notion of potentially haptic space.
145 As Crowley observes, les rapprochements effectus par Blanchot entre le toucher et
ce qui demeure par nature inaccessible disons, ici, la vision, lcriture, la lecture se
font invariablement sous le signe du paradoxe []; au milieu de tout contact souvre
une distance irrductible. [] Le toucher devient le propre du voir, lloignement
lessence de la proximit (Touche-l, pp.16970).
171
definitions 146 invests the narrators haptic faculties with the power to
insinuate themselves perhaps fatally beneath the surfaces with which they
interact ( la croire, mon regard tait la foudre et mes mainsdes occasions
de prir).147 This situation inverts the rationale of haptic interaction, which
demands vital contact between a beholder and a potentially tactile surface
first and foremost. Haptic interaction therefore becomes impossible not
only spatially, but also on a metaphysical level: the deathly senses of sight
and in particular, touch with which La Folie du jours narrator is imbued
will be unable to detect anything other than the deadness that they already
are themselves. Perhaps surprisingly, the referent of this dual impossibility is
space that could be designated as being haptic and which has the potential
to be perceived haptically under different physical circumstances.
Rcit vs. Hapticity?

La Folie du jour concludes with another impossibility that relates to
identification. The identity of the individual or individuals who smashed
the glass into the narrators eyes is never revealed. This does not prevent
his carers from asking him repeatedly about the events leading up to the
attack:
146 To justify this contention, I refer to Riegls qualification of the precociously optical
sensibilities exhibited by Thomas de Keysers paintings as [d]iese Entkrperlichung
durch Abstreifen des Tastbaren und Begrenzten, dieses berfhren der haptischen
Formen in den blo sichtbaren Luftraum und das Auflsen der das Haptische stets
begleitenden Lokalfarben in unmerklich ineinander berflieende Lichter und
Schatten (Das hollndische Gruppenportrt, p.179). (Bodies are stripped of their
substance, their tangible and physical properties; haptic forms melt into the purely
visual experience of the free space around them. The local colour that always clings
to the haptic is broken up by highlights and shadows into imperceptible modulation
of varying shades (The Group Portraiture of Holland, p.252).)
172
Chapter 2
lun tait un technicien de la vue, lautre un spcialiste des maladies mentales [].
Ni lun ni lautre, certes, ntait le commissaire de police. Mais, tant deux, cause de
cela ils taient trois, et ce troisime restait fermement convaincu, jen suis sr, quun
crivain, un homme qui parle et qui raisonne avec distinction, est toujours capable
de raconter des faits dont il se souvient.
Un rcit? Non, pas de rcit, plus jamais.148
The narrators rcit, his literary enunciation of that period of time as he

perceives it, comes to an end with the promise that no more shall follow
it. His refusal to give explanations about this decision or his injury in the
quotation above could just as easily be genuine ignorance about what happened to him or the state of mind that he was in subsequently. Neither those
characters who question the narrator nor we who read his narrative can be
certain whether the narrator is telling the truth or withholding it, however.
This uncertainty is integral to Blanchots approach to haptic interaction
in La Folie du jour. As I mentioned earlier in this chapter, Blanchot writes
in LEspace littraire that []crire, cest briser le lien qui unit la parole
moi-mme, [] laction et le temps.149 La Folie du jour makes liberal use
of this philosophy.
As with the majority of Batailles rcits that I analysed in the previous
chapter and Thomas lobscur, La Folie du jours narrative also makes frequent
reference to moments of potentially haptic interaction, only to undermine
this haptic potentiality within the same paragraph. It is in many respects a
text which is more exscriptive of haptic perception than directly allusive of it.
In spite of the frequent journeys made by Blanchots narrator to the
experiential limits of his body and mind, however, his vocabulary remains
firmly rooted within corporeal terms of reference. There is only one narrative voice apparent in La Folie du jour and that narrative concludes with a
refusal to create a coherent account of the events which led to the narrators seemingly hallucinatory experiences whilst in hospital. This refusal
directly contradicts the desires of two characters that specialise in visual
and mental perception. These individuals specialisms combine to create a
148 Ibid., pp.3738.

149 Blanchot, LEspace littraire, pp.2021.
173
discernibly absent third presence which the narrator believes to be juridical (Ni lun ni lautre, certes, ntait le commissaire de police. Mais, tant
deux, cause de cela ils taient trois).150 This assertion recalls the narrators
earlier encounter with the alternately haptic and non-haptic silhouette
de la loi, which had already established the existence of an intermittently
perceptible juridical force.
The space designated by the shadowy presence of the silhouette de la
loi is, as I suggested above, potentially haptic in nature. However, Blanchots
narrator cannot realise this haptic potentiality at the moment that the
space is shown to him because of the poor state of his eyesight and general
health. The haptic potential of that space therefore appears to be at once
present and absent, simultaneously possible and impossible to the narrator.
The avatar of justesse that points this space out to the narrator exhibits
haptic characteristics comparable with the very space designated by that
avatar.
I therefore suggest that the impossibly discernible absence that is nevertheless perceived by La Folie du jours narrator is not juridical in nature
but is instead haptic. As should be obvious from the textual analysis above,
this is a proto-exscriptive form of haptic perception, a mode of sensation
which in common with instances of haptic interaction in Batailles prose
does not recognise itself or its literary trace.151 Thus, the discernible literary
traces of these haptic interactions must also be effaced, meaning that there
151 This self-effacing form of inscription is perhaps the most apparent evidence of
Stphane Mallarms influence on Blanchots thinking. It also, however, highlights
the extent to which Blanchots thinking differs from that of Mallarm. Bruns opines of
Mallarms writing that [l]criture is not an inscription of something other than itself;
what is inscribed disappears (Bruns, Maurice Blanchot: The Refusal of Philosophy,
p.9; emphasis in original). As is evident from my textual analyses, I do not believe
that what Bruns says of Mallarms writing is applicable to Blanchots literary and
critical writings. To support this assertion, I refer to Georges Prlis observation that
[l]exprience de lcriture chez Blanchot correspond une coexistence du corps et
de lespace, qui est lextrme et secrte transparence de ses rcits, par o le langage se
voit comme rgi par les mouvements du corps et son sjour dans lespace, et o corps
et espace sont intimement inscrits dans le langage (La Force du dehors: extriorit,
174
Chapter 2
will be pas de rcit, plus jamais.152 This exscriptive form of haptic perception is carried to its logical conclusion in Blanchots final piece of literary
prose, LInstant de ma mort.
LInstant de ma mort: Erasing the Haptics Foothold

LInstant de ma mort is the last non-theoretical text of Blanchots career.
First published in 1994,153 this very brief work bears final testament to the
increasing absence of descriptions of haptic experience from Blanchots
prose. There has been much discussion as to whether LInstant de ma mort is
autobiographical or not; the text describes how as Blanchot in fact did a
young member of the French resistance narrowly avoids a Nazi firing squad
during the Allied invasion of France in June 1944.154
When LInstant de ma mort begins, we are treated to a haptic allusion
within fewer than two paragraphs: Les Allis avaient russi prendre pied
sur le sol franais. Les Allemands, dj vaincus, luttaient en vain avec une
inutilit froce.155 Though obviously idiomatic, the phrase above suggests
that some form of material possession can be associated with perceived
152
153
154
155
limite et non-pouvoir partir de Maurice Blanchot ([Fontenay-sous-Bois]: Recherches,

1977), p.217).
Blanchot, La Folie du jour, p.38.
I shall be referring to the 2006 reprint of Blanchots LInstant de ma mort (Paris:
NRF/Gallimard).
Jacques Derrida among others has discussed the autobiographical potential of
LInstant de ma mort. In Demeure (Paris: Galile, 1998), Derrida suggests that, though
there are documented parallels between the events which befall LInstant de morts
protagonist and situations in which Blanchot found himself during World War II,
Blanchots text cannot be considered entirely autobiographical (Derrida, Demeure,
pp.25, 3336, 132). A lack of space means that the question of autobiography cannot
be dwelt upon here, however.
Blanchot, LInstant de ma mort, p.9.
175
haptic presence: by setting foot on French soil, the Allies had already initiated the defeat of their Nazi enemies.
As these battles rage, there is a seemingly innocuous knock at the door
of a large house known locally as the chteau. The houses sole male occupant goes to see who is there: on frappa la porte plutt timidement. Je
sais que le jeune homme vint ouvrir des htes qui sans doute demandaient
secours. Cette fois, hurlement: Tous dehors..156 In the wake of responding
to what he hears, the young master of the chteau finds himself and the
rest of his family being ordered out of their own house at gunpoint. The
ensuing walk removes the whole family from the house but threatens to end
with the young mans death because he is then placed before a firing squad:
Le nazi mit en rang ses hommes pour atteindre, selon les rgles, la cible humaine.
Le jeune homme dit: Faites au moins rentrer ma famille. Soit:la tante (94 ans), sa
mre plus jeune, sa sur et sa belle-sur, un long et lent cortge, silencieux, comme
si tout tait dj accompli.
Je sais le sais-je que celui que visaient dj les Allemands, nattendant plus
que lordre final, prouva alors un sentiment de lgret extraordinaire, une sorte de
batitude (rien dheureux cependant) []. sa place, je ne chercherai pas analyser
ce sentiment de lgret.157
As the young mans four female relatives (rather than any religiously symbolic Trinity) retire to their chteau in a long et lent cortge, he stands
motionless, fascinated by his seemingly mortal fate. In this frozen moment,
he prouva alors un sentiment de lgret extraordinaire, une sorte de
batitude (rien dheureux cependant); cutaneous and kinaesthetic sensations appear to desert the young protagonist in pre-emption of the death of
their corporeal receptors. Moreover, the young man perceives his increasing
absence of sensation (Je sais le sais-je). Nevertheless, the young mans
visual faculties remain functional: he is still able to tell where he is, that
a Nazi firing squad stands before him and that his relatives are no longer
present.
156 Ibid.
157 Ibid., pp.1011.
176
Chapter 2
What is it that so diminishes the bodily sensations (and any haptic

potentiality) of this moment? Could the young mans sensation of being
light of body and in a state of batitude characteristics which correlate
closely with Batailles fictionalised descriptions of sublimity result from
the physical absence of his female relatives unwilling eyes at the moment
of his probable death? Equally, are the young mans sensations of haptic
absence incited by his wait to experience visually rather than visually and
cutaneously, as would be the case in haptic perception a concretisation
of the abstract military rgles that govern the firing squads actions?158
Though no answer is immediately apparent, it is clear that LInstant de ma
morts narrative expressly refuses to engage or identify with its protagonist
on the basis of sensory (and especially, haptic) empathy: sa place, je ne
chercherai pas analyser ce sentiment de lgret.159
From Haptic Perception to Sensory Neutralisation

Just when it seems that the young maquisards removal from the world
of haptic perception will also prove to be his final conscious moment on
earth, his life if not all of his perceptive faculties are saved by the noisy
intervention of his guerrilla comrades:
158 This wait for a concretisation of juridical force is foreshadowed by the alternately
haptic and non-haptic sensory experiences of the narrator of La Folie du jour when
he encounters la silhouette de la loi in his hospital room. In that instance, the loi
seemed distinctly feminine to the narrator. By contrast, the narrator of LInstant de
ma mort prepares himself to experience the rules of war in the absence of his female
relatives.
159 LInstant de ma mort, p.11. Derrida remarks upon this refusal to judge, but emphasises
the use of the future tense in the wording of it. Moreover, the haptic implications of
this refusal are not discussed by Derrida in any other terms than the lgret that
Blanchots young protagonist experiences (see Derrida, Demeure, pp.8183).
177
cet instant, brusque retour au monde, clata le bruit considrable dune proche
bataille. Les camarades du maquis voulaient porter secours celui quils savaient en
danger. Le lieutenant sloigna pour se rendre compte. Les Allemands restaient en
ordre [] dans une immobilit qui arrtait le temps.
Mais voici que lun deux sapprocha et dit dune voix ferme: Nous, pas allemands,
russes, et, dans une sorte de rire:arme Vlassov et il lui fit signe de disparatre.160
The noise created by the resistances attack proves sufficient to distract the
Nazi lieutenants attention from ordering the firing squad to carry out their
task. While the lieutenant moves away from his firing squad, his prisoner
continues to watch it intently. The prisoner becomes increasingly aware that
his gaze is being stripped of other corporeal sensation, yet as he becomes
fully conscious of this fact, time stops (Les Allemands restaient en ordre
[] dans une immobilit qui arrtait le temps).161
By reading this description of the moment before the young mans
anticipated death, we too enter the realm of literary fascination. Just to
remind us of this fact, the reason that chronology is restored in the quotation above is vocal, a product of language. Blanchots nameless protagonist
is told by one of his similarly nameless would-be executioners that they are
not members of the regular German Army. These words are accompanied by
a potentially haptic gesture (an action which is at once visible and tangible).
However, the soldiers signal, his signe de disparatre162 exscripts any haptic
potential from itself because of its content; the verb disparatre means
both to disappear and to die, so even as the soldier enacts this gesture, it
effaces itself. He is asking the young maquisard to become invisible to him
and by extension, not to see him make such a gesture again.
160 Blanchot, LInstant de ma mort, pp.1112.

161 Ibid., p.12. Ravel offers an interesting perspective upon this situation through a
comment that she makes about Blanchots writing in general. Ravel states that in all
of Blanchots writing, [l]il se pose sur la scintillation le permanent, lapparence,
donc , et saveugle de ce quil advient de visible lapparition et qui se perd,
disparat. Lactuel donc (Maurice Blanchot et lart au vingtime sicle, pp.3738).
Ravels observation is as applicable to Thomas lobscur and La Folie du jour as it is to
LInstant de ma mort.
162 Blanchot, LInstant de ma mort, p.12.
178
Chapter 2
Far from relying upon the vital, gendered diffrence that underpins
sensory interaction (according to philosophers such as Nancy),163 the
young maquisards physical liberation from imminent death and bodily
sensation whether unhappy or not can only be brought about by the
collusion of another male, the Vlassovite soldier who lets him go. The
males respective roles of victim and persecutor are transcended by this
complicity. The traditional archetypes of gender roles are not, however:
the women featured in LInstant de ma mort have nothing to offer the
young man in his struggle for life apart from their discernible silence and
their perceptible absence.
Having fled the firing squad, Blanchots young protagonist hides
himself in a distant wood:
Je crois quil sloigna, toujours dans le sentiment de lgret, au point quil se retrouva
dans un bois loign, nomm Bois des bruyres, o il demeura abrit par les arbres
quil connaissait bien. Cest dans le bois pais que tout coup, et aprs combien de
temps, il retrouva le sens du rel. Partout, des incendies, une suite de feu continu,
toutes les fermes brlaient. [] En ralit, combien de temps stait-il coul?164
Following his brush with death, the young protagonist finds himself almost
floating into the woods which shelter him, shorn of nearly all of his sensory awareness. Even the narrative which expresses this perceptual vagueness is uncertain of itself (Je crois quil sloigna). Once inside the wood,
however, in this isolated space o il demeura abrit par les arbres quil
connaissait bien, the maquisard rediscovers le sens du rel. Let us begin
by commenting upon the name of this wood, the Bois des bruyres. This
name would translate roughly as Briar Wood (though bruyre can also
mean heath(land) or heather). Given the sensory dislocation described
in the passage above, it seems far from accidental that the name given to
the wood (bruyres) could designate either a sharp, prickly plant (briar
bushes) or a plant which is relatively soft to the touch (heather).
163 See Nancy, Corpus, pp.16162 and my analysis of Batailles Madame Edwarda in the
previous chapter (pp.7690, above).
164 Blanchot, LInstant de ma mort, pp.1213.
179
Part of the young mans return to reality is provided by his growing

awareness of the violence which continues to occur in the area around
him ([p]artout, des incendies, une suite de feu continu, toutes les fermes
brlaient).165 The primary senses through which this awareness derives
are those of vision, hearing and possibly smell, in the case of the fires and
burning farms. The young mans sensory awareness begins to return after
an unknown period of time but the gunfire in the area and the death that
it brings with it are discernibly continu.
In spite of this temporal disjuncture being so apparent to him,
Blanchots protagonist recovers his sens du rel through his perceptive
faculties, even if references to touch are limited to a sentiment de lgret.166
This fact implies that tactile interaction is not necessary in order to create
a perception of the rel. To summarise, the sens du rel that the young
man experiences is atemporal and is perceptible from a densely covered
space that is obscure to others but is readily visible to him. At the same
time, this space is only faintly perceptible by cutaneous means, in spite of
the visible density of trees which fill it.
However, before becoming unduly distracted by the mostly visual
qualities of the sens du rel that the young man rediscovers in the carnage that unfolds around him, we must remember that this rel is one
of mortality: Mme les chevaux gonfls, sur la route, dans les champs,
attestaient une guerre qui avait dur.167 Though these visions are such that
interacting with them cutaneously could prove physically harmful, the
young maquisard experiences them at one remove because he is sheltered
by the simultaneously tactile and visible familiarity of the wood. Traces of
the Bataillean sublime (especially those in Le Bleu du ciel) are also discernible in this scene from LInstant de ma mort. Blanchots young maquisard
alternates between being almost entirely numb to cutaneous sensation
and being all too aware of the gunfire, noxious smoke and bloated animal
corpses which surround him.
165 Ibid.
166 Ibid., p.12.
167 Ibid., p.13.
180
Chapter 2
Though Blanchots young protagonist survives his return to reality

from the carnage that he witnesses, his haptic faculties appear to have been
permanently diminished by what he has seen:
Plus tard, revenu Paris, il rencontra Malraux. Celui-ci lui raconta quil avait t
fait prisonnier (sans tre reconnu), quil avait russi schapper, tout en perdant
un manuscrit. [] Avec Paulhan, il fit faire des recherches qui ne pouvaient que
rester vaines.
Quimporte. Seul demeure le sentiment de lgret qui est la mort mme ou, pour
le dire plus prcisment, linstant de ma mort dsormais toujours en instance.168
The overwhelming lgret that impresses itself upon the young maquisards
sensory faculties means that the art or the textual remnants that it inspires
cannot, for the young man at least, proffer any substantive expression of
his haptic perceptions of warfare. Nor can his sensory faculties perceive the
diminishment of their haptic acuity. Blanchots protagonist has become
possessed and obsessed by an indefinable lightness which he cannot know as
anything other than his lifelong haptic perceptions of an always recurrent,
ever-deferring moment of death. This unrelenting, deathly sensation unites
the young mans experiences of war as a civilian who aided the maquis with
the elder voice that narrates those perceptions of conflict subsequently (the
pronoun il and the possessive ma in the quotation above both appear
to refer to the same individual). Perhaps the simple act of recollection is
what seals the overwhelming feeling of lgret that the young maquisard
continues to endure.
Inspired by the deferred haptic experience of death that is imprinted
upon his perceptive faculties by the firing squads image and the sensation
of lgret that this moment brings, the young protagonists perceptible
conflict between life and an eternally recurrent death becomes a fixed form
of fascination. The mortal haptic potential of the primed firing squads image
and the attendant fascination that it generates refuse to dissipate. This multisensory image is unable to know or resolve itself. To this extent, LInstant
de ma mort is thus only able to examine what makes life perceptible to us
168 Ibid., p.17.
181
by referring every facet of itself to the absolute effacement and exscription

of bodily (and in particular, haptic) sensation and perception.
Conclusion
In 1975, Emmanuel Levinas made an observation concerning Blanchots
writing which is applicable to all three of the literary works studied in this
chapter. Levinas says that
[s]i la vision et la connaissance consistent pouvoir sur les objets, les donner
distance, le retournement exceptionnel que produit lcriture revient tre touch
par ce que lon voit tre touch la distance. Le regard est saisi par luvre, les
mots regardent celui qui crit. (Cest ainsi que Blanchot dfinit la fascination). Le
langage potique qui a cart le monde laisse rapparatre le murmure incessant de
cet loignement.169
Levinas describes here the essence of the potentially haptic space that
I believe to be a constant in Blanchots theoretical and literary writings, a
visible space which touches (and can be touched), but only at a distance
and only intermittently. Blanchot explores this speculative space from
both haptic and optical standpoints in all of the texts I have referred to in
this chapter. However, I have shown that there is an appreciable shift from
the predominantly haptic interests of Thomas lobscur to the mostly visual
preoccupations of La Folie du jour. This arc concludes in LInstant de ma
mort with the ultimate impossibility of reconciling either form of perception with empirically instructive knowledge. All three of these works of
prose begin with some element of haptic interaction before moving into
the optical realm and concluding with the impossibility of either form of
perception being of materially instructive value.
169 Emmanuel Levinas, Sur Maurice Blanchot (Paris: Fata Morgana, 1975), p.16; emphasis
in original.
182
Chapter 2
Blanchot is not alone in his broad rejection of corporeal sensation

being capable of providing an instructive experience, however. As is apparent from my analyses thus far, Bataille and Blanchot both reject the idea that
the spatial differentiations or discernments which result from corporeal sensation could amount to a consistently schematised form of knowledge. Both
writers critical and literary treatments of sensation exhibit an oscillation
between potentially haptic (simultaneously visual and tactile) and purely
visual perception. However, Blanchots bias towards visual perception
insofar as he expresses any such bias is more apparent from an earlier
stage in his career (as is evidenced by the critical and non-critical works
analysed in this chapter).170 Blanchots literary works also tend increasingly
towards decorporealisation; what is perceived haptically or otherwise by
the human body becomes of less and less relevance to Blanchots literary
explorations of the mortal human condition.
In Batailles case, some remnant of perceiving corporeity remains necessary in order that his theoretical and literary works may continue to oscillate
between sublimity and abjection. The fact remains however that according
to Blanchot and Bataille, our sensory organs (and haptic perceptions core
sensory faculties in particular) can neither glean nor enhance the acuity
of any empirical knowledge that we may be able to perceive. This truth
applies equally to Blanchots male and female characters. In the previous
chapter, however, I showed that the majority of Batailles male characters
display significantly more perceptual awareness of themselves and of others
than his female protagonists do. (Histoire de lils Simone is the notable
exception to this rule.)
As a counterpoint to the literary and critical approaches of Bataille
and Blanchot in matters of haptic perception, Michel Serres, the writer
whose works I shall be analysing in the next chapter, bases much of his
writing between the 1970s and 2010s on the premise that empirical knowledge is indeed shaped by specifically haptic perception. Moreover, it can
170 Though our analyses differ considerably, Ravel for example claims that [l]e regard
a chez Blanchot un statut ordonnancier et lgifrant (Maurice Blanchot et lart au
vingtime sicle, p.37).
183
be argued that Serress work blurs the boundaries between literary prose,
poetry, autobiography and critical commentary in ways that the writings of
Bataille and Blanchot do not. What parallels and differences of theoretical
approach and literary execution exist between Serress works and those of
Blanchot and Bataille where haptic perception is concerned?
Chapter 3
Serres: Haptic Perception, Touching Knowledge
The descriptions of haptic experience that appear in the theoretical and literary works of Blanchot and Bataille examined thus far exhibit a number of
common features. Both writers posit some form of disconnection between
the manner in which we perceive physical space and the manner in which
we perceive our physical interactions with this space. The critical and literary means through which both writers expose this disjuncture are variable and no one approach to the issue is privileged by either Bataille or
Blanchot for any length of time. Equivocation and a refusal to judge are
the two most discernible traits of the writers critical and literary accounts
of human spatial perception.
In their explorations of how the human body interacts with spaces
that it may or may not perceive, Blanchot and Bataille also suggest that
these interactions between sensory organs and (im)perceptible space do
not necessarily occur within the confines of temporal continuity. Just as
material cause need not determine material effect, so sensory stimulus does
not always give rise to bodily reaction, or vice versa.
For this reason, the critical and literary works of Bataille and Blanchot
also problematise the extent to which bodily perception of space or time
may be analysed in terms of the haptic theorisations put forward by Alos
Riegl, Laura U. Marks or Mark Paterson. This is especially troublesome
when we recall that all three of the theorists just mentioned claim that
some form of intellectually instructive data may be gleaned from haptic
perception. As I have demonstrated, however, the works of Bataille and
Blanchot do lend themselves to the discontinuous, exscriptive vision of
haptic perception posited by Jean-Luc Nancy.
In addition, I have shown that Bataille and Blanchots critical and
literary approaches to haptic experience demonstrate an increasing
186
Chapter 3
proclivity towards abstracting bodily sensation from any form of rational

schematisation. In this sense, it can be said that these writers advocate
an increasingly virtual approach to the bodys perceptive relationship
with haptic space and time. If we adhere to the arguments of Bataille or
Blanchot, the less physically centred (or the more virtual) that our bodily
relations with our perceptible environment become, the less we seek to
rationalise our sensory interactions with the haptic space and temporality that we inhabit. With this increasing absence of rationalisation comes
a paradoxically heightened sense of understanding: sensory experience
is less mediated by empirically suspect philosophies of perception. In
fact, what this liberation leads us to is a perceptible though inexplicable silence in Blanchots case. Batailles writings appear to suggest that
this sensory migration towards the virtual will, at best, lead us to a quasiNietzschean embrace of sensuality and tragedy that defies all other rationale
stubbornly.
It is at this point that I turn to Michel Serress critical theories and
literary writings, which offer a piquant rebuff to many of the positions
just itemised. Unlike Bataille or Blanchot, Serres claims more or less
explicitly though not without caveat that haptic perception is rich
in intellectually instructive potential. I shall be considering the extent to
which Serress portrayals of haptic perception differ from those of Bataille
and Blanchot.
In all of the following, it should not be forgotten that Serress first
major publication (Le Systme de Leibniz et ses modles mathmatiques)1
only appeared in 1968, some six years after Batailles death and relatively
late in Blanchots active career. Moreover, Serres has not yet had the last
word on any of the subjects under discussion in this chapter; at the time
of writing, he continues to publish a new book every twelve to eighteen
months. It is also extremely rare that any of the more than fifty books that
Serres has published as of May 2014 addresses just one issue. In the last
fifteen years alone, his writing has tackled matters as diverse as music, ecology, theatre, sport, education and art history often within the same text.
1
Michel Serres, Le Systme de Leibniz et ses modles mathmatiques (Paris: PUF, 1968).
Serres
187
In interviews with Bruno Latour, Serres admits that the interdisciplinary

nature of his tertiary education played a major role in his decision to write
in a style which, over the decades, has become increasingly at odds with
typical genre distinctions between critical theory and literary prose.2 As
Maria Assad says, Serress texts present [] topics in discursive nuggets,
fragments, and sometimes allusive parables whose thematic and conceptual
cohesion is not always easily recognisable.3
Serress frequently challenging refusal to adhere to categorisations
is equally apparent in his treatment of the perceiving human body, a
subject to which he returns on many occasions. In this chapter, I shall be
considering Serress postulation of a form of time which is not only continuous and dynamic in nature, but which is also integral to the manner
in which we perceive haptic space. What links Serress vision of time with
his portrayal of haptic perception is his approach to the question of how
we acquire knowledge. His answers to this question derive from broadly
empirical principles. More specifically, Serress postulation of time as a
form of dynamic continuity is rooted in his belief that history is driven
by empirical revelation. Rather than overarching and generalising theories or abstractive scientific laws, Serres claims heavily localised and
individualised moments of empirical discovery to be at the root of humanitys continually evolving pool or rseau of knowledge. Through this temporal
patchwork of localised, haptically discernible experiments and experiences, a flow of information develops. As we shall see, however, knowledge and information are not always interchangeable concepts in Serress
thinking.
2
3
Serres discusses his multidisciplinary graduate and postgraduate studies in Michel

Serres and Bruno Latour, claircissements (Paris: Franois Bourin, 1992), pp.1617,
2032 and 4647.
Maria L. Assad, Reading with Michel Serres: An Encounter with Time (Albany, NY:
SUNY, 1999), p.5.
188
Chapter 3
Information, Matters
Before considering how Serress early works approach the issue of human
perception, we must first understand how he conceives of the perceptive
information received and transmitted by the bodys sensory faculties. Before
we can even do that, we must be aware of how Serres believes information
to travel. In the second text of his Herms cycle, LInterfrence (1972),
Serres tells us that
chaque rgion est un changeur: jinterviens dans le monde objectif et contrle
linformation qui circule confusment entre les choses, et tout objet est, aussi, un
changeur; et voici quau moment o je sais en construire, je me perois moi-mme
comme tel, et les objets culturels que jengendre mon image. Jinterviens, et ne
pense que si jintercepte.4
It is clear from this passage that Serres believes the transmission of information and the knowledge that it conveys to be materially impactful:
he describes thought as a process of intercepting, of confused bundles
of data which emanate from and are receivable (or more accurately, are
intercepted) by both inanimate objects and living beings. This process
of sending and interception is constructive: it demands that the thinker/
interceptor construct a mental image of the cultural objects which enable
this information transfer.
This relation dictated by image has a material basis, however. The
process of interception to which Serres alludes in the quotation above
proceeds from an individual being struck by how he or she perceives an
object (much as Riegl suggests that the vision of a haptic surface imposes
itself upon the beholders retina).5 The Serresian image thus appears to have
little in common with the Blanchovian notion of image as ghostly petrification. The indifferent, indeterminate aspect of Blanchots literary image
4
5
Michel Serres, Herms II: LInterfrence (Paris: Minuit, 1972), p.16.

See p.7, n. 12 above for a transcription and translation of the passage in question,
which appears in Riegl, ber antike und moderne Kunstfreunde, pp.20203.
Serres
189
does however resonate with Serress explanation of thought inasmuch as

the latter of these concepts is an interceptive process which also interferes
with the flow of (perceptual) information. As Serres tells us, [l]interfrence
est, proprement, la rduction de la diffrence.6
Unlike the Blanchovian image, there is a sense of rationality underlining this Serresian philosophy of indifference: il est indispensable dlaborer
une philosophie du transport, de la circulation, et de labsence de rfrence.7
What Serres in fact postulates is a form of free-floating information that
exists and transmits itself independently of all indices sensory or otherwise.
Serres asserts that [l]espace est une forme a priori de la sensibilit.8 As a
result, (sensory) information that traverses perceptible space cannot be
bound by material or linguistic constraints.
In the midst of this newfound expressive freedom, perceptible difference becomes a means of communication: En tout cas, le diffrent, cest
le dform [], cest linform. Voici le code. Le langage objectif. Dont on
cherche, partout, la grammaire et la combinatoire. Non lunit dune loi,
mais la cohrence dune langue.9 Conscious communication is thus imbued
with an appeal to our corporeal senses: how else would we determine the
constitutive deformation or incompletion of the difference to which Serres
alludes? Speaking of the manner in which we perceive, Serres is thus able
to state that [i]l existe bien une intersubjectivit, un consensus transcendantal without appearing paradoxical.10
Now that we have established how information flows according to
Serress system, how does that information interact with emitters and receivers? Differentiation plays an integral part in the process once more, but
not perhaps in the expected manner. Serres explains that
6 Serres, Herms II, p.40.
7 Ibid., p.41.
8 Ibid., p.42.
9 Ibid., p.101.
10 Ibid., p.16. Mark Paterson also observes the seeming paradox of Serress juxtaposition
of transcendence and subjectivity (Paterson, The Senses of Touch, p.68). Similarities
with Batailles formulation of the informe are apparent in this paradox, but a word
limit prevents me from exploring these parallels here.
190
Chapter 3
il existe quelque chose et moi qui partage la mme dtermination qui la fait exister
comme chose exprimentable. La chose est exprimentable, parce quelle existe comme
conservateur et metteur dinformation et parce que jexiste comme lecteur, rcepteur
et conservateur dune mme ou analogue information. Elle est exprimentable et je
suis exprimentateur dans un rseau communicant o nous changeons des fonctions
trs simples, si simples quelles peuvent mettre en communication les objets entre
eux, sans que jintervienne sauf pour contrler. Ainsi, tel objet est metteur, tel autre
rcepteur, tel autre vecteur, tel, enfin, conservateur dinformation.11
As is clear from this quotation, Serress positing of sensory data as information is reliant upon a discernible homogeneity already existing between
a perceiver and the object that he or she perceives, in order for the two
elements to be apparent to each other.
Of particular import to any haptic interpretation of Serress information theory is the manner in which transmitting and receiving surfaces
act as selective repositories of sensory indices. The transfer of information between perceiver and object is able to occur because the two elements possess une mme ou analogue information. Sensory experience
can never therefore be considered truly revelatory. At its most unexpected
or surprising, a beholders perceptive experience of a given object will only
reveal forgotten or less immediately apparent dimensions or aspects of the
information gleaned. The scientific basis of Serress thinking is appreciable
in notions such as this; he hails Lon Brillouins 1959 treatise La Science et
la thorie de linformation as a major influence.12 As the following extract
underlines, Serress understanding of the manner in which information
flows is far more reliant upon objectivising scientific observation than it
is upon phenomenological interrogations of the experiencing subject: Ici,
la relation objet-objet est fondamentale, et le sujet est hors circuit []. Ici,
je ne me mets en circuit quen mintgrant au rseau fondamental de communication [] objetobjet.13
Serres, Herms II, p.98.
See Serres and Latour, claircissements, p.25 and Lon Brillouin, La Science et la
thorie de linformation (Paris: Masson, 1959).
13 Serres, Herms II, p.98. Later in his career, Serres admits that [l]a phnomnologie
ne mintressait pas []. Pourquoi une si haute technicit, pour si peu? (Serres and
11
12
Serres
191
At first glance, Serress insistance upon the centrality of the relation

objet-objet appears to rule out any haptic interpretation of his theories;
it does not allow for the conscious interaction between discerning subject
and perceived object that is demanded by any of the haptic models that
I presented in the introduction of this book. Indeed, the way in which
Serress speculative information network functions is such that it does
not seem to permit the material or temporal fixity necessary to differentiate haptically perceived information from optically gleaned data: par
le flux que je reois et celui que jmets, je suis indfiniment ici et ailleurs;
je ne suis pas un point fix ici et maintenant, jhabite une multiplicit
despaces, je vis une multiplicit de temps, toujours autre et toujours
le mme.14 Simultaneously extant in a number of spatial and temporal
dimensions, each node of Serress oscillating information network reoit et
redistribue, [] trie sans mlanger, [] simule localement, sur une station
ponctuelle, la totalit du rseau effrent et affrent.15
This last detail is of particular importance. In a pre-emption of Nancys
sensory zones,16 every constitutive nodule of the Serresian information
network is capable of creating a temporally immediate reproduction of
some or all of the network to which it belongs, including therein the data
which traverses it. The virtual quality of this concept is underscored by
Serress decision to dub each such nodule un quasi-point.17 The information
Latour, claircissements, p.20). Speaking of Maurice Merleau-Pontys phenomenological writings, Serres remarks that they contain [b]eaucoup de phnomnologie,
pas de sensation: tout dans la langue (ibid., p.193).
15 Ibid., p.131.
16 Le sentir et le se-sentir-sentir qui fait le sentir lui-mme, cest toujours sentir la fois
quil y a de lautre (ce que lon sent) et quil y a dautres zones du sentir, ignores par
celle qui sent en ce moment, ou bien auxquelles celle-ci touche de tous cts, mais
seulement par la limite o elle cesse dtre la zone quelle est. Chaque sentir touche au
reste du sentir comme ce quil ne peut pas sentir (Nancy, Les Muses, p.36; emphasis
in original).
17 Serres, Herms II, p.131. Before going any further, I would like to clarify my usage of
the term virtual in this instance and throughout the remainder of this chapter. Ian
Tuckers article Sense and the Limits of Knowledge: Bodily Connections in the Work
192
Chapter 3
network can hence be said to be transcendental, even if it remains rooted

in physicality and empiricism. In addition, none of the data transmitted
across the network are merged or otherwise conflated. This suggests that
the confluence of tactile and visual sensation that is integral to the modes
of haptic perception put forward by Riegl, Marks, Paterson or even Nancy
remains possible, but difficult to attain. As with Blanchots theories of perception, however, we encounter a temporal multiplicity in Serress understanding of sensory integration that further problematises any speculative
synergy between visual and tactile data.18 More precisely, this polyvalent
time threatens to disrupt the inexorable order of visual stimulus leading to
of Serres (Theory, Culture & Society, 28 (2011) <doi: 10.1177/0263276410372240>

[accessed 31 August 2012]) links Serress concept of the virtual with that postulated
by Gilles Deleuze in Diffrence et rptition (Paris: PUF, 1968; repr. 2011). Alluding
to Serress writing in Les Cinq Sens and the later 1980s, Tucker claims that bodies are
seen as possessing the ability to sense, to feel in ways that escape common cultural
patterns. Such a framing imbues bodies with the potential to escape the social, to
enter a space that is new, a place where invention can exist. The inventive place is what
Deleuze [] would refer to as virtual, a realm that is ever present, although never
directly accessible. This is not to suggest the virtual is a space, a place of invention,
rather that Deleuze proffers it as a concept to think creation (Sense and the Limits
of Knowledge, 15354). My reading of the Serresian virtual differs somewhat from
that of Tucker (and his interpretation of Deleuze). Following Serress words in the
critical and literary works studied in this chapter, I suggest that the dermal change
which remains integral to Serress thinking of the body retains an inherently social
and extracorporeal element of interaction. In addition, I shall demonstrate that the
Serresian bodys sensory faculties are able to gain fleeting, transcendent access to the
virtual realm through simulations of haptic sensation. I do however concur with
Tuckers view that the virtual is not a consistently definable space. I say this because
Serres portrays the virtual as a spatially allusive domain which nevertheless resists
quantitative or qualitative analysis.
18 In Reading with Michel Serres (p.75), Assad inadvertently justifies this contention
when she remarks that for Serres, [t]he skin is the common border where the world
and the body touch, where the one who feels mixes with the felt or sensately experienced. It is always variated and contingent, it is a fuzzy set which means that it
is not a middle or focal point, not a geometric center or point of order, but a pure
variability or mlange (emphasis in original).
Serres
193
tactile interaction that is demanded by the haptic theorisations of Riegl,

Marks or even Paterson:
Jhabite, archaquement, lespace dun corps organique plein, continu, connexe, lastique, [] o les changes soprent selon une totalit sourde et continue []. Il est
structur comme un espace topologique. [C]es structures sont telles et invariantes,
que je les vive, [] ou que je les pense. [ J]e suis le sige dune pluralit dchanges
ou dinterceptions.19
In spite of the significant caveats that I have just outlined, however, the
quotation above reveals that Serres tends towards an integrative schematisation of human perception (je suis le sige dune pluralit dchanges ou
dinterceptions). It is also apparent that he considers the human body to
be inherently topological or manifestly constructed of multiple physical
and sensory strata. Nevertheless, the element of chance that is integral in
establishing the bodys physical and perceptive presence and its sensory
interrelations with the world mean that ma seule certitude est dtre situ
irrductiblement, plong latralement dans lespace transcendantal de la
communication, dtre indfiniment travers par un flux continu dont je ne
suis quun cho de hasard, cest--dire une pure possibilit dinterruption.20
In other words, no absolute differentiation between haptic and optic space
is possible. As with Blanchot and Bataille, Serres believes the outcome of
this indecision between haptic and optic space, between body and the
eschewing of tangible sensation in particular, to be capable of unifying
society, rather than being socially divisive:
Qui suis-je encore? Une virtualit discontinue de tri, de slection dans la pense
intersubjective [] qui spare les modulations du bruit mondial, un changeur pour
messagers. Je suis lintercepteur du nous. La con-science est le savoir qui a pour sujet
la communaut du nous. La communication cre lhomme; il peut la rduire, non la
supprimer sans se supprimer lui-mme.21
19 Serres, Herms II, pp.15152; emphasis in original.

20 Ibid., p.155.
21 Ibid.
194
Chapter 3
With the subject substituted and replaced with transcendental intersubjectivity comes a new form of interdisciplinary science (and, implicitly,
a new notion of what constitutes observation to complement it): Il faut
lire interfrence, comme inter-rfrence. [I]l ny a pas de science-reine, []
de science-rfrence.22
The Material Traces of Time

The new, unreferenced model of perception advocated by Serres in
Herms II at once unifies and problematises linear conceptions of time and
space. As Serres illustrates in Herms V: Le Passage du Nord-Ouest (1980), he
distrusts the theoretical recasting of observations made in the real world as a
valid means of solving entirely abstractive geometrical problems. According
to Serres, we cannot even be certain what the categorisations of time and
space actually mean in either abstract or empirical terms:
le rel nest pas dcoup en crneaux, il est sporadique, espaces et temps, dtroits et
cols. La classification des sciences les ordonne dans un espace et lhistoire des sciences
les arrange dans un temps, comme si nous savions, avant les sciences mme, ce quil
en est de lespace et du temps. [] Au moins avons-nous douter de cet espace de
classes, de ce temps de spectacle.23
Serres implies here that space and time cannot be classified or dissected using
visual cues or references because the realities evoked by these cues or references are neither uniform nor perceptually contiguous in nature. Moreover,
those same visual cues or references are incapable of distinguishing time
and space from a broader notion of illustrative, demonstrative spectacle
with any certainty. This indecision stems from the collapse of the subject/
22
23
Ibid., p.157.
Michel Serres, Herms V: Le Passage du Nord-Ouest (Paris: Minuit, 1980), p.23.
Serres
195
object binary explained above, in which the genre distinctions sujet and
objet become as hard to discern as those of space or time.
It is at this moment of indecision that Serress presentation of writing
as a form of information comes to the fore: Espace des modles, espace
des images, espace du spectacle, lespace des similitudes est bien celui de
la reprsentation. [] Le rcit, porte cu, offre les icnes au regard [].
Jespre crire sans dtruire ni murs ni plans.24 The summary of empirical
observations conveyed by the rcit is capable of representing the sensory
experiences of which it speaks, but can only do so by means of reference
or allusion (images or similitudes, in Serress vocabulary). In the words of
Paul A. Harris, Serress method [] turns literary analysis into an exercise
in projective geometry in the sense that it maps the surface of fictional
discourse onto topological surfaces.25
As we have seen already, Serres disallows any notion of universal reference at this stage of his thinking. Because of this, the rcit must act as
a localised suspension of time, a protective shield or value (cu) which
evokes nothing other than its writers visions at that frozen moment. The
inscribed rcit as Serres posits it thus attests to an infinitely selective suspension of modern sciences laws of cause and effect: Lordre nest pas que
de lespace ou du voir de lobservateur. Il est aussi un ordre des rasions, par
chane de rapports, ou par consquence. La loi dune srie par cause et par
effet demeure une relation dordre, non-rflexive, asymtrique et transitive.26
Rather than prompting a fall into the stasis of reflective though often
communally experienced silence favoured by Blanchots critique, however,
the demise of absolute truth and absolute falsity posited by Serres heralds
a new model of social interaction. This model is based upon subjective
perceptive experiences. The sum of these individually experienced perceptions creates a global topology that has no common language because it is
24 Ibid., p.34.
25 Paul A. Harris, The Smooth Operator, in Mapping Michel Serres, ed. by Niran Abbas
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003), pp.11334 (p.116).
26 Serres, Herms V, p.35.
196
Chapter 3
composed entirely of subjectively gleaned information.27 My analyses thus

far have shown that Serres believes (spatial) perception to be inherently
bound by semiotics or, more precisely, an individuals mental experiences of
how his or her perceptions and the language that designates those perceptions interrelate. Yet for Serres, it is the very polyphony of any speculative
global topology of shared sensation that induces its silence:
Lespace est condition du sens et des valeurs, topologie sous smiotique, lespace
local dcoup en rgion. Pour lespace global, on ne peut rien en dire, il na ni sens
ni valeur de vrai, il est silencieux. Le silence ternel de ces espaces infinis meffraie.
Si vous parlez, hors le silence, dans le sens et dans les valeurs, il faut une topologie
locale []: comment recoller ces morceaux?28
Here, Serres asks how the silence of globally shared perceptive experiences
and its manifold, localised topologie sous smiotique can be reconciled. He
turns to both the material and the temporal in order to explain his position:
Lobjet de la philosophie, de la science classique, est le cristal, et en gnral, le solide
stable, bords distincts. Le systme est ferm, il est en quilibre. Le deuxime objetmodle est bords fluents, cest la gerbe ou le banc de nuages. Et le systme est oscillant. Il oscille entre des bords larges, il a aussi des bords.29
As we see from the extract above, Serres does not base his understanding of perception and the expression of it upon materialist principles
(embodied here by the crystals hardened outer surfaces and unchanging
inner structure). Instead, he evokes a system of perceptive and linguistic
27
See David Webbs article Penser le multiple sans le concept: vers un intellect dmocratique (in Michel Serres, ed. by Franois LYvonnet and Christiane Frmont (Paris:
LHerne, 2010), pp.8794): dans luvre de Serres [l]es mots sont des choses et leur
signification est elle aussi intrinsquement variable. La rticence de Serres quitter le
terrain de lexprience est donc aussi une rticence abandonner le langage et reflte
lintuition que les choses ne se prsentent pas dans le langage, comme si on pouvait
esprer remonter leurs origines (pour Serres, cela est une ineptie) (p.93; emphasis
in original).
29 Ibid., p.51.
Serres
197
interrelation that is akin to malleable, semi-solid composites such as sheaves

(of corn, for example) and banks of cloud. This second variety of objetmodle exhibits a physically discernible presence but the visible surfaces
of such objects appear to vary at will. They can seem to go from being in a
nearly solid state to complete dissolution so from one material extreme
to another with little rhyme or reason. Clearly, the changes of state perceptible in this second group of objects are driven by a discernible progress
of time.
Time remains similarly integral to the third form of material presence
that Serres identifies: Il existe une approche, une chelle, un temps, par
rapport quoi un objet quelconque du monde napparat pas entre les
bords que je viens de noter, uniformes ou oscillants. [I]l parat fluctuer
au hasard.30 I suggest that the random fluctuations that characterise this
troisime objet,31 as Serres names it, are an alternation between haptically and optically discernible characteristics.32 This postulation seems less
outlandish when we recall that Serres does not believe time to exist as a
coherent, unified whole.33 He claims instead that every surface that we perceive (including those which constitute our body) exists within a temporal
stream of its own. Every such stream is unique to the surface upon which
it acts. Each stream also functions independently of those around it: Les
objets sont des flammes geles par des temps diffrents. Mon corps est une
flamme un peu plus lente que ce rideau cramoisi qui consume les bches.
30 Ibid., pp.5152.
31 Ibid., p.51.
32 This remark is inspired by a comment made by Steven Connor concerning one of
Serress subsequent publications: The senses are the body forming and reforming
itself. As such the body is a miraculous node in the flux, a negentropic eddy or swirl in
the current that traverses it yet which it delays (from Michel Serress Les Cinq Sens,
in Empire of the Senses: The Sensual Cultural Reader, ed. by David Howes (Oxford:
Berg, 2005), pp.31834 (p.332).
33 Connor observes (ibid., p.332) that for Serres, self-touching, [] faces outwards
and inwards, backwards and forwards, at the same time. In doing so, it disobeys the
fundamental law of time, the law of entropy or going out.
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Chapter 3
Dautres choses sont plus lentes encore, pierres, dautres plus foudroyantes,
soleils. Mille temps font battre leurs bords.34
Serres states that in order to perceive our own presence or that of
our environment, our sensory organs distinguish more or less consciously
between an infinite variety of temporalities. No less significant is his correlative assertion that perceptible surfaces act as a form of temporal enclosure, as a regionalisation of time which is enforced by physically discernible
boundaries. To this extent, it can be said that for Serres, time is an optically
discernible phenomenon which is housed by haptically discernible shells.
This assertion comes with the obvious caveat that, due to the fluidity that
Serres believes to be inherent to the concept of time itself, the physical
boundaries that encompass temporal solidity are themselves subject to
gradual, perceptible variation.
Thus, according to Serres, when we are aware that we see and/or touch
a given surface, our sense organs are gluing together a fixed moment of our
perception of time. For just a split second, we petrify our conscious sense
of time. We then integrate our temporal consciousness with our perception
of the temporality enclosed by the surface that we are interacting with.35
Clearly, this sensory processing occurs on the basis of how apparent
the passage of time is to us. That is to say, on the basis of how we perceive
temporal difference. (As Serres explains, [l]a vie est identiquement la synchronie de plusieurs temps. [] Il y a contingence lorsque deux temps se
touchent.)36 The process that Serres describes is reminiscent of attempting
to piece together a jigsaw composed of ostensibly identical parts by first
looking for its corner pieces. Given the importance of discernible temporal difference to Serress perceptually integrative explanations of space and
time, the notion of a universally applicable spatial or temporal continuum
becomes nonsensical:

35 Genevive James states that [p]our Serres, lindividuation se fait par la conscience
du temps (Le Philosophe rcitant, in Michel Serres, ed. by LYvonnet and Frmont,
pp.26672 (p.267)).
36 Serres, Herms V, pp.80, 83.
Serres
199
Lespace comme tel, unique et global, est, je le crains, un artefact philosophique. []

Le temps, comme tel, unique et universel, est lui aussi, un artefact. Quand nous parlons de ce couple clbre, bni, monogamique, par la philosophie, ou parfois divorc,
nous ne faisons pas mme une synthse entre des temps divers ou des espaces spars,
nous mettons un son priv de sens.37
As Serres elucidates in the quotation above, the realms of space and

time and their discontinuous interactions cannot be navigated by means of
abstractive theory or philosophy alone. Instead, we must rely upon empiricism to guide us through these tessellated regions. Serres evokes the tactile
experience of those who engage in needlework in order to illustrate how
empiricism might lead us through the alternately congruent and incongruent zones of space and time:
tel espace topologique est justement celui du tact. [] Les espaces qualitatifs []
sont la fois a priori et sensoriels. [N]ous vivons dans une multiplicit despaces de
ce genre, et [] nous travaillons, parfois, tels le tisserand ou la tricoteuse qui fait
marcher ses doigts sans les voir, en eux et par eux, et non dans ce cube euclidien.38
Aside from obvious haptic/optic binaries, the plurality of coexisting spaces

to which Serres alludes here could also be thought of in terms of proprioception (that is, the synergy of kinaesthetic, vestibular and cutaneous
sensations itemised by Paterson). In order for this empiricism to be truly
haptic in nature, however, sight must play some role in it (if we follow the
definitions of haptic perception put forward by Riegl, Marks or Nancy).
Unfortunately, Serress speculative tactile topography integrates visual sensation with discontinuity. This integration is arrived at in such a way that
he appears to refute any notion of haptic perception:
dj, lacte de voir suppose un ou plusieurs espaces. Lobjet comme tel change dans sa
structure et sa dfinition selon quil est extrait ou plong, serti ou desserti, ce changement ne dpend plus du site de lobservateur ni de la reprsentation, puisque celle-ci,
justement, suppose un espace global de dfinition telle et telle.39
37
38
39
Ibid., p.68.
Ibid., p.69.
Ibid., p.71.
200
Chapter 3
The crux of the problem is Serress insistence that the position of the observer
does not matter because there is no unified space or time to measure his or
her proximity to the object being surveyed. As I explained in the introductory chapter, the position of the observer is critical to the definitions of
haptisch and optisch perspectives formulated by Riegl. The same is true of
Markss filmic definition of haptic perception. Even Patersons proprioceptively orientated explanations of haptic sensation and interaction assume
that the haptic perceiver is able to situate himself or herself spatially.
Perhaps most damning for any haptic interpretation of Serress thinking is his remark that [n]ul na jamais pu intgrer le local au global [;]
ce qui se fait passer pour un universel global nest quune varit enfle
dmesurment.40 According to Riegl, Marks or Paterson, haptic sensation is
contingent upon the human bodys ability to perceive a fraction of a surface
by tactile and visual means on occasions when using our sight alone will
not suffice. (We use our understanding of the surfaces that we can at once
see and grasp to decipher the characteristics of other parts of that surface
which do not make sense to us on a visual basis and are too distant from
us to be touched or are simply too large to be perceived in one glance.)
Temporal discontinuity is also integral to Serress concept of space.
This is similarly incompatible with the simultaneous physical and mental
presence demanded by the haptic theories of Riegl, Marks or Paterson:
[n]ous sommes archaques dans les trois quarts de nos actions; peu de gens,
moins de penses encore, sont, de part en part, prsents la date de leur
temps.41 Yet in spite of these caveats, Serres explains human perceptions
inevitable flaws in overtly haptic terms:
Nous chassons le dtail, et nous ne gardons que les peaux. Nous percevons un peu
les superficies, des points singuliers dans un continu. [D]ans lespace de communication, volent les muses. Nous vivons perceptiblement au milieu des simulacres, des
simulations du monde. Nos sens simulent les objets, au meilleur sens technique.42
40 Ibid., p.75.
41 Serres and Latour, claircissements, p.95.
42 Serres, Herms V, pp.10708.
Serres
201
Though he is paraphrasing a claim by Lucretius that only the perceptible details of the simulacrums outermost surface impose themselves
upon our senses, it is abundantly clear from the comments above that
Serres remains preoccupied with the idea of tactile perception because it
is a sensory experience that all humans are able to share in. As the following extract shows, Serres believes this skin-deep, surface-defined sharing
of simulacra to be linked with stirrings of linguistic and cultural exchange
which in turn seek to disembody language:
Nous tous percevons le monde par les terminaux sensoriels et la peau, nous le dessinons
de nos gestes, nous lendurons et nous en jouissons, le transformons par le travail,
le signifions par le langage, au moins le dsignons par l, le rvons et le fantasmons,
par le mythe et le pathtique.43
Serres nevertheless wishes to retain some interaction, however hazy,

between the perceiving body, inscribed language and cultural artefacts
that are accessible (or at once tangible and visible, if we extrapolate from
his definition of the inaccessible in Herms II):44
Les lettres ne sont pas seulement, comme en alphabet Morse, des points, des traits.
Elles sont aussi des ouverts, des ferms, des tracs intermdiaires, des nuds, des
bords, des graphes en gnral. Voici la topologie. Le tisserand, je le savais, est un
artisan pr-gomtrique. Mais aussi le scribe de cursive.45
In three short phrases, Serres manages to equate topology, sewing and handwriting. He suggests that the geometrical study of how objects and spaces
interact, stitching by hand and handwriting as an artefact of (spatial) perception are products of manual praxes which differentiate one space from
another. Nor should it escape our attention that the flowing, continuous
43 Ibid., p.161.
44 [L]inaccessible est ce que je ne puis toucher, ce vers quoi je ne puis transporter la
rgle, ce sur quoi lunit ne peut tre applique. [] La vue est un tact sans contact.
[] Linaccessible est, parfois, accessible la vue (Serres, Herms II, p.165).
202
Chapter 3
perception of space integral to topology, weaving and handwriting can be

perceived haptically.
How can Serres draw such seemingly tenuous parallels as these without venturing into poeticism or wilful obfuscation? Ironically enough, the
answer to this conundrum is provided by Serress concept of the virtual and
the manner in which it interacts with haptic perception.
A Virtually Haptic Turn

As I have shown, Serress early critical texts (exemplified by Herms II
and Herms V) display a regard for tactile perception that is far more pronounced than in the critical works of either Bataille or Blanchot. This regard
for tactile perception is even more apparent in Serress texts after 1980. At
that moment, his writing style changes appreciably: Serres becomes even
more interested in modern sciences relationship with literature than he
was previously and begins to present his prose in an overtly literary style.
Theory and dry terminology give way to erudition and etymological analyses. By so doing, Serres makes explicit his conviction that [l]a philosophie
nest pas un savoir, ni une discipline parmi les sciences usuelles, car elle tient
ce balancement entre tout et rien.46 The corollary of this stance is that
[i]l y a seulement des corpus de textes, des situations, des lieux, des objets.
De moins en moins de textes, dailleurs, et de plus en plus dobjets. [] La
science nest pas un contenu, mais un mode de circulation.47
Serres remains true to his word; henceforth, neither philosophy nor
science dominates his critical writings, though both categories of knowledge continue to contribute richly to his works. claircissements (1992),
Serress collaborative interview-cum-manifesto with Bruno Latour, is a
prime example of this even-handed approach. Indeed, Serress commitment

47 Ibid., p.154.
Serres
203
to intellectualism at its most fluid is mirrored by his continued conviction

that even the most solid regions of space known to modern science in fact
exist without either materially or temporally fixed borders:
les solides les plus durs ne sont que des fluides un peu plus visqueux que dautres.
Et [] les bords ou les frontires sont flous. Fluides flous. Alors lintelligence entre
dans le temps, dans les erres et les fluctuations, les plus rapides, les plus vives, les plus
subtiles [] de la turbulence []. Les relations engendrent des objets, des tres et
des actes, non linverse.48
There are a number of comments to be made concerning Serress words

here. Firstly, he postulates an explicit connection between solidity (which
may present itself in many unexpected forms) and knowledge. Under
certain circumstances, it is therefore possible that for Serres, touching (or
even seeing) a surface can provide valuable information to its perceiver.
Moreover, this knowing interaction between perceiver and surface is not
uniform in nature: it is prone to fluctuation. Such fluctuations are temporally specific phenomena: they do not operate outside the scheme of chronology in the manner that Blanchot claims fascination does, for example.
Thus, contrary to the stances taken by either Bataille or Blanchot, touching
or seeing a surface over a period of time observing its material characteristics either manually or visually is, in Serress opinion, a valid exercise.
The final and most crucial aspect of Serress argument arises from
this last point. Any sensory interaction or exchange that occurs between
two surfaces, defines both surfaces. So, until we are able to perceive, we do
not exist. Our surroundings are similarly nonexistent until they somehow
stimulate our perceptive organs, whether haptically or not. In short, we
must interact sensorially in order to be.49 We are evidently far removed
here from the increasingly disembodied silences towards which Blanchot
and even Bataille lean in their critical and literary works.
48 Ibid., p.159.
49 See Tucker, Sense and the Limits of Knowledge, 154: Individualism becomes nonreducible to individual bodies, but will occur as a set of relations (or event) at a particular moment, part of which is the constitution of a specific mode of human experience.
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Chapter 3
As Serres explains, mutually definitive interactions between surfaces

may also be haptic in a proprioceptive sense: Allons, debout, courez, sautez,
remuez-vous, dansez; comme le corps, lintelligence requiert le mouvement,
surtout des mouvements subtils et composs. [I]l y a beaucoup plus de
rapports, de relations, que de sujets ou dobjets.50 Yet just as Serres appears
to imply that we might be right to think of the world (and ourselves) in
haptic terms, he takes a detour into the virtual realm, stating that objets
fabriqus [] depuis la revolution industrielle [] inventent des entrelacs
serrs de relations nouvelles: ce sont tous des quasi-objets [,] ces objets qui
conditionnent la totalit de nos relations.51
Serress preoccupation with the virtual object is longstanding; it makes
repeated appearances in the Herms series but is only fully addressed in
Serress subsequent writings. To clarify, the Serresian quasi-objet is a physical object that can be observed as it passes between perceiving bodies. The
quasi-objects virtual component is its peripatetic travel from one tangible surface to another, which is viewed from a distance by a third party.52
As I shall demonstrate in the second half of this chapter, a common Serresian
example of the quasi-objet is a rugby ball being thrown from one player to
another in front of a stadium crowd.53

51 Ibid., pp.29091.
52 Steven D. Brown explains this idea well in Michel Serres: Science, Translation
and the Logic of the Parasite, Theory, Culture & Society, 19 (2002) <doi:
10.1177/0263276402019003001> [accessed 31 August 2012] (p.21): Consider a
game of rugby. The players are oriented around the ball, the token. They act in relation to the token, which is like a little sun around which the players orbit. [T]he
relationships between the players are defined by how they position themselves with
regard to the token. It is the movement of the token that defines their relations []
meaning that it [the token or quasi-objet] can become embedded within a concrete,
highly deterministic social practice. To this I would add that the crowds relationship
to the token and to the players who pass it around is equally important to Serres. My
analysis of La Guerre mondiale later in this chapter will explain why.
53 In Le Parasite (Paris: Grasset, 1980; repr. Hachette/Pluriel, 1997), Serres describes a
ball as a quasi-objet being passed amongst team members and alludes to American
Football in this context (pp.40405). In the first, pictorial edition of Variations sur
Serres
205
In spite of his repeated allusions to the quasi-objet, Serres is adamant

that humanitys quest to understand itself and its perceptible environment
will always rely upon empirical principles and praxes (Quand nous parlerions toutes les langues et pourrions dchiffrer tous les codes, quand nous
serions instruits du savoir absolu, nous ne saurions rien sans lexprience).54
Under these circumstances, perceptive experience, philosophy, science,
technology and sociology become increasingly interwoven:
Les problmes moraux qui nous pressent aujourdhui naissent, sans doute, dun temps
o les objets pilotent les relations, alors que nous sortons dune re archaque o les
relations pilotaient les objets. [] Nous navons pas encore une ide suffisante de ce
que le dluge dobjets fabriqus, depuis la rvolution industrielle, par les sciences, les
techniques, les laboratoires et les usines implique pour nos relations, et maintenant
de celles, universelles, que nos performances globales installent.55
The extent to which Serress thinking differs from the non-referential mode
of perception that he champions in his earlier works is manifest in the quotation above. Gone is the insistence that we remove our subjective selves
from any schematisation of our sensory modus operandi. In its place, Serres
demands that we consider our subjective interrelations based upon how
manufactured objects influence our daily behaviour. He also insists that
we must consider this question on an international and even a universal
scale. At first glance, it is somewhat surprising that the Michel Serres who
wrote the Herms series would be making such demands of us less than a
dozen years on from its final instalment.
In any case, it is the ability of modern societys manufactured objects
to create new perceptual interactions between themselves and us without
our knowledge that so intrigues Serres. As I explained above, such objects
are, in Serress view, quasi-objets because they can mould and manifest social
bonds, which then inspires and influences the manufacture of further
le corps (Paris: Le Pommier, 1999), Serres praises the benefits of teamwork and alludes
to rugby specifically (pp.44, 47). He later refers to a ball being passed around for
sport as a quasi-objet (p.114).
55 Ibid., p.290.
206
Chapter 3
(quasi-) objects and social interrelations: [b]alle, ballon, furet le quasiobjet prcde et construit lobjet parce quil trace la relation entre les gens
qui jouent.56 Over the next two subsections, I shall examine two of Serress
written accounts of the perceptible traces that are left by an objet and a
quasi-objet. In doing so, I shall assess how the two concepts are entwined
with Serress explanation of the virtual. What bearing does this rapprochement have upon his haptic postulations?
The Serresian Objet: Defining the Partial, the Quasi

and the Virtual
Though it is apparent that tactile perception has been of interest to him
for most if not all of his published career, Serres rarely discusses the topic
either directly or in great detail for much of the two decades that follow
claircissements in 1992. His most recent works suggest something of a
return to this area of enquiry, however. This change is demonstrated by
the following extract from the fourth instalment of Petites chroniques du
dimanche soir, a series of transcriptions of radio segments co-hosted by
Serres and Michel Polacco. These shows were first broadcast on the French
station France Info. In a segment that was first aired in April 2010, Serres
tells us that
le toucher, [] le tact [,] [c]est un sens global. La peau enveloppant tout le corps,
il concerne la peau, les mains, les pieds, le dos, la bouche, le sexe, etc. Le corps total.
[L]e mot adapt apt, haptonomie veut justement dire toucher. La personne
la mieux adapte, cest celle qui arrive toucher, caresser.57
56 Serres, Variations sur le corps, p.114.

57 Michel Serres and Michel Polacco, Petites chroniques du dimanche soir, 5 vols, IV
(Paris: Le Pommier/France Info, 2011), pp.20809. This idea echoes Jean-Luc Nancys
assertion in 2006 that [l]unit dun corps, sa singularit, cest lunit dune touche,
Serres
207
Responding to Serress observation, Michel Polacco remarks that on fait

corps avec lobjet.58 This brief exchange is of significance to any haptic
interpretation of Serress recent work. It shows that the writers attitude
to tactile perception has altered appreciably over the last thirty-five years.
Earlier in this chapter, I showed that in 1980, Serres claims [l]espace
comme tel, unique et global, est, je le crains, un artfact philosophique.59
Yet in 2010, le toucher, [] le tact [,] [c]est un sens global [,] [l]a peau
enveloppant tout le corps, [l]e corps total.60 Space has not only become
integrated, but also is centred upon the tactilely aware human body. Serres
makes clear that the integration of our bodies localised perceptive faculties
is arrived at and maintained by tactile means (le mot adapt apt,
haptonomie veut justement dire toucher. La personne la mieux
adapte, cest celle qui arrive toucher, caresser).61 He even goes so far
as to argue that because of their common etymology, the material qualities that are designated by the word adapt (meaning adapted, fitted or
accommodating) and the French verb and noun to touch (toucher) are
synonymous to a certain extent. The corollary of this logic is that an individuals adeptness to a given environment can be expressed through tactile
interaction between the perceiver and his or her perceptible surroundings.
Having established the possibility that tactile experience can be expressive and adaptive, Serres then evokes the concepts of subject and object.
He uses the ostensibly binary opposition of these terms and in doing so,
embraces a methodology that he eschews in his earlier theoretical works
to illustrate his current understanding of how tactile sensation relates to
our perception of distance:
Le sujet, cest ce corps qui, la peau en veil, le toucher en veil, a le bon tact pour
sadapter aux choses. Du coup, puisque je prends le mot adapter, je vous donne le
de toutes les touches (de tous les touchers) de ce corps. Et cest cette unit qui peut
faire un moi, une identit (Nancy, Corpus, p.122).
58 Serres and Polacco, Petites chroniques du dimanche soir, IV, p.209.
61 Ibid., p.209.
208
Chapter 3
mot objet. ce moment-l, le corps na dobjet. Pourquoi? Objet: ob, a veut dire
devant, et jet, a veut dire jeter. Comme si lobjet tait jet devant vous, distance.
Un objet suppose donc lobjectivit, cest--dire cette distance-l.62
What Serres disallows in this instance is the projective, hallucinatory sensation that is often apparent in the critical appraisals of perception offered by
Bataille or Blanchot. Serres implies that because all of the biomechanical
processes involved in perception are corporeally centred, the notion of
objectivity of perceiving a surface at distance, in a physically detached
manner is impossible. As Serres says, ladaptation, par la peau, par ce
toucher-l, rduit ou annule mme la distance et fait de vous un homme
qui est tout le temps en train de caresser ce qui nest plus un objet, ce qui
est absolument voisin.63
Thus, by reaching out to touch the space that surrounds us, our body
and its sensory faculties in fact overwrite the space or object that we grasp
for, replacing it with a subjectivity which, consciously or not, stands
momentarily in objectivitys stead. The Serresian object cannot hence be
perceptibly distant because it is constructed of sensory extrapolations drawn
from our existing proximal sensations. Even the virtual dimension of the
quasi-objet is defined by individual perceptive experiences of communal
tactile interaction. Steven D. Browns summary of the Serresian quasi-objet
is particularly succinct in explaining how this overwriting occurs through
communally shared tactile activity (in this case, a game of rugby or football):
The token that circulates is a [] quasi-object. The name is misleading, however.
Serres has in mind a token which does more than simply keep a game going. This is
more than a simple object. It is quasi object since it is undetermined, its particular
62 Ibid., p.210. Again, a parallel with Jean-Luc Nancys theories presents itself here.
Nancy remarks in 2006 that Je nest rien dautre que la singularit dune touche,
dune touche en tant quune touche est toujours la fois active et passive et quune
touche voque quelque chose de ponctuel une touche au sens dune touche de
couleur (Corpus, p.122).
Serres
209
qualities are unimportant. Its standing comes from the way it moves as a token. And
it is the movement that holds together the players.64
In the example above, individuals come into bodily contact with the quasiobjet (a rugby ball or football, on this occasion). Their individual haptic
experiences of that interaction are subordinated by their need to pass the
ball around to their teammates, whilst not allowing it to fall into the possession of their opponents. In order to achieve either task, the individual
who is in possession of the quasi-objet must juxtapose his or her simultaneously optical and tactile sensations of the quasi-objet with the purely optical
perceptions of it which the rest of the players share at that moment. This is
a projective process that requires the player to extrapolate simultaneously
visual and tactile data onto areas of space (the remainder of the pitch) which
are visible but intangible to the player at that moment. These proximal,
haptic sensory assessments will allow the player to navigate the quasi-objet
through intangible (optical) space with some degree of success, or, in the
words of Maria Assad, seeing circumstantially with all sensate parts of the
body, [] patiently circumnavigating every locality encountered, and in
this manner sewing together the strewn circumstances of reality.65
If we offset Serress indifference to the quasi-objets surface detail against
his interest in the proprioceptively discernible manner in which it moves,
his postulations concerning the quasi-objet remain in accordance with
the extrapolative forms of haptic perception described by Riegl, Marks
or Paterson. In each of these models of haptic experience, visual stimulus
solicits localised, tactile interaction with a larger object or surface area. As
it does not require conscious interpretation, haptic detail will be inevitably
perceptible in the same manner by all people, according to Riegl. Marks
and Paterson associate haptic sensation with more individualistic, fallible
perceptions of space and material. The inspiration for Serress haptic formulations owe as much to recent medical science as they do to studies of art
history, however: les nouveauts du corps [] viennent [] dune ralit
64 Brown, Michel Serres: Science, Translation and the Logic of the Parasite, p.21.
65 Assad, Reading with Michel Serres, p.94.
210
Chapter 3
bien concrte, celle de la recherche scientifique une ralit mdicale. []

Le nouveau corps arrive lorsque la douleur est supprime.66
Needless to say, Serress insistence that the new body he speaks of can
only exist in a realm devoid of pain runs largely contrary to the understandings of the perceiving human body advocated by Bataille or Blanchot. In
spite of this, the human body as it is explained by Serres does have something of the Bataillean informe about it:
Le corps, cest, je crois, un jaillissement extraordinaire qui passe par trois tapes.
Linerte leau, le carbone, lazote, etc. ; le vivant de lADN aux battements du
cur ; enfin, le langage, le sens, lme, le souffle, etc. [C]e jaillissement-l permet
quon ne dfinisse pas le corps. Je ne sais pas ce que cest que le corps, mais je sais ce
que peut le corps. Le corps, cest une pure possibilit. [] Ainsi le corps et lesprit
sont-ils deux possibilits du mme genre.67
The multifaceted body that Serres describes is characterised rather than

defined by science and the chemical reactions which occur within it. Serress
concept of the modern body is also marked by the guiding double helix of
DNA structures, the heartbeat and the act of breathing. By contrast, the
final isolatable though unquantifiable characteristics of the Serresian
body are at once abstractive and subjective. Serres mentions the importance
of language and sense to his concept of the modern body two paradigms
that do require at least some interaction with the perceptible world whilst
equating them with the notion of the soul (and the Cartesian legacy of this
term). Serres makes no hard and fast distinctions, however, between mind
and body, and has no interest in defining the human body in the manner
of the Cartesian categorisations of corps or me (in the quotation above,
Serres tells us that [j]e ne sais pas ce que cest que le corps). Moreover,
Serres believes that empirical assessment of the modern bodys oscillation
between inert chemical, empirical, and abstractive phenomenon points
to an as yet unrealised virtual potential (je sais ce que peut le corps. Le
corps, cest une pure possibilit). This possibility remains virtual for the
66 Serres and Polacco, Petites chroniques du dimanche soir, IV, pp.10203.

67 Ibid., pp.10405.
Serres
211
moment because it is foreshadowed but has not yet been tapped into. So
while the Serresian body is rooted in empirical (and potentially haptic)
praxis, it also retains a simultaneously transcendent, virtual element because
the Serresian body is an intersubjective exchanger (rather than purely a
receiver or transmitter) of information.68
How then might we formulate this virtual potential? Given Serress
noticeable preference for material praxis, it seems unlikely that his concept of the virtual would be uniquely transcendent. In fact, it appears that
Serres is thinking in cybernetic terms. He notes that the rise of information technology over robotics implies that il tait plus facile de mimer les
oprations de lesprit que les oprations du corps. Comme si le corps tait
plus complexe encore que les oprations intellectuelles.69 What makes the
human body so much more complicated than the human mind, in Serress
opinion, is that the body relies upon the mind in order to function, whereas
the mind may function more or less independently of the body.
Intriguingly, Serres posits the bodys reliance upon the mind in terms
highly reminiscent of Bataille, even if Serress use of metaphor serves rather
different ends. According to Serres, le rythme du pas entrane la pense.
[] Je crois que le pas et le pied sont le propre de lHomme. Les animaux
ne marchent pas, ou trs peu. Les singes ne marchent pas comme nous: ce
sont des quadrumanes. La formation du pied a form lhomme.70 In other
68 Serres: Qui suis-je encore? Une virtualit discontinue de tri, de slection dans la
pense intersubjective [] qui spare les modulations du bruit mondial, un changeur pour messagers (Herms II, p.155). On this point, see Ian Tuckers elaborations
of Serresian virtuality: Individualism becomes non-reducible to individual bodies,
but will occur as a set of relations (or event) at a particular moment, part of which
is the constitution of a specific mode of human experience. [] Virtuality is conceptualized as a driving force of such processes, never immediately accessible, but
a veiled presence, masked by the actualised forms that spin off and form from it.
Serres is attempting similar achievements with sense, arguing it is a concept that is
necessary if we are to see beyond current formations of knowledge. As such it exists
to point us towards a space outside of the present (Tucker, Sense and the Limits of
Knowledge, 154).
70 Ibid., pp.9798.
212
Chapter 3
words, the haptic, proprioceptive cadence of placing one foot in front of

the other (though not the metric possibilities of such actions) leads us
to think. In Serress view, this thought derived from haptically perceived
rhythm is what differentiates humans from other beings and has instructed
our knowledge and our behaviour.71
In stark contrast to this, Bataille describes the speculative il pinals
emergence as being an instinctive, sexual connection between tree-dwelling
primates and the next stage of modern humanitys evolution. As I demonstrated in my earlier analysis, rather than aiding our evolution, Bataille
claims that modern humanitys rootedness to the ground is burdensome.
Instead of swinging freely amidst the branches and being in closer contact
with the sun, earthbound modern humans must crane their heads awkwardly in order to perceive the transcendence of consciousness and reason
symbolised by the sun and sky.
In spite of these marked divergences of approach, Batailles claim in Le
Gros orteil that the big toe is the single most human part of the body does
resonate with Serress thinking. The big toe is after all a significant source
of physical balance for the rest of the body and is therefore an integral
biomechanical component of the le pas et le pied that Serres considers
so crucial to human evolution.
Another area of difference between Bataillean and Serresian approaches
to sensation concerns the question of distance and how it is perceived.
Whereas the Bataillean notion of walking is more evocative of a painful
trudge that reminds us of our physical and spiritual distance from the
heavens, Serres considers the tactile interaction between foot and ground
to be materially instructive and therefore, mentally liberating: Le toucher,
cest dabord labolition de la distance. Et quand vous parlez de tactile, il
71
In making this observation, we should not forget that Paterson makes a similar
argument in his postulation of haptic sensation as a proprioceptive phenomenon.
He even entitles one subsection of his text Geometry with Eyes, Hands and Feet
(in Paterson, The Senses of Touch, pp.7274). We must also be mindful that Jacques
Derrida disagrees with the suggestion that self-conscious thought and perception
is a uniquely human characteristic (see Derrida, Sminaire: la bte et le souverain,
2 vols, I (Paris: Galile, 2008), pp.40810, 41415, 42830).
Serres
213
sagit de laccs linformation, et mme la connaissance, par et seulement par le tact.72

Bataille would disagree with this assertion. His critical and literary
writings suggest that we can best shorten distance between ourselves and
our perceptible environment by looking. (The sun and sky are the nearest
perceptible things to the corporeal transcendence that Bataille advocates;
neither can be interacted with habitually on any other basis than the visual.)
Serres tacitly counters this position by claiming that tactile interaction is the best means of reducing distance. Like Bataille, Serres posits
a clear interrelation between the manner in which tactile interaction is
used (as a weapon of violence or as a tool of knowledge) and purposeful
(im)morality. As we shall see shortly, this communion between the individual body that perceives and the wider society that surrounds it forms
the basis of much of Serress thought in Les Cinq Sens. Serres is adamant,
however, that the integrity of perception and sociability implied by the
word tact result from humanitys collective experiences of tactile sensation. These experiences are born of and mediated by our skin: les autres
sens sont lis un ou deux organes qui sont situs en des points singuliers
du corps, [] alors que le tact court sur la totalit du corps. Cest la totalit de la peau qui est concerne. Le tact devrait donc tre beaucoup plus
important que les autres sens.73
Whereas neither Bataille nor Blanchot schematise the concepts of
individual or societal experiences of skin in a coherently scientific manner,
Serres does exactly that. He remarks, for example, upon how the traditional
categorisations of subject and object may be short-circuited by physical
haptic contact between two surfaces. Serres turns to the discipline of tribology to explain how this physical interaction between two surfaces creates
a third presence or object which is at once a mixture of those surfaces and
a distinct haptic surface in its own right:

73 Ibid., p.136. Again, the similarity between Serress positing of perception as fundamentally tactile resonates strongly with Nancys assertion that all perception is
defined by touchers.
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Chapter 3
la tribologie [] tudie les effets des frottements et des frictions: une science du
tact, une science du toucher. [E]lle a dcouvert que deux corps qui sont en contact,
en con-tact, dveloppent entre eux, lorsquils se frottent, un troisime petit feuillet,
comme sils produisaient ou quils craient, au moment du frottement, une sorte de
tiers corps, de corps troisime.74
What is most striking about this extract is that the Serresian corps troisime
is arrived at by skins being rubbed together. The act of rubbing requires
active movement of at least one of the two surfaces coming into tactile
contact. In this regard, the third body to which Serres alludes is created
by a haptic proprioception of the kind postulated by Paterson, in that it
requires kinaesthetic as well as tactile action and reaction from the body
or bodies involved.
Haptonomie (haptonomy) is similar; Serres characterises this tactile
discipline as being akin to a form of caresse used on pregnant women and
new mothers to help them prepare for or recover from the physical
demands of giving birth.75 By alluding to simultaneously functional and
scientific applications of tactility such as haptonomy, Serres draws out the
metaphorical ability of tactile interaction to manipulate and optimise as yet
unrealised (or in this case, unborn or newborn) potential. Moreover, haptonomy illustrates the capacity of tactility to reach into areas of life about
which we have much objectively observed information, but no conscious,
subjective sensory memory.
It would be erroneous to suggest that Serres privileges touch over
all other perceptive means, however: in his opinion, all of our sensory
faculties are capable of being instructive. To underline this point, Serres
alludes to the multiple sensory experiences evoked by the French verb
entendre:
Avez-vous remarqu que la plupart des gens, et mme la plupart des philosophes les
ignorants et les savants , croient que la vision est le modle de laccs la connaissance?
74 Serres and Polacco, Petites chroniques du dimanche soir, IV, pp.13637; emphasis in
original.
75 Ibid., p.137.
Serres
215
Eh bien, cest une erreur: loue est un accs aussi important et il en va de mme pour
lodorat. La preuve: entendre signifie comprendre, et sentir
signifie percevoir.76
This appeal to language in order to justify his conception of how the human
body perceives typifies much of Serress writing since 1980. Whereas Bataille
and, in particular, Blanchot differentiate not only between the act of seeing
and that of touching but also between the bodys other sensory faculties,
Serres seeks to establish sight and tactility as perceptual functions that are
interlinked by specifically proprioceptive processes.
The Interdisciplinary, the Virtual and the Haptic

As I stated above, there is a pronounced change in Serress literary style following the publication in 1980 of the last of his quintet of texts dedicated
to the ancient Greek god of communication, Hermes.
Over the subsequent decades, an appreciable amount of Serress more
critically orientated work has taken the form of interviews. Though Serres
complains bitterly about the unconstructive nature of critical texts in his
interviews with Latour,77 I have demonstrated that even after 1980, the
works by Serres that address matters of perception retain a clear interest in
critical theory and schematisation. Nevertheless, it should not escape our
attention that these interests serve an interdisciplinary agendum.
As Serres explains in Herms V, his project is to negotiate and reconcile
what he perceives to be a continually shifting gap in knowledge between the
natural sciences and the humanities. Significantly, Serres posits this quest for
interdisciplinary congruence in topological (physically perceptible) terms:
77 Serres: La critique se trouve [] sans cesse bloque entre le trivial et le fortement
inaccessible. [] Mieux vaut crer que critiquer (Serres and Latour, claircissements,
pp.19798).
216
Chapter 3
Je cherche le passage entre la science exacte et les sciences humaines. Ou, la langue
prs, ou, au contrle prs, entre nous et le monde. Le chemin nest pas aussi simple
que la laisse prvoir la classification du savoir. Je le crois aussi malais que le fameux
passage du Nord-Ouest []. Des optiques de fantasme trompent, dans un milieu
blanc, cristallin, diaphane, brumeux. La terre, lair et leau se confondent, solides et
liquides, flocons flous et brouillards se mlangent, ou, au contraire, chacun deux se
dcoupe, fractal.78
From these remarks we can establish that Serres treats the interaction
between the natural sciences and the humanities as being capable of impacting materially upon the manner in which we perceive. Serress rationale
here relies upon transcendental empiricism in the sense that though it is
fluid in form, the interdisciplinary space that he describes is based upon
perceptual indices. The writers interdisciplinary praxis instead seeks to
create an avant-la-lettre virtual reality for his readers. This virtual reality is
one based upon defeating the mental boundaries imposed by rigidly materialist thinking (La terre, lair et leau se confondent, solides et liquides,
flocons flous et brouillards se mlangent, ou, au contraire, chacun deux
se dcoupe). Assad emphasises the tactile basis of this virtuality: [f ]or
Serres, the sense of touch is the fractal boundary that opens up a creative
process, where objective reality and subjective intellect invent together.79
This simulacral zone subsists upon allusion to the readers existing perceptive experiences of solidity, of liquidity, and of the vaporous in order to
express its wilful confusion of these haptically discernible characteristics.80
Serress justification for making sensory confusion integral to his theory is
simple: Le mimtique est un chec.81
More recently, Serres has opined that

79 Assad, Reading with Michel Serres, p.76; emphasis in original.
80 The parallels between Serress presentation of perception here and Nancys thinking
on this subject are very strong indeed. Consider for example Nancys remark that
[l]e sentir et le se-sentir-sentir qui fait le sentir lui-mme, cest toujours sentir la
fois quil y a de lautre(ce que lon sent) et quil y a dautres zones du sentir, ignores
par celle qui sent en ce moment (Les Muses, p.36; emphasis in original).
Serres
217
[j]estime [] Lucrce, qui dit que la vision nous met directement en contact avec
des membranes que chaque chose que nous voyons met et disperse dans lespace. Et
ces membranes quil appelle des simulacres circulent toute vitesse dans lespace
entre nous, telles des peaux mobiles. Elles se posent sur nos yeux.82
These virtualised visual impressions of the surfaces that we perceive impose

themselves upon our eyes in a manner similar to Riegl or Markss versions
of the haptic image. Such sensory impressions as those postulated by Serres
are however indicative of perceptive reality rather than constitutive of perceptive reality itself. Tellingly, Serres believes that only this haptic synergy
between visual and tactile sensation is capable of bridging the experiential
gap between a perceiver and the object that he or she perceives. The writer
expresses his conviction in a fashion highly evocative of Riegl or Marks:
Vous voyez l que ce modle tactile abolit toute distance. La vue cre la distance. On a
du recul quand on voit, tandis que quand on touche, on a limpression la pression?
que la distance sabolit. Et si Lucrce a raison, nous nous caressons sans arrt les uns
les autres, et nous caressons le monde qui nous caresse. Et du coup, lespace du tact,
cest lespace de la caresse, cest--dire la fin des distances, le bonheur et la paix.83
According to Serres, then, the haptic synergy between tactile and

visual perception abolishes the concept of distance. As Serres makes this
remark, however, he cites Lucretius. I showed earlier in this chapter that
the simulacrum of Lucretian philosophy is described as being covered in
skin, much like a human body. Just before his invocation of Lucretius,
Serres claims that on a limpression la pression? que la distance sabolit.
So, Serres claims that tactile interaction leaves us with the (mental and
physical) impression that such interaction can abolish our perception of
distance, but this impression has as much to do with the simulacral realm
as it does our bodies or minds. The fact that Serress statement appeals to
tactile sensations that we have experienced consciously makes no difference here. In spite of invoking the real, Serress understanding of tactility
cannot rid itself of the virtual, the simulated, the simulacral.
83 Ibid.
218
Chapter 3
As we have seen thus far, it is languages oxymoronic potential in matters of sensory description that so enthrals Serres. In his earlier works, this
potential is explained in terms of oscillation. Serres tells us that the manner
in which we perceive ourselves and the world around us alternates between
our sensory faculties notably those of sight, touch and hearing and
our recourse to language. Evoking Aristotles concept of hylomorphism
(in which matter and form meld physically in myriad ways yet remain
distinct, linguistic categories), Serres claims that [l]e monde comme rseau
communicant est un rseau de ples ou de sommets hylmorphiques.84
As I established earlier in this chapter, perceptible topology and
inscriptive language go hand in hand in Serresian thinking: they are
intimately associated with the concept of tactility. This proximity renders
the sensory oscillation that Serres describes in the quotation above a threedimensional terrain of sorts, just as [u]n objet quelconque est un modle
hylmorphique.85 When a three-dimensional object is defined in the same
hylmorphique terms as the sensory oscillations which differentiate that
object from the rest of its surroundings, object and sensation can no longer
be distinguished reliably.86
To put it simply, the sensory faculties through which an object is sensed
or the subjective presence that differentiates itself from the object cease to
be distinct or discrete spaces. Instead, the subject, the object and the haptic
sensations that differentiate experientially between the concepts of subject
and object become regions of a larger experiential whole. This situation
requires us to change the manner in which we write about the perceptive
experience: La description, ici, nest plus globale, comme la prcdente o
le phnomne apparat figure sans fond, mais elle est simplement locale.
Elle ne requiert plus comme condition un espace de plongement ou de
prolongement.87
85 Ibid., p.113.
86 Assad: For Serres, [] the sensate brings together, at incredibly complex boundaries,
the subject and the object, our being as an intellect and the reality of the world we
are part of (Reading with Michel Serres, p.74).
Serres
219
The three-dimensional interconnectivity between topology, inscriptive language and tactile perception that Serres posits above does have a
drawback for any haptic interpretation of his theories, however. The problem stems from Serress rapprochement of these three domains: he treats
topology, inscriptive language and tactile perception as knowledge-giving
concepts which are simultaneously praxes reliant upon (specifically) bodily
sensation. Through this interdisciplinary approach to matters of perception,
science, geography, written culture and philosophy, Serres seeks to foster a
haptically discernible impression of physical and mental liberty amongst
his readers. This impression is, however, simulacral. To clarify: the liberating juxtaposition of tactile sensation with physical science, geography and
inscriptive language is simulacral because it becomes representational the
moment that it is expressed on a solely linguistic basis. Once Serress juxtaposition of disciplines becomes representational, it becomes unavoidably
mired in references to what we readers have or have not perceived before
(Serres tells us so in Herms V).88 This situation is problematic because once
knowledge moves into the representational realm, it ceases to be current
and therefore unmediated by sensory memory.89 These circumstances harm
the ability of literature to inform us reliably about things that we have not
seen, touched or otherwise sensed first-hand: Lcrit est prdit. Le roman
senchane de cause effet, des conditions initiales leur dveloppement, il
est le dveloppement des enveloppes prcites. Il est squences et consquences. Ainsi du calcul astronomique.90
88 See ibid., pp.1419.

89 Assad makes this point when she describes Serress writing in Les Cinq Sens: The
word itself becomes a literal object whose implications form the passages between
the senses and the various Serresean notions expressing the union of subject and
object in the topological space of ahistorical time. Circumstance is a bouquet of
intersecting sensations constantly in turbulent motion which cannot be qualified
or analysed (Assad, Reading with Michel Serres, p.87). Can the objectification of
language that Assad describes truly relay the plurality of sensation and temporality
that she believes to be so important to Serress understanding of this process?
220
Chapter 3
Due to the reliance of inscribed language upon memorial reference,

the chronology which defines memory begins to interfere with linguistic
freedom; it shackles literary description of perceptive experience to the laws
of sensory stimulus and perceptual reaction. Surprisingly, such shackling
also unleashes the haptic potential of literary description: it allows the
principle of visual cause and tactile response inherent to the haptic theories of Riegl, Marks, Paterson and Nancy to re-establish itself. As Maria
Assad summarises,
By juxtaposing language, the tactile, and the fine line that separates and weds the
two, Serres reveals the process of fuzzy logic with which he will try, not to explain,
but to imply what happens [] when the senses convert the concrete into abstract
forms that our intellect then shapes into knowledge.91
So, what are the specifics of Serress theoretical stance on haptic perception and what Assad dubs its fuzzy logic? From the evidence analysed thus
far, it seems fair to say that there are overtly haptic sensibilities discernible
in Serress treatment of bodily perception. It is also reasonable to state that
there remains an as yet untapped and therefore virtual potential inherent
to the perceiving body as he presents it. Serress writings suggest that at
least some of this virtual potential is capable of being unleashed through
haptic interaction. In Serress opinion, the haptic loosing of the modern
human bodys hitherto virtual potentiality provides us with valuable empirical insights to which modern science is otherwise wilfully blind and deaf.
The corollary of Serress works of ostensible critical theory is deceptively simple. Simultaneously haptic and instructive unleashing of the
human bodys potential may be expressed and/or perceived through partaking in or witnessing physical actions. The haptic component of this
realisation (and its instructive potential) may also be conveyed virtually.
This conveyance occurs through the simulacrum of inscriptive language.
What I mean by the simulacrum of inscriptive language is an inscribed
language which purports to include all of the temporal and sensory allusions
necessary to evoke haptic sensations within us. This language is inherently
91 Assad, Reading with Michel Serres, p.74.
Serres
221
partial or incomplete due to the impossibility of transporting perceptual

data from materiality into abstraction or vice versa with any degree of
exactitude or completeness. The sensations that this language evokes are
therefore unavoidably simulative rather than faithfully reproductive of
their experiential source. However, Serres considers this lack of sensory
fidelity to be positive. As Ian Tucker explains,
For Serres, [] there is something unique to sense, something that cannot be entirely
captured by the words and meaning attached to it. Language can affect sense, but
not feel it. Sense can be seen as produced through different kinds of processes than
language virtual processes that are open and outfacing rather than meaning-imbued
and narrowing.92
The instructive value of inscriptive language as virtual simulacrum is not,

therefore, universal. Indeed, this value is strictly localised to the individual
who, on an a priori basis, interprets the simulacra borne by inscriptive language into (potentially) haptic experience and vice versa.
As my analyses thus far have shown, there is a clear tension between
Serress positing of haptic perception in the Herms cycle and the positions he adopts subsequently in claircissements or the fourth volume of
the Petites chroniques du dimanche soir series. Much of this tension appears
linked with Serress changing opinions as to whether the question of
haptic perception could or indeed, should be thought about in relation to the perceiving human body or its environment. In the second half
of this chapter, I shall examine how Serress more anecdotally orientated
writings exploit and convey the haptic potential of the corps nouveau
in order to address this quandary. I also consider whether Serress literary
prose, in common with the literary works of Bataille and Blanchot, has
grown increasingly preoccupied with the virtual realm as his career has
progressed.
92 Tucker, Sense and the Limits of Knowledge, 157; emphasis in original.
222
Chapter 3
Skin to Begin: Les Cinq Sens

I begin my literary analysis with an exploration of Michel Serress Les Cinq
Sens, which was first published in 1985. I have selected this text because it
is among the first of Serress works to address directly the thorny issue of
how our perceptive faculties influence our way of thinking and what role art
objects and religious iconography may play in determining this influence.
Les Cinq Sens is a sizeable and thematically rich tome which has yet
to be analysed comprehensively. This is partly explicable by the fact that,
true to Serress interdisciplinary agenda, Les Cinq Sens contains many passages which could fall within the rubric of critique just as readily as they
might be considered littrature. For the sake of brevity, I have opted to
focus primarily upon passages from Les Cinq Sens which contain an overtly
anecdotal element or which make repeated and direct allusion to sensation
using the first person. These extracts are arguably the most unambiguously
literary in Serress oeuvre.
Firstly, I will explore how and why Serres links individual perceptive
experience with abstractive sensory theory. I begin with the following
quotation, which appears within the opening ten pages of Les Cinq Sens:
Du majeur, je me touche une lvre. En ce contact gt la conscience. Jen commence
lexamen. Elle se tapit souvent dans un repli, lvre pose sur lvre, palais coll la
langue, dents sur dents, paupires baisses, sphincters serrs, main ferme en poing,
doigts presss les uns contre les autres, face postrieure de cuisse croise sur la face
antrieure de lautre, ou pied pos sur lautre pied. [] Sans repli, sans contact de soimme sur soi, il ny aurait pas vraiment de sens interne, pas de corps propre, moins de
cnesthsie, pas vraiment de schma corporel, nous vivrions sans conscience; lisses,
prts nous vanouir.93
This handful of sentences illustrates the important role that self-awareness

plays in Serress understanding of the bodys perceptive faculties in the period
after 1980. Though the issue of self-awareness was present in theoretical
93
Michel Serres, Les Cinq Sens (Paris: Grasset, 1985; repr. Hachette/Pluriel, 2008),
p.20.
Serres
223
works such as Herms II, it is only with the publication of Les Cinq Sens
that the topic is explored in specifically haptic (and literary) terms. Serress
examination of perceptual consciousness begins with a male narrator quite
possibly Serres himself pressing a finger against his lips. The discernment
of distinct perceptive surfaces is underway. The fingertip distinguishes fine
surfaces and intricate detail from rough or plain material. Its ability to touch
a visible object is among our most basic sensory tools for discriminating
proximity from distance. In contact with his lips, that fingertip forces Les
Cinq Senss narrator into a subjective analysis of how his body must first
look inward before it can look outward.94
As we see from Serress words above, the formative, conscious influence of the inward looking that Serres evokes encompasses all areas of the
body. The writer goes so far as to state that without this form of predominantly tactile self-awareness, we would be no more than blank surfaces
devoid of consciousness (nous vivrions sans conscience; lisses, prts nous
vanouir). Serres acknowledges that the gesture of putting a finger to ones
lips is demonstrative and therefore social ([d]ans le geste de faire taire, le
corps, localement, joue).95 It implies a desire to silence another person
without actually laying hands upon them. Yet this gesture still requires a
simultaneously tactile and visible action from the person who seeks silence.
As we read the following quotation, we should not forget that it is a specifically individualistic, haptic experience that allows Serres to make this
leap into theory:
Les organes de sens font des nuds, des lieux de singularit haut relief dans ce
multiple dessin plat, des spcialisations denses, montagne ou valle ou puits sur la
94 Nancys recent portrayals of the entire perceptive process as being a series of interrelated sensory touche(r)s finds a notable precursor, here, yet he never mentions Serress
name. For example, Nancy remarks in Corpus (p.160) that, la vrit, cest la peau.
Elle est dans la peau, elle fait peau: authentique tendue expose, toute tourne au
dehors en mme temps quenveloppe du dedans, du sac rempli de borborygmes et
de remugles. La peau touche et se fait toucher.
95 Serres, Les Cinq Sens, p.20.
224
Chapter 3
plaine. Ils irriguent toute la peau de dsir, dcoute, de vue ou dodorat, elle coule
comme leau, confluence variable des qualits sensibles.96
As I highlighted earlier in this chapter, Serres has suggested on several

occasions that time flows akin to a liquid of variable viscosity, as temporal
streams contained within physical boundaries. In the extract above, he
leaves us with the impression that our perceptive faculties irrigate our very
skin, making it fluid in much the same manner as the writer claims time
to be. In addition, the dermal fluidity that Serres describes is a confluence
variable des qualits sensibles. Might this sensory confluence be haptic in
nature? Though tactile sensation is not referred to directly in the quotation
above, visual and olfactory sensations are. Moreover, Serres speaks of the
sensory irrigation that liquefies or at least lubricates our skin as providing
us with a haut relief dans ce multiple dessin plat. Riegl uses precisely this
analogy to differentiate the haptic surface from the optical.97 However, the
corollary of the extract from Les Cinq Sens given above is that all sensation
flows outwards from the perceivers body.
The sensing skin that Serres postulates here is far from neutral in its
integrative perceptive functions. In spite of this, the melding that Serres
alludes to retains a distinctly haptic quality. By stating subsequently that
[l]a peau intervient entre plusieurs choses du monde et les fait se mler,98
he evokes the visually and tactilely imposing characteristics of the haptic
surfaces that Riegl or Marks describe. What is more, if [t]out se rencontre
la contingence, comme si tout portait peau,99 then the haptic characteristics of perception that Serres itemises are actually simulacra, chance
sensory constructs.
As I remarked earlier, Serres states in Herms V that Lucretius believed
all simulacra to be covered in skin comparable with our own. Yet that observation begs a question: where does the simulacral end and the real begin?
In the next subsection, I shall examine how Serres believes two relatively
96
97
98
99
Ibid., p.60.
See Riegl, The Group Portraiture of Holland, pp.28182 and p.4, n. 7 above.
Serres, Les Cinq Sens, p.97.
Ibid., p.98.
Serres
225
recent artistic portrayals of human skin can begin to answer this question.
I also consider how Serress literary portrayals of skin clarify his often complex theorisations concerning sensation. Additionally, I will ask whether
Serres believes gender to have an effect upon the perceptual process in the
manner that Bataille and Blanchot appear to.
Painted Ladies: Skin as a Virtually Haptic Surface

In Les Cinq Sens, Serres devotes a dozen pages to a series of paintings
by Pierre Bonnard. I will not provide an exhaustive analysis of these
thematically rich, often highly associative commentaries, nor of Serress
subsequent discussion of the Dame la licorne tapestry, which hangs at the
Muse Cluny in Paris. Nevertheless, in this subsection, I shall explore how
Serres presents painted (female) skin as a simultaneously haptic and virtual
surface. This portrayal of skin painted on canvas as a haptically perceptible
oxymoron is valuable because it offers us a means of understanding certain
evolutions in Serress literary and critical writings. Moreover, it provides
numerous points of comparison between the Serresian stance on perception and those taken by Bataille and Blanchot.
Let us begin with Serress description of a canvas that Bonnard painted
in 1931:
Bonnard donne un Nu au miroir, dit encore La Toilette. Une femme nue, en souliers talons, vue de trois quarts arrire, se regarde la glace. Nous ne voyons pas
son image, de face.
Les deux miroirs et la nudit, la face cache ou limage vole, la deuxime glace
aussi vide que la premire, tout nous pousse ressentir les prestiges de loptique,
discourir drotisme et de reprsentation, encore. Non.100
100 Ibid., p.32.
226
Chapter 3
Serres imbues even the manifestly simulacral skin of Bonnards painted lady
with the same self-reflexive awareness that he associates with the gesture
of placing a finger over ones own lips. We cannot say whether Bonnards
figure is able to see herself, but we are certainly unable to see what she sees:
there is no reflection in either of the painted mirrors around her. It is for
this reason that Serres disallows any talk of Bonnards canvas as a work of
mere representation or eroticism. Serress refusal to consider this painting
in either manner immediately places him at odds with Bataille, who is
often preoccupied with the eroticism of female skin, and Blanchot, whose
works frequently address the impossibility of explaining or representing
what happens to our minds when our skin comes into contact with that
of another human being.
Additionally, we see from the quotation above that Serres refuses the
desire ressentir les prestiges de loptique. He appears to reject the sole
sensory faculty towards which Bataille and Blanchot are even vaguely
charitably disposed with any regularity. To judge by the quotation above,
it also seems that Serres refuses to accept any haptic confluence between
tactility (ressentir) and vision (loptique).
That is, until we read the description below. Here, Serres compares
the female figure of Nu au miroir with a painting by Bonnard that dates
from 1890 and is entitled Peignoir. In this earlier canvas, a woman wears
a dressing gown covered in leopard-like spots. Bonnard paints the gowns
hues and spots in such a way that they appear indistinguishable from the
womans skin. Serres suggests that the woman painted by Bonnard in 1931
still bears the marks of this dressing gown on her naked flesh:
Elle est nue, voyez sa peau: couverte de tatouages, chine, tigre, granite, ocelle,
piquete, nielle, tiquete, constelle plus encore que le vieux peignoir, ensemence
de taches moins monotones, moire. Son piderme est peint de manire bien singulire. Elle a t sa robe de chambre, on dirait que les imprims du tissu sont rests
sur sa peau.101
101 Ibid.
Serres
227
What Serres describes above would be a haptic surface, according to Riegls

theories: the visible indentations and striations of a proximal tactile surface impose themselves upon the beholders eyes (or in this case, upon the
writers words). Though they are static, the small imperfections on the
surface of the womans skin that Serres mentions also call to mind Markss
cinematic version of haptic solicitation. In Bonnards canvas, our visual
faculties are focussed upon often indistinct, highly localised regions of
a larger and more easily discerned whole, akin to the zooming cinematic
camera that Marks describes.102
Perhaps more striking is Serress suggestion that the skin of Nu au
miroirs female figure has been imprinted with the patterns of the dressing
gown visible in Peignoir four decades earlier. As I have demonstrated, the
concepts of perceiving skin advocated by Bataille tend towards an oscillation
between sublimity and abjection, between transcendental forgetfulness of
the skin and an utter subjugation and degradation through carnality that
our skin binds us to. Blanchot continually alludes to a skin that forgets
itself in favour of an indistinct vision or a clearer narrative voice. The skin
that Serres describes here is simulacral yet capable of remembering and
of inciting us, its viewer, to remember the perceptual realities inherent to
our own, non-virtual dermal layers. As Serres inadvertently points out,
however, the devil is in the haptic detail. Writing of the female figure in
Nu au miroir, he says that
les demi-lunes du peignoir se distribuaient sur lui de faon rgulire, mcanique,
reproductible; sur la robe cutane, vivantes, les impressions sensemencent au hasard,
de manire inimitable. On pourrait reconnatre le modle. La dernire pelure, celle
quon peigne, ne simprime pas lisse, homogne ni monotone, elle stale et brille
comme un chaos de couleurs, de formes et de tons. Nulle autre na la peau de cette
femme, spcifique. Vous lavez reconnue.103
102 The works I propose to call haptic invite a look that moves on the surface plane of
the screen for some time before the viewer realises what she or he is beholding. [A]
haptic work may create an image of such detail [] that it evades a distanced view,
instead pulling the viewer in close (Marks, The Skin of the Film, pp.16263; emphasis
in original).
228
Chapter 3
The painted evidence of perceiving skins irreproducibility in art ne

simprime pas lisse, homogne ni monotone, elle stale et brille comme
un chaos de couleurs, de formes et de tons. In other words, the failure
of (painted) art to reproduce the sensation of perceiving skin with any
accuracy is expressed in a myriad of simulacral forms and tones of colour,
comme un chaos. These forms can nevertheless be discerned haptically by
those who touch and/or view them. This haptic specificity comes with a
surprising twist. The female figure that Serres claims we recognise by haptic
means in Bonnards painting is in fact a literary character:
Au mlange des nuances, au chaos des marques et touches, vous avez reconnu la Belle
Noiseuse que Balzac disait inimaginable: de fait, elle na pas dimage, aux miroirs
et ne se reprsente pas. L se lve le corps au-dessus du dsordre []. Non, le vieux
peintre du Chef-duvre inconnu ne sombrait pas dans la folie, mais anticipait plus
dun sicle de peinture. Balzac rvait de Bonnard, la vue projetait le tact, la raison et
lordre mditaient le chaos de la singularit.104
There are a number of comments to be made here. Most importantly, the

haptically recognisable female figure of Bonnards Nu au miroir casts no
optical reflection upon the painted environment that she inhabits (Les
deux miroirs et la nudit, la face cache ou limage vole, la deuxime glace
aussi vide que la premire).105 Her simulacral skin does not register within
her equally simulacral dressing room because her skin is not tactilely selfreflexive, meaning that it is not self-aware (elle [] ne se reprsente pas).106
Nevertheless, the figure radiates simultaneously tactile and visual stimuli
to viewers who are able to distance themselves proprioceptively from the
painted locale contained within Bonnards canvas.107 In this sense, for Serres,
104 Ibid.
105 Ibid.
106 Ibid.
107 Connor also detects a certain synergy between tactility and vision in Les Cinq Sens,
but casts it in a distinctly negative light, observing that [w]here the other senses give
us the mingled body, vision appears on the side of detachment, separation. Vision is
a kind of dead zone, as the petrifying sense, of non-sense, which it is the role of the
other senses to make good or redeem (Michel Serress Les Cinq Sens, p.328).
Serres
229
the absence of optical image in Bonnards painting actually clarifies our

perceptual relationship with it. This is in stark contrast to the presence of
the Blanchovian image, which serves only to confuse and obscure the haptic
faculties of those literary characters who fall under its petrifying influence.
In spite of this, the temporal anomaly associated with the Blanchovian
image remains: Serres claims that Balzac rvait de Bonnard, when Balzac
actually died decades before Bonnard even began to paint. In addition, the
absence in presence of the Blanchovian image hovers over Serress account
of Bonnards Nu au miroir. The female figures absence of optical presence
and tactile self-awareness leaves a void that we could perceive both tactilely
and optically, were we able to touch the canvas ourselves. According to
Serres, this void forms a curtain of sorts between the figures skin and her
painted environment, which should be perceptible to her. This curtain is
adorned with reflections of the simultaneously flecked, bone-like and silkily undulating surfaces of the painted room itself:
Or le reflet dans le miroir, en face, miroir quon ne voit qu demi, or limage de la
femme dans la glace sont rduits une sorte de rideau, une tenture de la salle de
bains, elle-mme ocelle, moire, chine, constelle, ensemence de couleurs et de
tons, tatoue. Mlange pour mlange et chaos pour chaos, la peau a pour image le
rideau, a pour reflet une toile, pour fantme un drap.108
As we read in the quotation above, Bonnards female figure is unable either

to see herself or to be tactilely self-aware. This non-perception of selfhood
forms a haptically constituted mesh of sorts which renders her skin the
painted skin that we would perceive haptically upon Bonnards canvas, were
we allowed to touch it a ghostly curtain between the figures perceptually
discernible world and our own.
Let us recap briefly. A haptic interaction between our visual and tactile
faculties allows us to discern the lack of haptic self-awareness of the female
figure painted in Bonnards painting, Nu au miroir. She does not appear
to herself either visually or haptically, yet we are able to perceive this of
her by both sensory means. Our haptic recognition of her lack of haptic
108 Serres, Les Cinq Sens, pp.3233.
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self-recognition leads us in Serress opinion to an inevitable comparison between Bonnards female figure and the infamous Belle Noiseuse of
Honor de Balzacs novella, Le Chef-duvre inconnu.109
Important as all of this may be, the most crucial aspect of Serress presentation of Bonnards painting is the manner in which Serres uses the haptic
imagery that the paintings evoke (la vue projetait le tact)110 as a means of
orientating interdisciplinary communication in the humanities. Serres says
of Bonnards canvases that [l]image se forme sur une varit dploye, la
carte se dessine sur une page, simprime sur elle.111 The simultaneously visual
and potentially tactile characteristics of Bonnards painted female simulacra
are not materially different in nature from Serress interpretation of the act
of reading. This is because reading as Serres presents it is a solicitation of
the readers senses to fabulate visual and tactile information based upon
their prior perceptual experiences. To repeat a phrase from Paul Harriss
article, Serress method of moving by analytic prolongement turns literary
analysis into an exercise in projective geometry in the sense that it maps
the surface of fictional discourse onto topological surfaces.112
The sight of Bonnards canvases makes us want to touch them. The
sensory projections stirred by our interpretation of words on a page are what
make us want to touch the living or inanimate surfaces that those words
describe or fabulate. Serres nevertheless postulates a haptically informed
yet individually experienced equivalence between the simulacrum as it is
painted and the simulacrum as it is written:
La toile se recouvre de toiles, les voiles sentassent et ne voilent que des voiles, les
feuilles se chevauchent dans le feuillage. Feuilles qui gisent sous les pages. Sans doute
109 The question of recognition and non-recognition of the human body in paintings
is an integral element of Le Chef-duvre inconnu, a novela of which several drafts
were published between 1831 and 1846. Balzacs tale concludes with an elderly master
painter (Frenhofer) being criticised by two young artists who cannot decipher anything more than a particularly lifelike foot from La Belle Noiseuse, a canvas that the
older man believes to be his masterpiece.
111 Ibid., p.37.
112 Harris, The Smooth Operator, p.116; emphasis in original.
Serres
231
lisez-vous du regard ces pages o jcris au sujet de Bonnard, tez les feuilles, tournez
les pages, [] lil enfin ne trouvera plus rien. Reste toucher la feuille imprime,
pellicule fine, support de sens, la feuille, la page, tissu-toffe, peau, la toile mme de
la femme de Bonnard. Je feuillette le peignoir.113
According to Serres, the instructive potential of haptic perception and its

sensory indices exist in the projective fabulations that literature demands of
us, just as readily as they do in paintings evocations of the physical world.
In both instances, Serres claims that tactility incites memory and empirical
knowledge in a way that visual perception alone never can. In this respect,
Les Cinq Senss version of Serresian tactility exhibits an instructive autonomy and inherent sens (or raison) that is not apparent in the perceptive
experiences written about by either Bataille or Blanchot.
This is not to say that the Serresian model of tactility or its correlate
hapticity is guaranteed to provide intellectual clarity in all circumstances:
La sensation se tient dans une bote noire et fonctionne comme elle. Lune
et lautre prcdent la connaissance, mais la suivent aussi, et lentourent ou
la trouent, lune et lautre mconnues.114 What Serres tells us here is clear:
even tactile perception has blind spots, but only our individual sensory
experiences of this fact will make rational sense of it.115 The reason for this
is the infinitely fractal, enveloping effect of our skin upon our sensory faculties. These voiles separate us from our perceived environment because
that environment is contingent upon our self-awareness, which is itself
born of our skins auto-defined sense of tactility. In spite of their simulacral
nature, Serres claims that Bonnards canvases are capable of articulating
this very fact to us:

114 Ibid., p.186.
115 Assad takes this argument a stage further. In Reading with Michel Serres (p.74), she
claims that skins function in Serress reading as frontiers of such extreme complexity that precisely defined and quantified descriptions of their composition becomes
impossible; they are black boxes. He resorts therefore to fuzzy logic to imply their
multivalued functions.
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Les anciens picuriens appelaient simulacres des membranes fragiles qui volent par
lair, mises partout, reues par tous, charges de faire signe et sens. Les toiles de
Bonnard, et dautres peut-tre, remplissent la fonction de simulacres. Certes, elles
font semblant. Mais surtout: partant de la peau du peintre et de la fine enveloppe
des choses, le voile de lun rencontre les voiles des autres, la toile saisit la jonction
instantane des mues. Simulacre simultan.116
Whilst we digest the repercussions of this haptic journey from theory

to subjectivity and back again, let us return to Serress writings on Pierre
Bonnard and a third of the latters canvases, Nu la baignoire, which, Serres
claims, Bonnard painted in 1936.117 In this painting composed of bright
patinas, a naked female figure viewed from a slightly elevated angle
perches on the edge of a partially filled bathtub, her face slightly obscured.
The dimensions of the bathroom appear somewhat occluded, almost as if
we were looking at it through a high-focus telescope. The only shading that
differentiates the female figure from the background that surrounds her is
provided by the sleeve of a densely patterned dressing gown that she has
not yet removed fully. The remainder of the dressing gown forms a textured
shadow beneath the womans right hip and upper leg:
le Nu la baignoire parat. Plongement. Je ne peux pas dire avoir vu ce nu, je ne puis
prtendre le connatre, jessaie dcrire que je sais, que je vis ce que Bonnard a voulu
faire. Le plongement rvle, au voisinage de la peau, sensitive, au voisinage des apparitions ou impressions qui lenveloppent ou la baignent, une sorte de membrane, une
pellicule fine qui se glisse ou nat entre le milieu ou le mlange et le baigneur ou la
baigneuse, une varit commune au sentant et au senti, un tissu arachnen qui leur
sert de bord commun, de frontire, dinterface, un film de transition qui spare et

117 Serres could in fact be alluding to any one of several canvases painted by Bonnard
between 1925 and 1936, all of which have a similar title and subject matter. For example, there is another canvas by Bonnard that dates from 1936 and includes a female
figure this time entirely naked and lying in a filled bathtub. This work is entitled
Nu dans la baignoire.
Serres
233
qui unit limpressionnant et limpressionn, limprimant et limprim, mince toffe

impressions, le bain rvle ce voile.118
Let us begin our appraisal of this quotation by stating the obvious. Serres
claims not to have seen the painting that he describes. The haptic characteristics that Serres exposes perhaps unwittingly in three of Bonnards
other paintings (Serres also alludes to Bonnards 1936 canvas, Le Jardin)
are intuitive. Irrespective of their simulacral state, the haptic (female)
skins painted by Bonnard provide Serres with the intuitions necessary
to decode the underlying rationale of a fourth canvas (Nu la baignoire)
that the writer has only heard others speak of (Je ne peux pas dire avoir vu
ce nu). What are these intuitions?
Serres tells us that [l]e plongement rvle, au voisinage de la peau,
sensitive, au voisinage des apparitions ou impressions qui lenveloppent
ou la baignent, une sorte de membrane, une pellicule fine qui se glisse ou
nat entre le milieu ou le mlange et le baigneur ou la baigneuse. What he
means by this is that our perceptions of our surroundings and the manner
in which they impress themselves haptically upon our perceiving skin are
not the only ingredients of the sensations that our bodies emit or receive.
Rather, we perceive the sensation of being immersed in space, a sensation
which results from visible semblance and cutaneous impression being channelled through an intermediary simulacrum. Whether the intermediary
simulacrum is written, painted, filmic (as it is in the quotation above) or
otherwise projected, this third element in the perceptive equation is integrative rather than divisive of the other two; it does not separate perceiver
from perceived.
Instead, the simulacrums infinitely variable form and opacity alternates between drawing the perceiver and the perceived together and pushing them apart. As Jennifer Leas likening of this process to the kneading
action of therapeutic massage reminds us, the oscillation between haptic
intermeshing and haptic enveloping that Serres postulates is arrived at by
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chance. Such oscillation is nevertheless integral to Serress understanding

of corporeal and extracorporeal space: [t]he mixing of body and body,
or body and world brings unpredictability into what has generally been
understood to be a relatively predictable and stable system, and underlines
the tension that exists between thinking about the mixed body and the
body as contained by the skin.119 The fact remains that the mixed body of
which Lea speaks is one based upon the fusion of our body with our physical
environment or upon social contact with another body. I believe that the
Serresian corps ml of Les Cinq Sens is as much a product of integration
between the tangible and the intangible, between the empirical and the
virtually empirical (the simulacral). Under such circumstances, environmental, societal and individual contexts determine the extent to which a
simulacrum will mitigate how apparent (and how accurately discernible)
the perceiver is to the perceived, and vice versa.120
The simulacrums almost Bataillean varit commune au sentant et au
senti constitutes the dynamically haptic frontier of Serresian perception
in Les Cinq Sens, frontire [] dinterface, un film de transition qui spare
et qui unit limpressionnant et limpressionn, limprimant et limprim.
The potentially haptic aspect of this otherwise intangibly fluid and virtual
frontier is provided by the works of creative industry that Serres discusses
119 Jennifer Lea, Negotiating Therapeutic Touch: Encountering Massage Through the
Mixed Bodies of Michel Serres, in Touching Space, Placing Touch, ed. by Mark
Paterson and Martin Dodge (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012), pp.2945 (p.33).
Concerning the interrelation of therapeutic massage as kneading and Serress writings on perception, see ibid., p.32.
120 As Marcel Hnaff explains in Des pierres, des anges et des hommes: Michel
Serres et la question de la ville globale, Horizons philosophiques, 8, 1 (1997) <doi:
10.7202/801061ar> [accessed 1 April 2014], [l]e langage, limagination, luvre de
fiction sont des modes de traitement du virtuel. Mais si lon sen tient la question de
lespace dit virtuel, lexprience nous en est donne de manire constante. Ainsi entre
deux personnes qui changent par lettres ou par tlphone se dessine un lieu invisible,
insituable, qui nest ni celui de lune ni celui de lautre (on pourrait mme le dire dune
simple conversation): plus quun entre-deux cest un mi-lieu ou mme un non-lieu,
un ailleurs par rapport chaque site, cet espace o se croisent nos messages (89).
Serres
235
and likens.121 It is Serress interdisciplinary approach to these comparisons that reconciles much of the misguided but nonetheless troublesome
schism between conceptualism and empiricism against which he writes. In
the following subsection, I shall consider how the Serres of Les Cinq Sens
addresses haptic perception in aspects of our lives that are not so obviously
connected with art.
Speech, Haptic Perception and Remembering a

Sting in the Tale
Though Serres insists that [j]e ne puis dire ni crire du toucher, ni daucun
sens,122 he is more than happy in Les Cinq Sens to describe in considerable
detail the ways in which tactility grounds our understanding of sens as both
sensation and as reason or rationale:
Notre peau varie comme une queue de paon, mme si nous ne portons pas de plumes,
croire quelle voit. Elle aperoit confusment sur toute la surface de sa plage, voit,
clair et distinct, par la singularit suraigu des yeux. Partout ailleurs, elle porte des
sortes docelles vagues. La peau fait des poches et des plis.123
Serress integrative approach to corporeal perception is highly apparent in

this instance (and in many others I have cited thus far); human skin links
121 Serres: On cite de faon distraite Montaigne qui disait: ce moi ondoyant et divers.
On le cite comme une phrase potique sans vraiment rflchir ce que Montaigne
disait. En disant: ondoyant, ce qui veut dire: fluctuant comme londe, de lordre du
liquide et non pas du solide; ce qui signifie: de lordre du changeant et non pas du
stable. Quand il disait: divers, il disait quelque chose qui voulait dire: ml, stri,
nu, comme je le dis dans Les Cinq Sens (Genevive James and Michel Serres,
Entretien avec Michel Serres, The French Review, 60, 6 (1987) <http://www.jstor.
org/stable/393765> [accessed 31 August 2012], 792. Emphasis in original.).
123 Ibid., p.59.
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our perceptual faculties together physically and functionally, integrating and

distinguishing between them as the need arises. Serres sums up the skins
multivalent character with the pithy observation that [l]e toucher voit
un peu, il a ou.124 All of this leaves us wondering, however, what happens
when the world as we perceive it interrupts or even penetrates our skins
haptic (or otherwise sensory) envelope. Serress response to this question
is pointedly non-theoretical. In fact, he turns to personal reminiscence:
Je parlais un jour devant quelque auditoire, attentifs, lui et moi, sous la tente dune
confrence. Soudain, un gros frelon me piqua lintrieur de la cuisse, la surprise sajoutant la douleur exquise. Rien dans la voix ni dans lintonation ne trahit laccident
et le discours sacheva. Que ce souvenir exact ne vante pas un courage spartiate, mais
indique seulement que le corps parlant, la chair pleine de langue a peu de peine
demeurer dans la parole quoi quil arrive. Le verbe emplit la chair et lanesthsie, on
a dit mme, on a crit quil se faisait chair.125
By retelling this anecdote, Serres states clearly that language as a participatory, first-person sensory experience is capable of overriding bodily
responses to perceptual stimuli. In one respect, then, he implies that speech
is capable of disrupting our cognition of our haptic faculties. Nonetheless,
the anaesthetic influence of language does not extend into our sensory
memory: Serres is able to recall his unflinching vocal response to the hornets physically disturbing sting. What is more, Serres is aware that he did
not react outwardly to the sudden, unexpected pain that he felt after the
sting because he was concentrating on speaking to his audience, who were
listening just as intently. The fact that Serress narrator mentions un gros
frelon implies that he saw the insect circling him at some point before,
during or after being stung by it. Since neither Serress voice nor its intonation alter following the hornet sting, it seems reasonable to assume that
he did not look down to see where he had been stung. Even under the
self-reflexive influence of the spoken word, then, Serress skin proves itself
capable of informing him where he has been stung and does not require
his conscious visual verification in order to do so. Because le verbe emplit
124 Ibid., p.58.
125 Ibid., p.68.
Serres
237
la chair, the writers skin, filled or bloated with language, does not react
to being penetrated by the hornet. Under the aegis of language as a participatory (that is, as an intently listened) sensation, Serress body does not
twitch a muscle even involuntarily.
Yet under the influence of his words as he speaks them, the haptic
(visual and cutaneous) sensations that Serres is aware of when he is stung
linger in his memory, such that he is able to articulate and analyse these
sensations subsequently. Serres appears convinced that spoken language
as a subjectively experienced sensation is uniquely capable of suppressing
our physical (and specifically haptic) responses:
Rien ne rend insensible comme la parole. Si javais regard quelque image, cout le
son issu du positif, senti une couronne de fleurs, got une drage, tenu poing serr
une hampe, laiguillon du frelon met arrach des cris. Mais je parlais, en quilibre
dans un sillon ou une clture, au sein de la cuirasse discursive. [] Nous parlons pour
nous droguer, militants comme gotistes.126
Serres claims here that if one or more of his senses (vision, hearing, smell,
taste or touch) had been in concentrated use at the time that he was stung,
he would have felt the hornets attack and would have yelped involuntarily. However, because Serress mouth is colonised by language when he is
stung, his skin is also filled by language (le verbe emplit la chair) and in
that state of sensorial plenitude, is content not to react.
The corollary of Serress recounting of the hornet sting is that words
are somehow more haptically arresting than a combination of tactile and
visual sensory data because the thought or attention required to make use
of or to interpret language can dull our perceptual awareness. Contrarily,
sensory stimulus alone cannot diminish our recourse to language.127 (For
example, someone who inadvertently hammers a nail into his or her hand
will almost certainly express their physical anguish verbally.) Serres thus
suggests that our conscious participation in the act of enunciation can
126 Ibid.
127 As Tucker says, Serres sense fits in nicely here, as a way of recalibrating theory and
analysis towards a space before rather than post language (Sense and the Limits of
Knowledge, 157; emphasis in original).
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satisfy our perceptive faculties in a manner that sensory data cannot. We

might then ask how language which is allusive of sensation and is, in this
regard, a tool for abstracting or virtualising perception could be more
filling, more materially nourishing of our sensory consciousness and organs
than our own, corporeally gleaned sensations are. Let us reread Serress
encounter with the hornet.
A state of equilibrium is induced in Serress skin by his concerted gesture of speaking at length to a visibly engrossed audience. This sustained
engagement with his oral faculties and the visible comportment of his
audience softens the ability of his skin to respond instinctively, unthinkingly, to external stimuli. When Serres is assailed by the sharp and fleeting intensity of the hornets sting, his skin registers the intrusion and he
becomes conscious of it, but does not react physically. His account of the
incident describes his skins selective refusal to react to momentary, intensely
localised and therefore acute sensation. In place of that sensation, there is
an extended period of diminished reactivity to sensory stimulus which
stifles almost all unconscious bodily expression. The implication is that to
engage fully and actively in dialogue with others is to react less viscerally to
them, to be less haptically expressive to and impressive upon others. Serres
even goes so far as to say that sensation and designatory language cannot
function together: Il faut sentir ou se nommer, choisissez. Le langage ou
la peau, esthsie ou anesthsie. La langue indure les sens. [] Combien
dimpressions et de temps manqu-je en marquant sur la peau de papier
tant dcriture codifie []?.128
Above all else, Serress understanding of touch in Les Cinq Sens is
one in which le toucher se situe entre, la peau fait nos changes.129 Touch
retains a virtual dimension in all of its guises precisely because it is not our
sole preserve. The specifically haptic (potentially, simultaneously visual and
tactile) experience of touching and the language that articulates it no more
belong to us in their entirety than either concept does to the person, object
or surface that comes into proximal haptic contact with us. It is the third,

129 Ibid., p.97.
Serres
239
shared, liminal dimension that tactility fosters between us and what we

(see and) touch which is so valuable in Serress opinion: it leaves room for
further thought and interaction on individual and societal bases. We may
presume to know something of that which we touch, but cannot hope to
know everything about it.
Serres also believes that the indefinable nature of tactility as a third, liminal space frees us from the tyranny of modern science, which falsely claims
to be a form of all-encompassing knowledge:130 Le toucher, topologique,
prpare les plans et les varits lisses, pour un regard mtrique, euclidien
et paresseux, la peau couvre dun voile ce que lil ne peut pas voir.131
Tactility thus has a role in scientific observation, if only as an unacknowledged blind spot in a discipline which takes such pride in its metrics and
supposed impartiality.
As Les Cinq Sens draws to a close, it becomes clear that many of the
anecdotes and theories that Serres expounds upon during the text have
been selected to emphasise the writers conviction that his modified understanding of tactility (as a constitutive element of haptic perception) is one
of the few remaining bulwarks capable of challenging modern sciences
overriding influence (and its fixation with purely visual observation of the
world). Tactile perception as Serres postulates it in Les Cinq Sens is the
sole preserve of neither truth nor fiction, neither empiricism nor critical
theory. Similarly, tactility is not uniquely appealed to by the creative arts.
Indeed, our sense of touch can be every bit as verisimilitudinous as it can
be simulacral; it can lead us to critical thought and social observation as
readily as it may lead us into the realms of abstractive or wholly fantastical
130 Serres explores the origins of this issue at length in Herms II (especially pp.67125,
16380). See also Les Cinq Sens, pp.458, 461: rien nchappe lempire de science.
Rien. [] Travaillant sur nos relations, les sciences humaines dracinent le langage
en passant derrire lui, comme font les sciences exactes sur les objets, en lui substituant un algorithme vrai. Le langage mme se soumet quations ou formules. []
Je cherche extraire le livre que jcris et celui qui lcrit des listes objectives, de la
mmoire machinale, des algorithmes reprs, pour les rendre un nouveau sujet ou
pour relancer laventure de la philosophie.
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literature. In addition, our tactile perception can be haptic in that our skin
may see and even hear as it interacts on an ostensibly tactile basis with
a given surface. For all its topological characteristics, the Serresian model
of tactility and its points of confluence with (inscribed) language have
yet to be mapped fully. As we shall see, Les Cinq Sens is only the first step
on this path.
Le Tiers-Instruit: That Swimming Feeling (Again)

Le Tiers-Instruit was first published in 1991, a year after Serress election
to the Acadmie Franaise. Though primarily focussed upon educational
issues, Le Tiers-Instruit ruminates at some length upon the confluence
between language and haptic perception that becomes apparent during the
course of Les Cinq Sens. Of particular significance is the manner in which
Le Tiers-Instruit presents haptic perception as more of a proprioceptive
phenomenon than was the case in Serress earlier work.132 For this reason,
I now turn to Serress literary, anecdotal portrayal of going for a swim, in
spite of there being allusions to football, rugby, tennis and dancing peppered throughout Le Tiers-Instruit.
In common with those of Bataille and Blanchot analysed earlier,
Serress account of swimming begins with a description of the haptic sensory indices that the act of swimming might evoke. His description then
turns to increasingly metaphorical concerns. Unlike Bataille or Blanchot,
however, Serres believes that there is materially valuable information to
be gained from indulging and immersing our bodies in the space that surrounds us. Unexpectedly, much of the instructive potential of the (haptic,
132 Even so, remarks such as [l]e corps se pose et marche par lespace des messages,
soriente dans le bruit et le sens, parmi les rythmes et les rumeurs (Les Cinq Sens,
p.181) imply that Serress approach to perception was already beginning to shift as
he wrote Les Cinq Sens.
Serres
241
proprioceptive) experience of swimming that Serres describes is rooted

in metric references, in the perception of distance between swimmer and
shoreline or riverbed:
Nul ne sait nager vraiment avant davoir travers, seul, un fleuve large et imptueux
ou un dtroit, un bras de mer agits. [] Partez, plongez. []
Le vrai passage a lieu au milieu. Quelque sens que la nage dcide, le sol gt des
dizaines ou centaines de mtres sous le ventre ou des kilomtres derrire et devant.
Voici le nageur seul. Il faut traverser pour apprendre la solitude. Elle se reconnat
lvanouissement des rfrences. [L]a peau sadapte lenvironnement turbulent, le
vertige de la tte sarrte parce quelle ne peut plus compter sur dautre support que le
sien; sous peine de noyade, elle entre en confiance dans la brasse lente. [] Le corps
qui traverse apprend certes un second monde, celui vers lequel il se dirige, o lon
parle une autre langue, mais il sinitie surtout un troisime, par o il transite.133
Particularly striking here is the rapidity with which Serres is able to move
from describing a physical pastime replete with overtly proprioceptive
(and, in a Patersonian sense, haptic) detail into a metaphor which evokes
language, whilst simultaneously distancing us from the haptic sensations
with which he began the description.134
Serres claims that la solitude [] se reconnat lvanouissement des
rfrences. However, the phrases which follow these words itemise how the
swimmers dizzying disorientation, which is centred on the head (there is
no hint of the Bataillean Acphale in Serress work), is cured by the brains
obligation to trust in the arms that propel the swimmer across the waterway or die. Furthermore, the swimmers enforced self-confidence in his
body is brought about by the realisation that he is not an easily quantifiable distance from solid ground. In short, the dangerousness of the space
in which Serress swimmer finds himself and the instructive experience
133 Michel Serres, Le Tiers-Instruit (Paris: Franois Bourin, 1991; repr. Folio/Gallimard,
2008), pp.2425.
134 My assertion here echoes William Paulsons remark in his article Swimming the
Channel that for Serres, [t]he user of language inhabits a sensory and kinaesthetic
body, the novelist draws on the accretions of language, the philosopher follows repertoires of stories and tales, the scientist draws on the whole cultural reservoir (in
Mapping Michel Serres, ed. by Abbas, pp.2436 (pp.3435)).
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that he will garner from this peril is defined by the swimmers ability to
discern his distance from the safety of solid, tactile surfaces. Assessing this
danger requires a certain degree of congruence between sight and touch:
among those of us without serious visual disabilities, the eyes can detect
hazards from a greater distance away than our outstretched hands and
arms are able to.
It should not escape our attention that Serres claims the truly instructive potential of swimming to become apparent midway between two river
shores. At this stage, our tactile faculties (in the sense of proximal grabbing
for solid objects) and our visual faculties would be in harmony precisely
because of their inability to function with any more than fleeting efficacy.
Our eyes would tell us roughly where the shoreline we sought might be.
Though our hands would be unable to do this, their sieving of the water
through which they plunge would be sufficient to propel us towards the
visible shore. As a result, tactility dominates vision in this situation because
only physical actions (informed first and foremost by tactility) can save
the swimmer from drowning.
The peril that Serress swimmer faces is universal and genderless, yet
remains a unique product of haptic interaction between the (swimmers)
body and the (fluid) space that surrounds it. The swimmer in Serress extract
is male, but his plight would be equally applicable to any female in the
same situation.135 As Serres remarks later, le partage par genre concerne
seulement les vivants sexus, quelques rles sociaux, parfois le langage. Peu
de chose, en somme.136
Faced with visual confirmation that safety is far from his grasp, Serress
swimmer adapts to his almost total haptic immersion in a liquidity possessed of fluctuating currents on an expressly tactile basis. These watery pulls
135 Maria Assad goes a step further in Being Free to Write for a Woman: The Question
of Gender in the Work of Michel Serres, in Mapping Michel Serres, ed. by Abbas,
pp.21025 (p.223): the feminine is everywhere in [] Le Tiers-Instruit. [] The
question of gender finds its answer in the education of the other who goes into an
instructed middle. (The instructed middle to which Assad alludes includes the
ability to write with both hands.)
136 Serres, Le Tiers-Instruit, p.37.
Serres
243
and pushes could prove fatal if the swimmers tactile balance with them
is not maintained. Balance between current and swimmer must therefore
involve all of the swimmers bodily faculties at once. As William Paulson
remarks, if such proprioceptive integrity is not possible, the rhythm of the
swimmers tactile interactions with the tide will be threatened, as will the
swimmers life.137 Akin to the Bataillean or Blanchovian accounts of swimming, Serress account veers initially from the practical and the haptically
perceptible, to the abstractive. It is the learning of this timeless language
of trust that must develop between the various extremities of the disorientated swimmers body in order for him not to drown which enables him to
complete his swim safely. (The ageless value of learning to trust ones body
and mind determines the seemingly inverted chronology of the swimmers
journey through the troisime [monde], par o il transite into un second
monde, celui vers lequel il se dirige, o lon parle une autre langue.)138 The
swim eventually concludes with the swimmers safe arrival on the opposite
shore and a return to haptic sensation. However, this haptic sensation is
experienced in a different manner than before:
Il parvient lautre rive: autrefois gaucher, vous le trouvez droitier, maintenant;
jadis gascon, vous lentendez francophone ou anglomane aujourdhui. [L]e voil
multiple. Source ou changeur de sens, relativisant jamais la gauche, la droite et
la terre do sortent les directions, il a intgr un compas dans son corps liquide. Le
pensiez-vous converti, invers, boulevers? Certes. Plus encore: universel. Sur laxe
mobile du fleuve et du corps frissonne, mue, la source du sens. [] A-t-il travers la
totalit du concret pour entrer en abstraction?139
Unlike the confusion that engulfs Batailles Troppmann or Blanchots

Thomas once they have emerged from troubled waters, Serress account
of swimming as a haptic experience is one in which returning to dry land
137 Paulson, Swimming the Channel, p.35: the sea both makes the music of its waves
and writes the traces of its ebb and flow on beaches and banks. [H]umans can only
understand this nonhuman language if they throw themselves into it, risking their
all, swimming naked.
139 Ibid., pp.2627.
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brings mental and perceptual clarity. There is a perceptible trajectory from

one bank to another during which the swimmer gains empirical knowledge
about his bodys sensory faculties and how they and his active body
relate to the untamed violence of the rivers currents.
Serres says that empirical knowledge of this type helps to integrate
and to orientate our perceptive faculties and muscle movements: Source
ou changeur de sens, relativisant jamais la gauche, la droite et la terre
do sortent les directions, il a intgr un compas dans son corps liquide.
As in Les Cinq Sens, the Serres of Le Tiers-Instruit postulates an inextricable confluence between integration and orientation of our bodily
faculties through physical exercise and the exercise of language through
multilingual polyphony (il parvient lautre rive: autrefois gaucher, vous
le trouvez droitier, maintenant; jadis gascon, vous lentendez francophone
ou anglomane aujourdhui).
The extract above concludes with the question of the swimmer:
A-t-il travers la totalit du concret pour entrer en abstraction?. If we look
at the order of Serress observations, left-handedness melds into righthandedness. This integration leads to a passage from monolingual expression to trilingualism. In turn, this widened variety of physical actions give
rise to a broadened intellectual, physically inscriptive and verbal scheme of
expression. Serres does hence imply a movement away from the corporeal
and a drift towards the abstractive in his explanation of this evolution. He
employs an example of physical, haptically orientated exertion in order to
create a metaphor that illustrates the benefits of being multilingual. These
benefits are generally supposed to be more abstract in nature: increased
theoretical knowledge or greater cultural awareness would be the most
obvious gains. What Serres seeks to demonstrate in the extracts above is
that these supposedly abstract gains through language are, as often as not,
the product of empirical haptic experience, and that they will make a material difference once they have taken effect. In this instance, the swimmers
very life depends upon the application of empiricially gleaned knowledge.
The shivering mentioned in the quotation above is not the product of
fearful mortality, however. In my analysis of the Bataillean literary motif of
shaking or shivering, I remarked upon the clear oscillation between sublimity and abjection that this action implies. Serress understanding of the verb
Serres
245
frissonner (to shiver or shudder) also suggests recurrent movement between

states (left-handedness and right-handedness; monolingual expression
and trilingualism). Unlike the vacillation between abjection and sublimity that Troppmann (and to some extent, Blanchots Thomas) experiences
in the sea, Serres presents the act of shivering as a symptom of temporal
coincidence between these states. In Le Tiers-Instruit, the simultaneity of
abjection and sublimity manifests itself through an interlocking cadence
between perceptible, purposeful muscular activity and polyvalent linguistic
expression.140 Perceptible and physically interactive spaces become unified
in this process because right-handedness and left-handedness coexist within
the ambidextrous swimmers body. Serres himself asks, [n]est-il pas plus
raisonnable dutiliser ensemble les deux hmisphres du cerveau?.141 These
spaces are brought into haptic confluence to answer a functional need: to
stop the swimmer from drowning by repelling the bodily torsions caused
by the rivers currents. As Serres explains below, this sensory experience
has enduring mental consequences:
Un jour, quelque moment, chacun passe par le milieu de ce fleuve blanc, tat trange
du changement de phase, quon peut nommer sensibilit, mot qui signifie la possibilit ou la capacit en tous sens. Sensible, par exemple, la balance quand elle branle
vers le haut et vers le bas tout la fois, vibrant, au beau milieu, dans les deux sens;
sensible aussi lenfant qui va marcher, quand il se lance dans un dsquilibre rquilibr; observez-le encore, lorsquil plonge dans la parole, la lecture ou lcriture,
dbarbouill, embarbouill dans le sens et le non-sens.142
Central to the interaction between perception and (inscribed or spoken)

language described here is an oscillation between the two realms which is
140 As Harris says in The Smooth Operator, [i]n essence, Serres treats the text or discourse at hand as a set of elements bound together by some rule(s), which may be
formulated in their purest form in spatial terms (pp.11415).
142 Serres, Le Tiers-Instruit, pp.2930. Again, the similarity between Serress thoughts
here and those articulated by Jean-Luc Nancy is strong. For proof of this, compare
Serress remarks above with Nancys remarks concerning the interrelation of excription,
corporeity and literary accounts of this interaction (see especially Nancy, Corpus,
p.14 and pp.2528 above for my commentary of excription).
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Chapter 3
so intense that it blurs them together. Serress allusion to haut and bas
puts us in mind of the alternation between sublimity and abjection that is
so apparent in Batailles writing, but such comparisons are, as we have seen,
a little misleading. What Serres evokes in the quotation above is an oscillation between perception and literature that derives from sensory experiences of centrifugal forces whose perceptible characteristics are themselves
defined through the empirical methodologies of physics. In concert with
the empirically defined theories which describe them, these forces create a
stable framework through which we can understand our past and present
physical actions, as well as our perceptions of these actions. This understanding also allows us to predict how our bodies will react to future situations that are, as yet, beyond our ken. Serres underscores the fundamental
importance of this synergetic knowledge by linking a childs ambulatory
development with his or her acquisition of language.
It is by no means accidental that Serres mentions the act of walking
before he alludes to linguistic expression. It is, however, surprising that he
should place both of these before sens and non-sens in the quotation above.
If we recall the literary and critical works of Bataille or Blanchot, both writers wilfully refute the possibility of any rational sense being derivable from
physical sensation. Indeed, the very ineffability of physical sensation is a
characteristic of Batailles formulation of angoisse as it is expressed in Le
Gros orteil or in Le Bleu du ciel. The same can be said of the increasingly
disembodied and disorientated voices of Blanchots LEntretien infini or
LInstant de ma mort. According to either writer, whether it is written or
spoken, language is simply not up to the task of articulating sensory processes or the data which results from them.
Serres disagrees with such notions. In all of the quotations from Le
Tiers-Instruit that I have presented, the overarching emphasis is upon
balance. Balance at least in a physical context is an expressly proprioceptive phenomenon which, according to Mark Patersons definition of
the term, would require haptic interaction between sight and tactility. One
particularly salient feature of Serress account of swimming is the manner
in which physical balance paves the way for mental balance.
This realisation compels us to remember the aquatic episodes described
by Bataille in Le Bleu du ciel and Blanchot in Thomas lobscur. In both
Serres
247
of these texts, immersion in water proves disintegrative of the protagonists sensory faculties. The very plurality of the characters thoughts and
sensations confuses them mentally and physically to such an extent that
Troppmann and Thomas both suffer acute sensory disorientation and
disjuncture. In Thomass case, this disorientation threatens his very life.
Serres portrays the act of swimming in another manner: the fluidity of
water and the simultaneous, often multi-directional pull of its currents force
any body that attempts to traverse them into a state of sensory integration.
Additionally, this materially necessitated but intellectually reasoned cohesion of perceptive faculties leads Serress swimmer into a state of mental
clarity which is wholly transferrable to situations with little or no physical
resemblance to the act of swimming (such as speaking a second or third
language). Part of this transferability of skills arises from the fact that Serress
swimmer must be attuned to the rhythms of the currents upon which he
swims. This in turn requires an embrace of chronology and temporality
which is largely at odds with Bataillean or Blanchovian thinking.143
The Serresian swimmer keeps mental notes concerning the frequency
and intensity of the waves upon which he swims. He must also be mindful
of the sequence of physical gestures (such as kicking or paddling) that he
makes in response to the seas cadences, lest he become asynchronous with
them and potentially lose his life. Though the stakes will rarely be quite so
high, the act of speaking also requires a good sense of timing. In order to
provide our words with greater impact, we will frequently make physical
gestures for the sake of emphasis. This requires us to be able to coordinate
word and deed, often in response to the words or actions of others. Thus,
the skilful and simultaneous manoeuvring of body and perceiving mind
into temporal coincidence constitutes much of the parity or equivalence
that Serres claims to exist between the physical acts of swimming and
speaking.
143 As Assad suggests, Serress discussion of the five senses demonstrates that we cannot
seize time as a sum total or even as a series of subtotals. It invites the reader to roam
the topological space of localities where ones fluctuating wanderings are the new
expression of time (Reading with Michel Serres, p.99).
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Chapter 3
Unsurprisingly, therefore, Serres takes great exception to modern

sciences refusal to acknowledge the confluence between time as it is perceived haptically and the subjective intervention that is required to navigate the interaction between the concepts of chronology and body. Early
in his career, Serres remarks in one of his more critically orientated works
that from its earliest beginnings, geometry arrte le temps pour mesurer
lespace and that this is the (impossible) premise upon which modern science is based.144 The Serres of Le Tiers-Instruit remains committed to the
localised congruence of perceiving body and time; empiricism and not
pure observation is the glue of this sensory integration.
Fighting on Film and a Trip to the Theatre:

La Guerre mondiale
In the seventeen years between Le Tiers-Instruit and La Guerre mondiale,
only Variations sur le corps (published in 1999) explores matters of the
body and perception in the same level of detail that Les Cinq Sens did in
the mid-1980s.145 Even La Guerre mondiale only addresses these themes
in passing, however: the book is mostly concerned with diminishing what
Serres considers to be an ever-rising tide of global violence. With the advent
of Le Tiers-Instruit, Serress writing becomes appreciably less focussed upon
the confines of the human body and more preoccupied with its perceptible surroundings. Le Contrat naturel, published in 1990,146 had already
confirmed the beginning of this trend in Serress work and is, like much
of his writing over the following two decades, dominated by ecological
144 Serres, Herms II, p.167. The parallels between Serress portrayal of the geometric
notion of arrte[r] le temps pour mesurer lespace offers an interesting counterpoint
to the senseless freezing of time implied by the Blanchovian image.
145 A lack of space prevents me from examining Variations sur le corps in any detail here,
unfortunately.
146 Michel Serres, Le Contrat naturel (Paris: Franois Bourin, 1990).
Serres
249
issues. For its part, the narrative of La Guerre mondiale attempts to unify
the human body and environment against physical violence of all kinds.
There is insufficient space for me to analyse Serress response to the
problems of war and violence in any more than the broadest of strokes here.
Instead, I shall concentrate upon La Guerre mondiales fleeting allusions
to perception. These instances illustrate a significant shift in Serress writing about corporeality and sensory faculties in comparison with Le TiersInstruit and Les Cinq Sens. In my reading of Le Tiers-Instruit, I identified
an increasingly noticeable shift towards the virtual in Serress descriptions
of the perceiving body. By 2008 and La Guerre mondiale, this change has
become more appreciable still.
I shall begin my analysis of the 2008 text by considering Serress account
of a bar fight which breaks out [d]ans un bar matelots, sur les quais de
Hambourg, de Brest ou de Bordeaux [:] LAncre de Misricorde.147 As the
passage progresses, we see that this brawl among sailors which could be
taking place anywhere in the Western Europe of the Cold War era is deescalated by the intervention of film:
Une chope renverse, un poignet qui effleure un cheveu, le pompon caress de trop
prs qui commence, qui le sait? [P]rsent, par chance, au milieu du bar, quoiquun
peu moins saoul, jai pu filmer, ds lorigine et jusquau dnouement juridique, le
grandiose et thtral vnement. En guise dintroduction, je propose den projeter
les squences sur lcran de vos imaginations, mais lenvers.148
We read above that the physical contact which ignites the drunken fight
is not seen by Serres. However, two of the three reasons that he gives for
the brawl starting result from excessive proximity between bodies and
(perhaps deliberate) clumsiness. In spite of Serres being present to film the
origine of the ensuing disorder, his optical record of that disorder does
not pick out the haptic incitements which set the fight off. In the absence
of this haptic knowledge, Serress writing remains preoccupied with optical
detail. The narrative moves on to describe a reversed version of the brawl:
147 Michel Serres, La Guerre mondiale (Paris: Le Pommier, 2008), p.27.

148 Ibid., pp.2728.
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je propose den projeter les squences sur lcran de vos imaginations, mais
lenvers. Because he is not physically involved in the fight, Serres can only
describe what he sees; he is not tactilely involved in it. In the absence of
points of tactile reference, Serress description of the bar brawl inverts the
chronology upon which his earlier works rely so heavily. In addition, the
writer seeks to project his rejection of temporality onto our minds eye,
onto the screen of our imagination, through his textual description of this
inverted chronology.
Under these circumstances, written words cannot compensate for
the temporal skewing that the absence of tactility causes. As we read his
inverted account of the fight, we understand that Serres, the tactilely uninvolved observer who is un peu moins saoul than those he surveys, seeks
to undo the careless caressing that begins the scrum. Rather than having
a small, misplaced moment of tactility lead to sustained, haptically perceptible exchanges of violence between the sailors, Serres seeks to reduce
the amount of tactile interaction between them from violent excess to
increasingly sober nothingness:
Du chaos confus, devenu dsormais spectacle et reprsentation pour les anciens
lutteurs qui y participaient, restent, avec le temps, telle et telle escarmouche locale,
puis, mesure que le film passe, un quatuor qui se dfait, ensuite un trio, enfin le
duel principiel du quartier-matre et du bosco. Dernire image: le pompon, les cheveux caresss.149
The diminishment of tactile intensity described above reduces the generalised chaos confus in the bar to an escarmouche locale and ends with
a final caress. An increased absence of haptic contact therefore equates
with a return to rational thought and behaviour. Indeed, Serres attempts
to make the violent haptic excesses at once seen and felt by the squabbling
sailors just a few moments before into a spectacle et reprsentation pour
les anciens lutteurs qui y participaient.
This heureux diminishment of excessively haptic proximity in
favour of non-tactilely experienced visions also leads to a reduced level of
149 Ibid., p.29.
Serres
251
inebriation among the former combatants. In the aftermath of this abolition of tactility, the accoutrements of militarism and their visual impact
remain, unruffled:
mesure que jatteins la fin du film, cest--dire le dbut de la rixe, puisque tout dfile
lenvers, je ralentis la vitesse de la projection pour laisser voir ce qui se dgage du
reflux: lagression de trois contre trois succde, lentement, celle de deux contre deux,
enfin un sen prend un verre final-primordial, pompons droits sur les bonnets,
dnouement heureux.150
The juxtaposition of tactility and filmic visions undertaken by Serres

in these scenes recalls the hand holding which occurs between Irne and
Thomas as they watch a film in Blanchots Thomas lobscur. In La Guerre
mondiale, Serres asks us to project the film of the violent disturbance in the
bar that he describes onto our minds eye, using his words as the instructions
for this process. His intent is to expose the tactilely limiting mechanism
through which he hopes violence in the modern world may be curtailed
(dans une priode non protge, que lon pourrait nommer apocalypse,
[j]e livre ici un livre dutopie, si jose dire, concrte).151 In Thomas lobscur,
the confluence of imagination and unexpected or at least unconsidered
tactile contact between Irne and Blanchots titular protagonist does a great
deal of violence to the female characters mind, such that her very ability to
reason becomes impaired: Elle le sentait souple, mallable []. Cest une
absence de corps quelle sappropriait comme son propre corps dlicieux et
dont la douceur, bouleversante et dchirante, la grisait.152 True to its cancerous nature, this intoxicating psychological experience of tactility then
causes Irne to imagine it doing physical damage to her body: dans une
apothose pathtique [l]es doigts, contact tour tour froid et brlant, lui
apportaient limpression nouvelle []. Irne se sentait malade, dlicieusement malade.153 Because they coincide with the actuality of her purely
tactile experience of holding Thomass hand, Irne becomes convinced that
150 Ibid.
151 Ibid., p.22.
153 Ibid., pp.17778.
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Chapter 3
her mental images of the incident as being harmful are justified. No longer
merely tactile, this phantasmic haptic experience is initiated unthinkingly.
It is questionable whether Irne actually perceives it entirely consciously.
Nevertheless, she becomes sufficiently aware of these (newly haptic but still
essentially virtual) sensations to act consciously upon them.
Unfortunately, Irne decides to bring virtual reality into the physical
realm by slitting her throat. Her tactile embrace of the virtual image of
death brings a premature (and briefly, genuinely haptic) end to her life. She
becomes intoxicated to the point of mortality first with unthinking tactile
contact, then virtual imagery and finally, entirely haptic delusions. The
element of Dionysian Rausch that is apparent in the bar brawl that Serres
describes in La Guerre mondiale runs in the opposite direction (or dans
lautre sens) to the increasingly haptic chain of events that Irne experiences
in Thomas lobscur. It is Serress hope that by inverting the tragic spiral of
causality, he might create a series of mental images increasingly stripped of
tactility and thereby, rid these images of any physically harmful potential.
Serres projects his plea to reduce tactile (and by extension, haptic) excess
through filmic images that are disseminated in virtual form by his written
words.154 It is his intention that these words should form mental images
for his readers which will in turn encourage them to find practical ways to
stave off tactilitys intoxicatingly haptic excesses and thereby safeguard life.
Serres does not seek to endorse the morbid potential of Nietzsches demand
that theatre be considered an instrument to help audiences embrace their
mortality and their misery, however:
Non seulement les eaux se retirent, baisse la crue, refroidit la violence, mais nat le
spectacle. Voil lorigine de la tragdie, que chercha Nietzsche sans la trouver. La
reprsentation commence lorsque la violence va vers son tiage, que baisse le nombre
des participants. Quelle serve de catharsis ou de purge devient simple tautologie. []
154 Serress use of the cinematic paradigm in this instance clashes puzzlingly with a
remark he makes in 1999: au cinma [] les voyeurs restent assis et passifs dans une
chambre noire, rduits au regard, seul actif dans une chair aussi absente quune bote
noire. Lil vif au surplomb dun organisme quasi mort donne des sensations presque
incorporelles, abstraites dj (Variations sur le corps, p.12).
Serres
253
Double bnfice: la bataille ralentit, le thtre merge. On dit bien: le thtre des
oprations.155
What Serres seeks to convey in his narrative and filmic reversal of

the bar fight is a reorientation of conflict which suppresses haptic interaction or tactile proximity in favour of distanced optical representation
and perception. In the absence of tactility (and hapticity), we are left with
phantasmic, disconnected visions of militarism. In place of the empirical science advocated by Serres in Les Cinq Sens and Le Tiers-Instruit, we
are edged nearer to the vociferous rejection of empiricism given voice by
Nietzsches concept of tragedy.156 Far from Serress backwardly projected
film inviting us to touch in the manner of Marksian haptic cinema, we are
being beseeched not to touch with even the slightest of intensity.
We might well ask where all of this leaves tactility and haptic perception in Serress thinking, given that he now seems to equate the reduction
of immediate tangibility with an increase in rational thought and sociable comportment. His idea of diminishing the intensity of tactile contact
might well reduce the number of haptically active participants in a conflict.
However, Serress suggestions also ensure the enduring visibility of the
accoutrements and harbingers of any such conflict while emphasising our
powerlessness to do anything other than imagine or otherwise fabulate a
different train of events.
In order to decode Serress rationale here, we must look to a series of
remarks that he makes during the remainder of La Guerre mondiale. Let
us first consider his positing of the concept of battle or bataille:
155 Serres, La Guerre mondiale, p.42.
156 Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, p.75: At present, [] science, spurred on by its powerful delusions, is hurrying unstoppably to its limits, where the optimism hidden in
the essence of logic will founder and break up. [L]ogic curls up around itself at these
limits and finally bites its own tail, then a new form of knowledge breaks through,
tragic knowledge, which, simply to be endured, needs art for protection and as medicine. [W]e can see the insatiable greed of optimistic knowledge, of which Socrates
appeared to be the exemplar, turning suddenly into tragic resignation and a need
for art []. Alas! The magic of these struggles is such, that he who sees them must
also take part in them! (emphasis in original).
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la bataille suppose une partition, donc une limite; il ne peut donc exister de telles
relations de puissance, ou doppositions entre les individus ou les groupes, que dans
le dtail du dcoupage impliqu par cette rduction. Le temporel se bat pour son
bout de gras. Il dcoupe des cartes et fait la guerre sur ces frontires; il tue donc,
partial, pour ce partiel. Je veux souligner fortement le rapport dcisif entre conflit
ou opposition et partition dtaille du rel.157
We learn from these remarks that Serres is attempting to undermine the

rigidity of concepts such as temporality and tactility because he believes
them to be inherently partial and therefore, potentially destructive (Je veux
souligner fortement le rapport dcisif entre conflit ou opposition et partition dtaille du rel). Battle as an empirical reality is a threat to life because
it invites the parties involved to divide up space and then fight over whose
version of this partitioning is the most valid. Conflicting, differentiating
perceptions of space external to our bodies perceptions which include the
various schematisations of haptic and optical sensation thus play a major
role in the incitement of conflict, according to Serres. As a result, the minimisation of touch that Serress reversed film-cum-theatre of Nietzschean
tragedy advocates is as much a warning not to discriminate on a physical
(and especially not on a haptic) basis.158 To do so would be to draw battle
lines: Le partiel [] induit la bataille et pousse laffrontement, ce que
cherchent, en effet, les interrogatoires du spectacle.159
Thus far, we have established that Serres wishes the aestheticisation of
war to act as a form of surrogacy in the modern age. But how would this
idea work, in practice? In order to illuminate this vision, Serres returns to
one of his favourite sporting tropes: a game of rugby.

158 Writing of Les Cinq Sens, Connor notes that for Serres, Les sens ont le sens du
sans. [] The senses move toward lessness. [] The lessons of the senses [] get
less and less (Michel Serress Les Cinq Sens, p.333). The same remark can be made
of La Guerre mondiale, in spite of the decades that separate these Serresian texts.
Serres
255
Tackling Rugby or the Benefits of Watching a Play

Prior to Le Tiers-Instruit and La Guerre mondiale, Serres writes about ball
games in several of his texts, including Le Parasite (1980) and Variations
sur le corps (1999). On each occasion, he describes the game in question
either American Football or rugby as an allegorisation of social exclusion.
The ball is a quasi-objet; its possession singles out a player as a potential
victim who must be protected by the rest of his or her team from aggression by their opponents.160
Serress presentation of rugby in 2008 differs somewhat because he casts
the game as an aesthetic replacement for warfare. In place of actors having
to changer de peau, a ritual that Serres considers integral to Greek tragedy,
the exchange of skin is effected by the rugby players throwing and catching of the ball. In the following account, the teams simultaneous sharing
of tactility and sight is particularly significant because the spectacle of this
haptic interaction transmits specifically haptic sensations to the watching
crowd which are not mediated by language:
sans langue, le frisson passe sur la foule comme la balle passe parmi les combattants,
elle vole comme le contact pugnace a lieu dans lescarmouche. Dessinez bien les trois
zones: les engags se battent vraiment, corps corps dans le premier groupe, centre,
noyau, cur, entre-deux au basket-ball ou round pour la boxe; la couronne intermdiaire se passe ou non le ballon, quasi-chose, intermdiaire entre signe et objet; une
onde dangoisse ou desprance suit ce quasi-objet, parcourant la foule dalentour.
La balle traduit, au beau milieu, la ralit du combat en signal ou la mobilisation
en motion. Traduisant la chose en signe, transformant lnergie haute en basse, elle
porte deux fois les deux. Dur de cuir mais doux de signe.161
The sentences above are particularly rich in detail concerning Serress

recent attitude towards tactile and specifically haptic sensation. They also
offer a number of points of confluence between his thinking and that of
Bataille and Blanchot. Serres begins with an account of how the crowd
160 See Serres, Le Parasite, pp.40405 and Variations sur le corps, pp.44, 47 and 114.
161 Serres, La Guerre mondiale, pp.6465.
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Chapter 3
shiver as one when visibly heavy physical contact occurs between opposing
players and the ball is thrown in response to these attacks. If we consider
this more closely, Serres claims that the balls flight transmits an urge to
shiver to the crowd who watch its trajectory (lest we forget, he remarks
in the more theoretically orientated claircissements that [t]out revient
en fin de compte au substantif, mme le relationnel, in spite of the fact
that he vise un transcendantal des relations).162 The ball is being thrown
following a scrum, either because a tackle between opposing players has
necessitated it or because one teammate wants to pass the ball to a teammate who is better situated to score a try. For their team to win, every
player must situate him- or herself spatially relative to the try line and the
players that are nearby.
In order to decide what to do next, each participant must look to
see what spaces there are within the opposing teams line of players, or
imagine what gaps might develop when this line moves. In this imagining, haptic space is virtualised, but this virtual space is itself cast in haptic
terms. Steven Connor writes: Gaps in space and gaps in time are entirely
equivalent. [] The field of play winks and shimmers, opening and closing,
actual and virtual, with these wrinkles and pockets of opportunity [being]
nothing but the fluctuation of these chronotopological compossibilities.163
Whatever the circumstances, there is a clear confluence between sight,
touch and temporality on each players part which will eventually lead
that player to throw or catch the ball. Additionally, according to Serres,
the crowd will shiver in response to the balls flight. In other words, what
causes the crowd to shiver is a visible excess of haptic interaction, followed by an optically discernible absence of tactile input whilst the ball
is airborne. This process concludes by satisfying the crowds anticipation
of renewed haptic contact between the rugby ball and the hands of one
or more players when it lands.
162 Serres and Latour, claircissements, pp.166, 172.

163 Steven Connor, A Philosophy of Sport (London: Reaktion, 2011), p.78.
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257
On the Ball
I would now like to address the rugby balls status as either a haptic or an
optical surface in the situation just described. For the players, the ball alternates between being haptic in that they will probably handle some or all
of its surface and optical, because it will frequently be airborne and well
beyond their reach. For the crowd, the rugby ball as an object is uniquely
optical: they are almost certain never to have any proximal contact with
it (unless it is kicked into the stands). However, Serres claims that the
rugby ball as quasi-objet is capable of disseminating haptically perceptible
(that is, at once visible and tangible) shivers through the watching crowd:
Traduisant la chose en signe, transformant lnergie haute en basse, elle
porte deux fois les deux.164 Though the rugby ball is described as [d]ur
de cuir, Serres also qualifies it as being doux de signe:165 it has a physical
presence which is augmented by its transformation into abstractive (and
nonlinguistic) sign. Crucially, once it is visible, this transformation is experienced on a haptic basis and projects a transubstantive potential: the rugby
ball stops being a purely optical object for the crowd because they shiver
in response to its flights (and perhaps in response to or anticipation of
the crunching tackles which necessitate the ball being thrown in the first
instance).166

165 Ibid.
166 This sentiment echoes Connors words in Michel Serress Les Cinq Sens. Connor
claims that for Serres, the body, or more particularly the senses, is never a mere object,
but itself a kind of work. The body is the work of transforming mere sensitiveness
into sense and sensibility both: the body is its work of transformation. There is no
chance of getting back to the body, since it is the nature of the human body to be
self-organising and therefore self-surpassing (p.331). Connor adds that the body
conducts this work through sensation (ibid.). These comments are also applicable
to Le Tiers-Instruit and La Guerre mondiale.
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So, the rugby ball as Serres describes it is an optical surface which is

nevertheless capable of transmitting haptic sensations to its beholders,
without them ever coming into tactile contact with it. The haptic data
transmitted by the ball as an optical object is virtual because it is inferred
from the balls visible movement. In spite of this, the virtual haptic data
that the ball transmits the urge to shiver exerts a tactile and visible
influence upon those who see the source of its transmission (the rugby
ball flying through the air).
It is this virtual transmission of haptic perception which provides the
major point of confluence between Serress treatment of haptic sensation
and the haptic traits apparent in the literary works of Bataille and Blanchot
that I have analysed. At its simplest, Serress metaphorical treatment of
the empirical realities of a rugby game evokes the excessive desire to at
once see and touch which is so notable in Batailles prose. The balls flight
also reminds us of the decorporealisation towards which both Batailles
literary works and those written by Blanchot tend, especially in their later
careers.
In the case of Batailles fictional characters often oscillating between
abjection and sublimity, there is a clear parallel with Serress claim that
the rugby ball is capable of [t]raduisant la chose en signe, transformant
lnergie haute en basse. Indeed, the shockwaves of this translation make
themselves felt haptically: the awestruck crowd shiver, either out of excitement or angst. Blanchots habit of imposing an inexpressible sense of silence
upon his fictional characters also resonates in Serress account of the way
in which sans langue, le frisson passe sur la foule comme la balle passe
parmi les combattants.
It might be argued that Serres makes a convenient metaphorical fiction of the empirical realities involved in playing rugby: his description of
the game in La Guerre mondiale bears no reference to the first person, for
example. The same criticism could easily be levelled at facets of Batailles
and Blanchots prose. Yet there is one major difference between Serres and
Bataille or Blanchot: Serres believes that haptically perceived experiences
can help humanity better itself. Thus it is that the writer claims war to be
sublimated by theatrical tragedy, which is in turn being usurped by the
sports spectaculars of today: [l]es sports dquipe remplacent, sans texte,
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259
le thtre, en construisant un vnement o la passion sattache seulement

[q]ui donc va gagner.167
As Serres presents it, modern sport with its players taking the place
of theatrical actors projects emotion by manifesting the act of projection itself. In its momentary excursions skyward before coming back down
to earth, the flight of a rugby ball offers the crowd a fleeting metaphorical visualisation of their impossible dream, of their desire to leave their
own bodies.168 The vicarious optical realisation of this fantasy creates a
perceptible resonance within the sensory faculties of each member of
the crowd this is why they shiver. This emotional resonance is not
the product of a purposefully irrational oscillation between abjection
and sublimity in the Bataillean mode, however. The crowd must understand why one player should kick or throw the ball to another at a given
moment based solely on the tactile gesture itself and its immediately visible
consequences.
It is this chronology that makes Serress forfending of language in the
movement from theatre to sport so notable. In the absence of descriptive
language, Serres claims thatle concret (cum-crescere) dsigne la croissance
de toutes les parties vers un tout solide, comme agglomr.169 On this basis,
the emergent community based upon sporting spectacle and virtual haptic

168 Steven Browns explanation of the quasi-objet as social token expresses this vicariously derived transcendence in terms of subjectivity: The token is a marker of the
subject. She or he who is caught with the token is it, a subject. We others form the
indivisible mass, we are the mute collective who will turn on the I, who is now
victim, the excluded. The quasi-object marks out these Is, it is the moving back
and forth of this marker, these provisional subjects. In this sense Serres describes
the token as being equally quasi-subject. But this pointing out is ambiguous. To be
the I is to enjoy a privileged position. One is able to influence the play shoot for
goal, make a heroic move. But equally one is a potential victim the fool, the one
to be excluded. Hence the collective turns around the endless selection and passing
on of Is (Michel Serres: Science, Translation and the Logic of the Parasite, p.21).
169 Serres, La Guerre mondiale, p.185; emphasis in original.
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sensation that Serres presents here is inavouable, to borrow a term (though

not an ideology) from Blanchot.170
Social relations within Serress speculative community continue to
be focussed upon physical presence, meaning that the community itself is
similarly concretised. Though this is not an imagined community in the
Blanchovian sense, the essence of those physical relations between subjects and objects cannot be grasped either physically or linguistically with
any degree of consistency or certainty. Serres detects no partiality in this
situation. Indeed, he speaks of the sporting aestheticisation of conflict in
positively glowing terms: Le partiel revient brusquement au pass, vieilli,
obsolte, au formel abstrait, mchant et guerrier. Il induit la bataille et
pousse laffrontement, ce que cherchent, en effet, les interrogatoires du
spectacle.171 On this basis, the rugby balls virtual but nevertheless haptically
perceptible projection of emotion and its resultant translation of active
tactile conflict into tactilely remote spectacle appear anything but partial.
Indeed, for Serres, the (rugby) balls arcing trajectory has the potential to
tweak the haptic faculties of anyone who sees it.
Language is a result of this transition from theatre to sport. The movement from audio-visual perception to oscillations between optical and
haptic perception is a product of this evolution, rather than being a factor
in its instigation. (How else could one crowd member express to the next
what he or she felt whilst watching the rugby ball travelling its path?) In
light of this fact, how might we consider the role of new media such as the
internet in disseminating clouds of data which rely upon the application
of linguistic and numeric principles? Given his comments concerning the
170 The communal experience of silence is treated in differing manners in the works of
Blanchot and Serres. Compare for example Serress remarks concerning the rugby
crowd above with the following observation from Blanchots La Communaut inavouable, p.19: La communaut nest pas pour autant la simple mise en commun,
dans les limites quelle se tracerait, dune volont partage dtre plusieurs, [] de
maintenir le partage de quelque chose qui prcisment semble stre toujours dj
soustrait la possibilit dtre considr comme part un partage: parole, silence.
Serres
261
virtual and the haptic, Serress answer to this question is somewhat unexpected, as I shall now demonstrate.
An Ever More Virtual Skin

Though Serres does not actually mention the internet by name in La
Guerre mondiale, he does refer to lagglomrat des donnes [,] la somme
des sommes172 and suggests that au moins virtuellement [,] [f ]lottant sur
un dluge mondial quelle contribue crer, lhumanit navigue bord
dune arche mondiale quelle construit en temps rel, cognitivement.173 It
would be hard not to think of the worldwide web when reading descriptions such as these. Serres informs us that the primary effect of recent evolutions in communication technology such as the internet is to place us
into direct contact with knowledge. For him, the most important piece of
this knowledge is the number of people who have been killed in wars since
the beginning of recorded history: Je mappelle, tu tappelles, nous nous
appelons No: [] nous venons dapprendre, grce lOMS, le volume du
Dluge: plus de trois milliards de morts. No navait recrut quun reste;
nous recrutons tout.174 Because anyone with access to the internet can discover this information (at least in theory),a new, non-hierarchical form
of democracy results: comme tout le monde peut connatre cette somme
et les autres, nous assistons lmergence dune dmocratie nouvelle, celle
des donnes, celle des totalits.175
A key characteristic of the new, democratic totality of knowledge that
Serres postulates is that it places humankind into a state of being which is
172
173
174
175
Ibid., p.187.
Ibid., pp.18788.
Ibid., p.186.
Ibid. In making these statements, Serres appears to overlook illiteracy, innumeracy
and State-sanctioned policies which deny access to information technology or seek
to block access to certain websites.
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simultaneously subjective and objective. Needless to say, neither Bataille

nor Blanchot conceive of any such fusion of subjectivity and objectivity as a
functional means of acquiring knowledge, much less one which is common
to all things. (Batailles Exprience intrieure requires that [l]exprience
atteint pour finir la fusion de lobjet et du sujet, tant comme sujet nonsavoir, comme objet linconnu, for instance.)176 Serres is nevertheless confident that social and perceptive change will occur inevitably as we adapt
to our new, simultaneously subjective and objective mode of being:
Comme cette dmocratie sensuit de ces calculs et peut les contrler, elle nat comme
sujet, comme active production de ces synthses, mais aussi comme leur rsultat,
elle nat comme objet. Lhumanit devient sujet de son monde et son objet. Cette
nouvelle donne cognitive ne peut pas ne pas faire merger une nouvelle culture, de
nouvelles politiques.177
The haptic element of the ideas in the quotation above comes from the
manner in which Serres frames them. We base our new state of simultaneously subjective and objective being upon abstractive numbers, but these
numbers belie the physical remnants of the rising tide of bodies and violence that they describe. The virtual data provided by the internet is what
brings us into present-day sensory contact with past brutalities, the physical remnants of which have long since rotted from haptic recognition.178
By recognising the abstractive number of war dead, we recognise the
empirical (and haptic) realities of the wholesale slaughter that these numbers represent. Using our simultaneous subjectivity and objectivity, we
navigate this new empirical reality intellectually and haptically, referring to

178 See Christian Godin, Panorama dune pense, in Michel Serres, ed. by LYvonnet and
Frmont, pp.2736: un pass trs lointain peut coller exactement au prsent: ainsi
larithmtique sumrienne est-elle intgre des logiciels informatiques. Ce temps
pli donne voir des concidences qui ne sont pas des hasards. Lucrce concide avec
la physique moderne; littralement, il tombe en mme temps quelle. Ainsi va lantihistoire de Michel Serres (p.34; emphasis in original).
Serres
263
both realms at once.179 As Serres tacitly suggests below, our sensory faculties
play an unavoidably large (though consciously unacknowledged) role in
navigating this newfound coincidence of subjective and objective thought
and action because our perceptive faculties create our sense of the world
around us. These same perceptive (and especially, haptic) faculties are also
our primary means of establishing a social rapport with those around us:
Dsormais, nous embarquons des sommes: sommant la somme des universels concrets,
notre arche devient quipotente au Monde, au moins virtuellement. Nous voil
embarqus sur le Monde, avec le Monde, dans le Monde. Flottant sur un dluge
mondial quelle contribue crer, lhumanit navigue bord dune arche mondiale
quelle construit en temps rel, cognitivement. Cette puissance cognitive changera
les consciences. [L]humanit flotte sur des rapports humains souvent insenss.180
Here, Serres describes a form of reality which is responsive to our thought,

but which is based in physicality. It is matter being moulded by our minds,
by our access to virtual data concerning physical situations that we have not
experienced directly. The products of this rumination are then mediated
by or filtered through our recollection of prior perceptive (and specifically
haptic) experiences which may or may not be related to the virtual data
that we interpret.
The physical and sensory convergence that this process requires of us
also joins up our perception of time: the past becomes a part of our perceptually discernible present. What Serres implies is that, whether or not
we realise it, we are at once perceptually fused with the virtual data that
we perceive whilst also being objectively detached from it. This temporal
congruence of mental and sensory states determines that all experience is at
once haptic and optical, in much the same manner that Nancy suggests all
of our sensory zones contain an unpredictable, immeasurable and continually variable ratio of haptic and optical data. ([P]ar consquent, le sens du
monde ne se donne quen dis-loquant dorigine son sens unique et unitaire
179 Assads remarks are prescient in this regard, as well; see Reading with Michel Serres,
p.76: For Serres, [] the sensate brings together [] the subject and the object [.]
[T]ouch is the fractal boundary that opens up a creative process.
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de sens dans le zonage gnral quon vise sous telle ou telle distribution
diffrentielle des sens.)181
In keeping with the concepts detailed above, Serres claims that the
sensory and temporal integration that is fostered by virtuality manifests
itself visually. Just a few words later, he then invokes the tactile comparison
between doux and dur that he employed in Les Cinq Sens:
Du coup, et par images, No le Patriarche ou Deucalion avec Pyrrha la Rousse nembarquent plus seuls bord de lArche, mais tous les accompagnent. [] Douce, lArche
crot et peut atteindre le volume du Dluge, dur. Face la vieille croissance des morts,
due aux guerres engendres par lancien concret partiel et ses vieux partages jaloux,
voici la nouvelle croissance, lagglomrat des donnes vers la somme des sommes,
vers lunivers. Qui prtendrait se battre contre lunivers?182
The ghosts of wars past are haptic once more. Ancient Greek myth (personified by Deucalion and Pyrrha, the husband and wife who survive Zeuss
flooding of the earth) and Christian dogma (personified by Noah) now
inhabit the same perceptual space as the victims of war who have died
in the name of any culture, religion or philosophy throughout history.
All now exist in the present, a present that we construct and reconstruct
materially using our thoughts. These thoughts are in turn influenced by
our own sensory memories of violence as a haptic experience. Our perceptual memories are then manipulated into real, current sensations by
the virtual data that the internet provides us with. Our sensory memory,
lashed together with the information it processes, forms an experiential
raft upon which we float, in time with the different rhythms and intensities
of violence that our sensory faculties intercept. Much like the swimmer in
Le Tiers-Instruit, our survival upon these composite tides of information,
181 Nancy, Les Muses, pp. 3738; emphasis in original. Nancy also observes that
[l]indiffrence ou la synergie synesthsique ne consistent pas en autre chose que
dans lauto-htrologie du toucher. La touche des sens pourra donc tre distribue
et classe dautant de manires que lon voudra: ce qui la fait tre la touche quelle
est, cest une dis-location, une htrognisation de principe (ibid., p.36; emphasis
in original).
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265
sensation and violence requires our perceptual synchronicity with them,

lest we become engulfed or overpowered in the manner that Blanchots
Thomas is when he goes swimming. As Serres explains, la crue de cadavres,
je nen dcouvre limportance que par les sommes de lArche; [] je ne
puis connatre la nature du Dluge que par les informations globales qui
constituent lArche. En les absorbant, pourra-t-elle en asscher les eaux?183
Because these agglomerated tides of violence, sensation and information result from an exposure to a multiplicity of data and sensations, our
navigation of them no longer requires discriminative perception of the
haptic or optical type. Indeed, to think on a differential rather than an
integrative basis would be to repeat the same mortal errors which have
created all of the death and destruction that assails our senses each day:
Nous nagissons et ne pensons que diffrentiellement; au moment mme
o nous avons besoin dintgrales, nous navons de philosophies que celles
de la diffrence. La diffrence faisait la guerre.184
How best then to go about the business of perceiving ourselves and
our (social) environment in the Information Age? Serress answer is that
we should use all of our sensory faculties to their fullest extent and as integratively as possible. We must avoid consciously excluding any of them.
To do so would be to turn a blind eye to the horrors of the past, human
tragedies on an epic scale which could and sadly, continue to repeat
themselves. In the final analysis, Serres presents a model of haptic perception which remains haptic, but which is augmented to its optimum state
by the rest of our (proprioceptive) sensory faculties.
According to Serres, skin is no longer a barrier to our perception, if
ever it actually was. In the Information Age, our skin (and the sense of
touch associated with it) has become a fully integrated locus of our sensory,
183 Ibid., p.188.

184 Ibid., p.190. This quotation illustrates indirectly the profoundly varied approaches
favoured by Serres and Nancy in matters of diffrence; where Nancy embraces difference, Serres seeks to reduce it as much as possible. For evidence of this, compare
the quotation above with pp.16162 of Nancys Corpus.
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intellectual and social evolution.185 Serres intends to spread the news of this
newfound sensory interconnection between myth, religion and (social) history, hoping it will reduce the growing tide of violence that spans human
history. This is not all Serres intends to do, however: he also wishes to
disseminate the interdisciplinary knowledge which bursts forth from this
perceptive confluence of subjectivity and objectivity. In order to do this,
Serres makes a final gesture towards this newfound integration of optic
and haptic perception, of theory and prose: he dons the ever-changeable
skin of Arlequin, a figure popular in seventeenth-century French theatre
that Maria Assad characterises as an androgynous man-beast.186 Arlequin
is arguably the unattainable paradigm of the corps troisime, a concept
that I showed to be of importance to Serress theories of perception earlier
in this chapter. To judge by the quotation below, however, the only way
that anyone can hope to experience Arlequins multifaceted existence and
perceptions is to wear a patchwork imitation (or simulacrum) of his skin
over their own:
limage de mon monde, je me vts dun habit dArlequin mille couleurs, ml,
tigr, chin, nu, haillonn, ensemenc de pices et sem de dchirures.
Cousu, connect.
Je cours vers LAncre de Misricorde, proposer aux matelots, encore habills
duniformes, de sen revtir.187
Rather than this situation representing the failure of Serress approach to

perception, the events described above in fact represent its success. Donning
185 As Hnaff remarks in Des pierres, des anges et des hommes, chacun en son lieu est
virtuellement en tout lieu. Le vieux rve dubiquit prend forme. Trs exactement
il se matrialise. Et cela de multiples manires. Il y a lubiquit des corps mmes qui
peuvent maintenant, en quelques heures, changer de continents, en des voyages qui
demandaient autrefois des semaines ou des mois. Mieux, sans mme nous dplacer,
nous pouvons par les techniques de communication intervenir en temps rel et
simultanment en des endroits diffrents de la plante (8889).
186 Assad provides a full overview of the Arlequin character in Reading with Michel
Serres, pp.12930, 14445, 147.
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267
Arlequins imitative skin creates a perceptible, continually changing third

space which would exist as a sensory buffer between the sailors skins and
the patchwork of simulacra that Serres proposes that the sailors wear over
them. As Serres says in 1987, le mlange ou le mtissage a toujours t la
chose qui ma le plus passionn. Cette espce despace entre.188
Conclusion
Prior to my summation of how the critical theories and literary prose of
Bataille, Blanchot and Serres treat the issue of haptic perception, let us
consider Serress approach to haptic perception in its own right.
Serress inscriptive relationship with haptic perception is one of
stages. He begins his career with more theoretically orientated works. Of
these works, the Herms cycle is particularly influenced by Information
Theory. One of the key characteristics of these works and especially of
Herms II is Serress insistence that perception of information is a matter
of interception: Jinterviens, et ne pense que si jintercepte.189 The writer
presents this ostensibly abstractive concept in relatively personal terms by
employing first-person pronouns.
This stylistic choice is far from accidental: the potential for friction
between the performative je and the demonstrative il is a major issue
for Serres. This is not because he favours subjectivity over objectivity, but
because modern science classifies tactile sensation as a symptom of subjectivity and therefore excludes it from modern scientific methodologies.
In place of tactility, science embraces visual perception as its sole appraiser
of metrics and values.
Such favouritism is unwise in Serress opinion because it is based upon
a fallacy. His biggest problem with the supposedly scientific pre-eminence
188 James and Serres, Entretien avec Michel Serres, 792; emphasis in original.
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of visual perception is that it establishes intangibility as a healthy norm

when it should not be considered as such. Serres summarises his appraisal
of the advent of modern science by stating that [l]e rcit dinauguration est
ce discours interminable que nous tenons sans repos depuis notre propre
aurore. Quest-ce, au fait, quun discours interminable? Celui qui se rapporte dun objet absent, dun objet qui sabsente, inaccessiblement.190 To
clarify, Serres adds that linaccessible est ce que je ne puis toucher, ce vers
quoi je ne puis transporter la rgle, ce sur quoi lunit ne peut tre applique. [] La vue est un tact sans contact. [] Linaccessible est, parfois,
accessible la vue.191
The tactile remoteness of modern scientific rationale clearly troubles
Serres because it always places something just beyond our reach and visibly so. We know that we are missing out on something, but cannot put
our collective finger on it. At the same time, however, Serres posits a form
of free-floating information that exists and transmits itself independently
of all sensory and linguistic indices.
How, then, can the interception of information that Serres deems
necessary take place? The answer is virtually, through evocation of haptic
sensations. In Herms II, Serres expresses this virtuality in terms of an
image which stimulates our sensory faculties. (Laura U. Markss concept
of haptic visuality is not far removed from this idea: a haptic work may
create an image of such detail [] that it evades a distanced view, instead
pulling the viewer in close.)192
In Serress words, je ne suis pas un point fix ici et maintenant, jhabite
une multiplicit despaces, je vis une multiplicit de temps, toujours autre
et toujours le mme.193 Functioning in a number of spatial and temporal
dimensions at once, each quasi-point of Serress oscillating information
network reoit et redistribue, [] trie sans mlanger, [] simule localement, sur une station ponctuelle, la totalit du rseau effrent et affrent.194
190 Ibid., p.180.
191 Ibid., p.165.
194 Ibid., p.131.
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269
It can be argued that Serress subsequent works of critical theory concern themselves more with the various manners and contexts in which such
perceptive stimulation through simulation could occur. In Herms V, the
intellectually perceived space of interdisciplinary exchange between the
natural sciences, mathematics and the humanities provides the necessary
simulacral ingredients. In claircissements, Serres clarifies the interaction
between temporal and spatial perception. As he does so, the writer casts
the sensory ambiguities inherent to either of these terms as one of the key
motivating forces of the interdisciplinary approach that he advocates in
Herms V.
In volume four of Petites chroniques du dimanche soir, we learn that,
nearly forty years after the publication of Herms II, Serres continues to
present the perceptual process as being a matter of confluence between
perceiving skin and its localised stimulation by virtual simulation. In this
instance, Serres alludes to Lucretiuss concept of the skin-covered simulacrum in specifically haptic terms: Lucrce [] dit que la vision nous met
directement en contact avec des membranes que chaque chose que nous
voyons met []. [C]es membranes [] des simulacres circulent []
dans lespace entre nous, telles des peaux mobiles. Elles se posent sur
nos yeux.195
Whatever their vintage, Serress critical theorisations of corporeal
perception rely upon some form of virtual or simulacral transmission of
sensation. In each instance, he is able to demonstrate convincingly that
there is a detectable pattern in the manner that such transmission operates.
Even if it is not linguistically explicable in its entirety, it is by no means
chaotic or irrational.
What changes is that the abolition of distance through non-differentiation of subject and object as it is theorised in 1972 becomes a specifically haptic and subjectively experienced undertaking in 2009, just
as the internets endless and often impersonal dissemination of data had
begun to insinuate itself into the daily lives of societies across the globe:
quand on touche, on a limpression la pression? que la distance sabolit.
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[S]i Lucrce a raison, nous nous caressons sans arrt les uns les autres, et
nous caressons le monde qui nous caresse. [C]est [] la fin des distances,
le bonheur et la paix.196
As is the case with Bataille and Blanchot, there remains an equivocal si
to this reasoning; Serresian hapticity is localised, even if it can be extrapolated into a global context. It should not be forgotten that Riegl makes
similar claims for the haptic interaction of sight and touch; he believes
that they can explain all of humankinds artistic evolutions.197
The hesitation of Serress critical theories between touche, impression and pression in 2009 recalls his earlier likening of these qualities
in Les Cinq Sens, the first of his works of literary prose to be analysed in
this chapter. The stylistic choices made by Serres in the writing of this
text from 1985 demonstrate an appreciable movement away from critical
theory, even if all of his books contain some theoretical argument. (There
are no footnotes in Les Cinq Sens, unlike the Herms series, for example.)
In Les Cinq Sens, Serress ideas are clearly focussed upon identifying
and presenting confluences between art history, literature, philosophy and
perception, rather than analysing the flow of information between subjects
and objects from a mathematical or structuralist standpoint as he does in
Herms II. The biggest difference between the two texts is, however, tangible. Though there are plenty of allusions to the first person in Herms II and
Les Cinq Sens, the je of Serress 1972 work is just one alternately exchanging
and interceptive surface among an almost infinite multitude of others. The
first person narrative of Les Cinq Sens is, by contrast, rooted in simultaneously tangible, visible and otherwise perceptible sensory experiences. Visual
interaction is alluded to frequently in the anecdotes concerning instances
of haptic confluence between sight and touch which appear in Les Cinq
Sens, but touch is often proven to exert the dominant influence. Thus it is
that we are treated to Serress account of being stung by a hornet: it would
have hurt the writer more had he been looking at the hornet as it stung
196 Ibid.
197 See above (pp. 311 and 1617, n.46) for my analysis of Riegls claims concerning
the haptic and optical.
Serres
271
him. This may be a true story. It might equally be a conveniently fabricated

anecdote. The fact is that the truth of this tale and of any of the others
that I have analysed in this chapter is to be found in how easily it can
be related to perceptive experiences that many of us have endured. In the
words of David Webb, [l]e matrialisme de Serres est tel que les termes
vecteurs sont puiss au plus proche, dans des exemples concrets tirs du
quotidien (littrature, art et sciences).198
In Serress encounter with the hornet, this story with a sting in its
tail, tactile sensation is not portrayed in abstract terms. Similarly, in the
following comment concerning Bonnards painted female figures, Serres
casts the confluence between writing and painting in primarily tactile and
deeply personal terms, even if visual observation is alluded to: lil enfin
ne trouvera plus rien. Reste toucher la feuille imprime, pellicule fine,
support de sens, la feuille, la page, tissu-toffe, peau, la toile mme de la
femme de Bonnard. Je feuillette le peignoir.199
Though what Serres describes above may appear similar to Jean-Luc
Nancys concept of excription, the equivalence of touch and literature
evoked by Serres is markedly different. To be more specific, Nancy says
that, [l]e corps, sans doute, cest quon crit, mais ce nest absolument pas
o on crit, [] toujours ce que lcriture excrit.200 Rather than concerning
itself with effacing the perceiving body, the very point of Serress likening
of text and tactility is to underline the vital haptic and intellectual synergy
between sight, touch and mind that primarily tactile sensation can incite.
Remaining on the question of likeness, are there any discernible differences between male and female touching of the kind that are apparent in
Bataille and Blanchots narrative works? Though masculinity and femininity are mentioned in Les Cinq Sens, Serres does not highlight any particular
difference between the manner in which the sexes perceive tactilely, visually
or haptically. He adds in Le Tiers-Instruit that gauche et droite se disent
198 Webb, Penser le multiple sans le concept, p.92.

272
Chapter 3
de plus de choses que mle ou femelle et sparent plus universellement que

le genre ne distingue.201
This allusion to left- and right-handedness is far from surprising: Serres
admits to favouring empirical science over tactilely remote observation
during the final paragraphs of Les Cinq Sens and a similar sentiment permeates Le Tiers-Instruit. There is, however, change afoot in Serress work from
1991. In Serress hands, swimming becomes more than just an empirical,
physically educative experience of haptic and proprioceptive interaction;
it is also an activity rich in metaphor.
Whatever the circumstances, it is clear in Le Tiers-Instruit that Serress
writing is beginning to transcend the confines of the human body, in order
to place that body in closer proximity to the earths (in)visible chemical,
biological and evolutionary processes. Haptic perception remains important in this enterprise, but is markedly less apparent in Le Tiers-Instruit
than it was in Les Cinq Sens.
By 2008 and the publication of La Guerre mondiale, Serres considers the worlds increasingly violent proclivities to be as grave a threat to
humanity as pollution. His answer to this rising tide of violence is the
diminishment of tactility and hapticity through their virtualisation. A bar
brawl escalates among drunken sailors; Serress response is to film it without
intervening and then ask us to imagine how that fight would appear if it
were played backwards. The end of the violence (and the end of the film)
leaves the sailors at a respectful tactile distance from one another, growing
more sober. Spectacle remains, unabated, whilst haptic interaction becomes
undesirable. On this occasion at least, film is by no means the haptically
inviting medium that Laura U. Marks claims it to be.
In place of violent haptic melees such as the sailors bar fight, armed
conflicts are to be sublimated by games of rugby; total war is to be replaced
with a (rugby) code of violence. The flight of a rugby ball will act as a surrogate for a flying bullet. The baying crowds who behold this ordered conflict
are spared the haptic excesses which occur on the (battle)field. They will
be transfixed (or even fascinated?) by the rugby balls transubstantive flight
Serres
273
because it reminds them of their desire to escape their own skin, however
briefly. In a cruel twist of fate, this visual reminder of their inability to transcend will make the crowd shudder visibly. Though the thrown or kicked
rugby ball is an optical quasi-object to the crowd, their witnessing of the
players handling and throwing of the ball among themselves before and after
its flight gives it a haptic charge or polarity which is visually perceptible.
When in no-ones hands and flying through the air, the formerly tactile
ball fleetingly ceases to appear tactile (and therefore, does not seem haptic)
to the crowd. They shiver in anticipation of its imminent interception by
a player and the visible orgy of hapticity that will greet the ball as it lands.
Just as with the oscillations between haptic and non-haptic sensation
that we find in Bataille and Blanchots writings, the flight of Serress rugby
ball creates a third, virtual space in which our hesitation between vision and
tactility creates a limited synergy between the two faculties and thereby,
haptic sensation. Thus, even where there are no tactile data or surfaces to
solicit our faculties, tactile perception may remain possible, almost as if
it were paradoxically enough a phantom image of the variety experienced by Blanchots Thomas whilst he shelters in the cave. Blanchovian or
not, Serress rugby crowd shudder at the rugby balls flight and anticipate
its bumpy landing. The vector of this haptically experienced shudder is
uniquely optical.
Serres applies the same notion that tactile sensation can be fostered
by images to his treatment of the internet. Faced with the grim visual data
published on the internet by the WHO, data which suggests that three
billion humans have died in wars since the beginning of recorded history,
it would be hard to imagine not feeling a shiver, however slight. It is that
small shiver which Serres seeks to make us mindful of. This instinctive yet
perceptible tweaking of our collective conscience suggests that humanity
may yet be able to diminish the tide of self-inflicted death and destruction
which has swept it along thus far. Serress prose may have moved away from
its earlier specifically haptic preoccupations, but the virtuality of which
Serres now writes remains haptically impactful. To think of the Serresian
virtual in such narrow terms is to miss the point, however: its raison dtre
is to integrate haptic and optical perception, along with the auditory, olfactory and gustatory, into a proprioceptively functional (and intermittently
274
Chapter 3
haptic) whole.202 In Serress opinion, however, only the virtual, visualised

rendering and mathematical representation of humanitys war-torn past
and the sensations that they provoke within us can provide the necessary
push to begin this integrative process. Once we are walking this path,
interdisciplinary thought, praxes and our own empirical experiences will
guide us.
After more schematic beginnings, Serress critical works appear to
have reached a similar conclusion. Except that there is no definite conclusion yet: Serres continues to write, continues to refine his opinions and
continues to speak as he finds. What most differentiates Serress critical
theorisation of haptic sensation (a perceptible synergy between sight and
touch) from those of Bataille or Blanchot most of all is its (untapped)
potential to heal societys wounds: Cette puissance cognitive changera
les consciences. [L]humanit flotte sur des rapports humains souvent
insenss.203 According to Serres, the positive imprint that haptic perception leaves upon human societies has yet to be charted in anything like its
entirety. The more integrative rather than exclusive that our approach to
issues of perception, language and society becomes, the better our chances
of feeling the positive, as yet unrealised potential of (haptic) sensory interaction that Serres evokes so passionately.
To conclude, I shall provide a brief summary of my findings. Just how
different are the Bataillean, Blanchovian and Serresian approaches to the
constitutive elements of haptic perception and how much difference is there
between the writers critical and literary explorations of them?
202 Though I have not had the space to address the issue here, the connectedness of the
gustatory and olfactory senses to the human bodys visual, tactile and auditory sensory
faculties is alluded to on numerous occasions in Serress Les Cinq Sens in particular
(notably pp.199247 and 27495).
Conclusion
In writings which straddle the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
Alos Riegl tells us that haptic sensation is inspired by tangible art objects
such as reliefs, monuments, paintings, statues and buildings. The potential
tactility of these objects visual detailing imposes itself upon the beholders
eye to such an extent that he or she feels compelled to touch the object.
Though Laura U. Marks admits to changing Riegls definition of the
haptic somewhat,1 her twenty-first century recasting of haptic perception
as a form of cinematic haptic visuality remains dependent upon the appeal
of proximal tactility. However, this appeal is incited by a virtual experience of tactile proximity; Marksian haptic visuality arises from the filmic
projection and enlargement of materially distant surfaces. This projection
magnifies our awareness of those surfaces tactile details and makes us want
to touch them. The probable geographical and temporal distance of these
surfaces means that the projected surfaces are likely to be impossible for us
to touch or to see in the way that the cinematic image before us suggests.
The camera may magnify otherwise imperceptible visual details greatly or
diminish the appearance of others which would be much more noticeable
if the filmed surfaces were placed before us to inspect haptically. Use of
camera effects such as focus zooming and hazing or (digital) film manipulation in postproduction renders the moving pictures before our eyes even
further removed from the surfaces that the camera lens dwelt upon initially.
Nevertheless, the projected vision of these surfaces makes us want to see
and to touch those surfaces at the same time. Markss understanding of
hapticity as haptic visuality is therefore as rooted in physicality as Riegls
haptic postulations are, in spite of the virtual and simulacral nature
of haptic visualitys sensory solicitations. Markss haptic visuality also has
psychological implications and demands a desirous respect of all forms
276 Conclusion
of otherness as difference.2 Riegls postulation of haptic perception makes

no such demands.
In Jean-Luc Nancys haptic theories, physical differences between male
and female bodies have a decisive effect upon the ways in which we perceive
ourselves and others.3 In addition to this, Nancy claims the functioning of
and triggers for haptic perception to be infinitely variable because, in his
opinion, the human bodys zones of perception are in perpetual flux. As a
result of these fluctuations, the bodys perceptive faculties cannot even be
defined consistently in terms of the haptic/optical distinction upon which
Riegl or Markss understandings of haptic perception rely. Moreover, the
Nancyan concept of excription establishes a principle which further weakens any effort to discuss haptic sensation in literary terms. In texts such as
Corpus, Nancy states that philosophies which purport to explain corporeal
perception are inherently suspect. Any attempt to write objectively about
our bodily sensations is similarly doomed. No empirically valuable information may be derived from either enterprise.4
Even Mark Patersons proprioceptively orientated (and largely genderneutral) postulation of haptic perception suggests that there are virtual
dimensions to the corporeal synergy of proximal tactility, vision, vestibular
sensation and kinaesthesia that his use of the term describes. One instance
of synergy between the virtual and the haptic that Paterson discusses is the
first virtual handshake to be conducted internationally via the PHANToM
haptic system in 2002.5 In his discussion of Paul Sermon and Susan Kozels
video art installation Telematic Dreaming, Paterson also remarks at length
upon the use of video technology to create a virtual simulation of haptic
immediacy.6
2
3
4
5
6
Ibid., p.192.
As I discussed above (see p.28).
See my earlier commentary on Nancy (pp.2528 above).
This handshake is discussed above (pp.1921) and is explored in detail by Paterson,
The Senses of Touch, pp.127, 13537, 14043.
Telematic Dreaming is described in the introduction (pp.2122 above). For further
details, see Paterson, The Senses of Touch, pp.11920.
Conclusion
277
From these brief summaries, it is clear that theoretical understandings

of haptic perception are becoming increasingly orientated towards the
virtual at the expense of the physical. As the examples cited by Paterson
illustrate vividly, a paradoxically constant factor in this change is technologys increasing ability to mitigate the effects of physical distance between
two people, to bridge a tactile and optical divide by (re)creating proximal
haptic data.
The critical and literary writings by Bataille, Blanchot and Serres that
I have studied also exhibit an increasing proclivity towards virtualisation
in their descriptions of corporeal and especially, haptic sensory experience.
However, these writers seek to convey their impressions of what effects
haptic sensation can have, rather than attempting to recreate haptic sensations by means of inscriptive language. With the advancement of the
careers of Bataille, Blanchot and Serres, each writer comes to portray bodily
sensations as a gateway into a realm (or realms) other than the corporeal.
If anything, the already notable divergence of approach between Bataille,
Blanchot and Serres grows even more pronounced as the perceiving human
body becomes a less important component of their various works of critical theory and literary prose. Batailles critique and prose suggest that only
death frees us of corporeity, but adds that the sensuousness that leads us
to our mortal fate will also leave us feeling nothing, in the end. Blanchot
seems to consider even the living body to be undergoing a preliminary stage
of the death and sensory numbness which so preoccupies Batailles critical
and literary writings. Blanchots prose and philosophical writings imply
that life blunts the living bodys perceptive faculties to such an extent that
death must result from this increasingly indifferent sensory experience. The
demise of sensory awareness leaves only the unbearable acuity of a disembodied, unidentifiable voice whose literary inscription says something and
nothing of the sensations and thoughts that went before it. For Bataille
and Blanchot, sensation is doomed to become a less and less relevant topic
of critical or literary exploration. This situation is inevitable and must be
embraced. In the works of both writers, hapticity is accordingly most significant in its absence and in the intellectual equivocation that simultaneously visual and tactile awareness brings with it. There is even a degree of
predictability to these haptically defined absences and confusions because
278 Conclusion
manifestations of disorder and outright chaos are integral to the theories

and prose of Bataille and Blanchot.
Serress works arguably begin working through if not working
out the difficulties of discriminating reliably between the haptic proximity
and optical distance that Bataille and Blanchots critical and literary works
identify. (Contrary to the insistences of Bataille and Blanchot, physical
numbness and the mortality that it implies are not to be embraced, according to Serress writings.) During this process of working through, Serress
critical theories and literary prose allude frequently to a form of materially
and intellectually instructive haptic perception that is most consistent with
Patersons proprioceptive model.
By contrast, the works of Bataille and Blanchot that I have analysed
only point out the perceptible paradoxes in our understandings of what
is near or present and what is far or absent. The two authors appear either
unable or unwilling to resolve such ambiguities. I shall consider why this
might be in a moment.
What Serress works show us is that, just as the genres of literary prose
and critical theorisations converge in his writings, so the postulates of art
history and the natural sciences, of mechanical technicity and theorisations
of corporeal perception, merge into one continuous and reasoned (though
not always balanced) dialogue. Blanchots rcits hint at the possibility of a
theoretical convergence of this kind, but he like Bataille seems unable
to move beyond his disbelief that corporeal perception could be of any
instructive value.
Mathematics, Chaos, Hapticity, Order

This sense of disbelief on the part of Bataille and Blanchot has far-reaching
implications. Where Serres lauds paradigms of perceptually led interconnection between sciences and technologies of ancient and modern
vintage, Bataille and Blanchot seem unable to discern any more than happenstance. More often than not, Serress allusions to haptic perception
Conclusion
279
have a mathematical aspect which would probably be characterised as a

redingote mathmatique by Bataille.7
The tension between Serress initially reluctant yet increasingly taut
embrace of the technological algorithm8 and what Bataille deems to be the
abstractive tendencies of mathematics also underscores an evolution in the
treatment of haptic perceptions relevance to literature and philosophy.
(I note this at a time when, through dissemination of blogs, retweetable
newsfeeds, online gaming and socialising, the internet appears to be leading
us into an ever more disembodied sphere of perceptual existence.) In Serress
writings, just as with the modern artistic and more practical applications of
technology described by Paterson, an interactive, haptic element remains
necessary. Whereas the human bodies of Blanchot or Batailles critical
theories and prose are often passive and frequently unaware of themselves
to any significant extent, the bodies portrayed in Serress oeuvre are proactive and self-aware, creating meaning and learning from their every gesture.
The sensations conveyed by Serress writings concerning active bodies
also provide instructive philosophical lessons to their experiencers in a
manner wholly absent from the critical or literary works of either Bataille
or Blanchot. As I stated in the introduction, the Bataillean and Blanchovian
prose that I have analysed appears to begin from a haptic perspective in
almost every instance. This perspective is rejected more or less immediately
in favour of an optical standpoint. The critical writings of Bataille share this
trait, as do those of Blanchot. Whether prose or treatise, each of the texts
by Bataille and Blanchot that I have studied concludes with a portrayal
and, perhaps, an investigation of the impossibility of integrating haptic and
optical perceptions into a functional sensory continuum.
It is apparent from my analyses that there are many more instances
of (unacknowledged) haptic perception in Batailles literary works than
there are in those of Blanchot. Insofar as Blanchot writes about any form
7
8
Il faudrait en effet, pour que les hommes acadmiques soient contents, que lunivers prenne forme. La philosophie entire na pas dautre but: il sagit de donner une
redingote ce qui est, une redingote mathmatique (Bataille, Informe, p.217).
To appreciate this change, compare for example Les Cinq Sens (1985) and La Guerre
mondiale (2008).
280 Conclusion
of perception consistently, he refers appreciably more frequently to the

uniquely visual (or optical) than he does to any form of identifiably haptic
(at once visible and potentially tactile) perception.
Contrarily, the critical and more anecdotal Serresian texts that I considered during the previous chapter begin by presenting what Serres considers
to be the mythe of a necessary discrimination between visual and tactile
sensation. His theory is consistent on this point: the senses of sight and
tactility are part of an interconnected sensory network which the human
bodys cutaneous surface renders whole. In Serress opinion, arguments
which contradict this stance arise from the fact that Western philosophers have failed often wilfully to understand the constructive value
of simultaneously tactile and visual perception to the human condition.
The narratives of Les Cinq Sens, Le Tiers-Instruit and La Guerre mondiale
set about exposing different facets of how, through (haptic or otherwise
integrative) perception, a materially and intellectually useful integration
of visual and tactile perception can be arrived at. This process reaches a
conclusion of sorts with La Guerre mondiale.
A Journey into Virtually Inscribed Skin and Actual Sensation

In La Guerre mondiale, Serres asks us to imagine a bar fight between sailors that he has filmed. He then asks us to imagine a filmic reversal of the
fights chronology and of the increasing haptic excesses which this reversal
undoes. We are told that this reduction of hapticity is a paradigm that we
should aspire to. Under its aegis, purely optical spectacle becomes a conductor of haptic sensation. War is sublimated by the sight of a rugby ball
being fought for and thrown around a field by opposing teams. The crowds
that behold this substitutive ritual shudder visibly at the balls moments
of airborne intangibility, at the fleeting non-consummation of its haptic
appeal. Serres asks us albeit implicitly to experience this same shudder
when we discover via the internet that three billion people have been killed
by war since the beginning of recorded history.
Conclusion
281
The shudder of sympathy, regret and repugnance that Serres demands

renders the physical horrors evoked by the otherwise abstract number of
wartime casualties (haptically) perceptible and, thereby, current. With
this new, virtual yet haptic relation to the past as our moral touchstone,
we begin to assimilate further virtual data brought to us by the internet
into our perceptions of our present (social and ecological) surroundings.
Gradually, we become motivated to make positive changes to these spaces.
Serres suggests therefore that the present day is one in which we exist and
perceive in a reality that is augmented and informed by virtual, mathematical data. This convergence between our sensory faculties and our perceptible environment also requires enmeshing of the sensory faculties which
discern and define our surroundings for us. Under these circumstances,
haptic perception (that is, the synergetic sensory interaction between tactility and vision posited by Riegl, Marks or Nancy or the proprioception
suggested by Paterson) remains relevant to the sensory integration that
Serres demands and may even be one of its primary directive forces. An
examination of Serress comments in texts such as Herms II or even recent
works such as the fourth instalment of Petites chroniques du dimanche soir
suggests that he rarely deviates from this stance in his more theoretically
orientated writings. Contrarily, the integration of perceptive faculties that
Serres posits in La Guerre mondiale (and Les Cinq Sens or Le Tiers-Instruit
before it) assembles visual, tactile, auditory, olfactory and gustative sensation into one multi-temporal sensory continuum. Unless we define this
sensory integration using Mark Patersons definition of hapticity (specifically, the proprioceptive fusion of kinaesthesia, vestibular, tactile and
cutaneous perception), haptic perception alone would be insufficient to
navigate humanity through the new, virtually augmented realities that the
imagery of Serress literary anecdotes present.
The sensory confluence presented by Serresian anecdote and the temporal multiplicities which go hand in hand with it provides an unexpected
parallel with Blanchovian critique. In texts such as LEspace littraire or
LEntretien infini, Blanchot suggests that there is a synergy between time
and human consciousness. Serres posits his understanding of temporal
interaction in terms of multi-temporal and multi-spatial composites which
are cemented together by bodily sensations and our attempts to think about
282 Conclusion
them or to explain them by inscriptive or verbal means. Contrarily, Blanchots

concept of fascination describes an inscriptive orality which exists distinct
from the perceiving human body and which even places the body into a state
of temporal neutrality when it attempts to speak (or to write). This distinction between the body which houses or stores thought and sensation, as well
as the (articulating) voice which attempts to convey and interconnect them
places the human voices transcendent relationship with temporality into
asynchrony. A perceptible disjuncture arises between our sensations and the
language that we employ either to think about those sensations for ourselves
or to describe them to others. Blanchots interest in this disembodied voice
is evident in his critical and literary works from an early stage.
Through the postulates of abjection and sublimity, Batailles literary
portrayals of haptic perception exist in a median space between those of
Serres and Blanchot. As a result of oscillation between the abject and the
sublime, moments of profound haptic excess in Batailles prose are frequently
offset by instances of apparent decorporealisation. For example, the collective murder and mutilation of Don Aminado in Histoire de lil is counterbalanced in Le Bleu du ciel by the lonesome disintegration of Troppmanns
sensory faculties while he floats alone in the waves at Badalona. Batailles
works of critical theory are similarly ambivalent in matters of decorporealisation. His articles alternate between denunciations of corporeal perceptions
unreliability (in Le Langage des fleurs) and explorations of transcendence
rooted in carnality (in the various drafts of Lil pinal).
Bataille and Blanchot: Virtual Haptic Likenesses?

A recurrent theme of Batailles critical and literary works is the randomness of sensory oscillations. Examples of this include the murder which
concludes Histoire de lil, or the behaviour of Madame Edwardas titular
character at the conclusion of that text, during which the narrative lurches
from carnality to voyeurism and ends in somnolence. In both works, narrative reliance upon hapticity gives way to uniquely optical perception, only
Conclusion
283
for both forms of perception to cease to provide any empirically useful

knowledge or awareness.
The critical and literary strands of Blanchots writing also return to
the themes of serendipity and sensation on numerous occasions. The linguistic mechanisms of fascination ensure that Blanchots presentation of
these concepts remains opaque, however.
Serres agrees that chance plays an important role in matters of perception, but Serresian chance manifests itself as multiplicities of spatiotemporal simultaneity and interdisciplinary congruence. Neither of these
qualities is apparent in the Bataillean or Blanchovian oeuvres to any great
extent. Nor should they be: the critical and literary approaches adopted by
Bataille and Blanchot are rooted in exposing but refusing to even attempt
to resolve perceptible disjunctures between time, space and (academic or
scientific notions of ) rationality. In spite of this, the disfavour that Bataille
and Blanchot accord rationality does not amount to a rejection of or disinterest in empirically verifiable truth or falsehood in either writers critical
or literary works. As I have shown, Bataille and Blanchot present lengthy
paeans to the perceptible simulacra of physical presence and their power
to mislead. Acting together or on their own, tactile and visual perceptions
are portrayed in both strands of Batailles and Blanchots writings as being
capable of creating powerful simulacra which are eminently able to confuse
previously coherent thought patterns or explicable sensations.
Hapticity and Gender, Life and Death

What we see over the decades spanned by Bataille, Blanchot and Serress
critical theories and literary works is, as I have stated, a virtualisation of
the haptic experience. Unlike Bataille and Blanchot, Serres does not equate
the virtual with the simulacral in every instance. This is because, as we have
seen, Serres believes there to be much intellectually instructive value inherent to empiricism of any variety. His predecessors are rather less convinced
by such ideas. For Bataille and Blanchot, haptic sensation is capable of
284 Conclusion
making us aware of the error that we make when we imagine perception

to be an intellectual experience purely because we can articulate aspects
of our sensations through spoken and written language. This is the only
truth that haptic sensation can provide us with, according to the critical
theories or prose of both writers.
For markedly differing reasons, we can see that the literary and critical
texts of Bataille, Blanchot and Serres therefore exhort us to think about
ourselves and the (social) world that we perceive around us in more integrative terms than haptic/optic differentiations. The appreciable effects of this
demand play out differently in each authors works, especially where gender
is at issue. Serres, for example, does not portray an appreciable difference
between the perceptual faculties or experiences of the male and female
characters that he alludes to. This holds true whether the figures mentioned
are historical, present-day or eternally mythical figures. The same cannot
be said of Bataille or Blanchot. A brief comparison between the differing
behaviours and sensory experiences of the male and female protagonists
of Batailles Madame Edwarda and Le Bleu du ciel or Blanchots Thomas
lobscur and La Folie du jour shows as much. Even in the most unhinged situations, the male protagonists especially if they are also narrators almost
always remain sane enough to recount or explain their actions and perceptions lucidly. Contrarily, female Bataillean characters such as Edwarda and
Dirty or Blanchovian figures such as Anne, Irne or the anonymous female
characters in La Folie du jour are frequently mere narrative objects. They
rarely appear able to comprehend what is happening to them, much less
articulate their feelings about this state of affairs. Serres meanwhile portrays
the painted female skins of Bonnards canvases as being exemplary of all
sensory relation in Les Cinq Sens. We could also refer to his insistence upon
genders relative unimportance in Le Tiers-Instruit. As can be seen from
Herms II and Le Tiers-Instruit alone, la rduction de la diffrence in its
many forms has proved to be a subject of enduring importance for Serres.9
See Serres, Herms II, p.40 and Le Tiers-Instruit, pp.3537. It goes without saying
that Nancyan notions of hapticity based upon gendered diffrence such as those
itemised in Corpus (pp.16162) do not, therefore, sit well with Serress thinking.
Conclusion
285
Serress attempts to minimise difference or at least, sensorially appreciable difference in all of its forms have unmistakeably social implications.
Chief among these is the possibility that the diminishment of difference
that Serres advocates might actually impede forms of social integration
which demand a recognition and acceptance of difference. This realisation
also poses particular difficulties for any reading of Serres through Markss
concept of haptic visuality, which relies upon a respect of otherness. Like
Serres, Bataille and Blanchot also explore issues of social cohesion and
dissolution in their critical and literary works (notably in LExprience
intrieure and Le Bleu du ciel for Bataille and in La Communaut inavouable
and LInstant de ma mort in Blanchots case). In spite of this, Bataille and
Blanchot do not consider touch, much less haptic perception (as per any
of the haptic models that I presented in the introduction), to be in any way
constitutive of social bonds. As a result, we find relatively few direct allusions to tactility anywhere in Blanchots critical works concerning society
which are anything other than obfuscatory. The same is true of the various Bataillean works of critical theory that I have examined. In addition,
neither Bataille nor Blanchot appears to consider tactile interaction to be
governed by any specific ethical code, but both writers claim that to touch
another person in whatever way is to do violence to that individuals mind
and body. In both authors critical and literary works, the act of touching
satisfies an otherwise unquenchable desire created by the initial act of looking longingly at that person.
To this extent, the act of touching appears almost vampiric, especially
in the prose of Bataille and Blanchot. Tactile interaction stimulated by
vision sucks the beholders mind of its pent-up desire and concretises that
psychic energy (and its ability to create or to do the unthinkable) into
banal carnality, into haptic sensations familiar to almost every human adult.
According to the prose works of Bataille and Blanchot, once tactile contact is initiated, the haptic effects of the mental and physical damage that
it inflicts cannot be abated. Serres, for his part, claims that in moderation
(a moderation which he believes to be achievable), tactility (as a constitutive component of (haptic) proprioception) is inherently constructive. It
builds social bonds, allows us to adapt to our changing environment, to
realise and, subsequently, minimise the violence that we do to it and to
286 Conclusion
ourselves. What Serress theories and anecdotes tell us is that, as the sensory
bonds between an individual and his or her locale of global society and its
ecology become increasingly manifest (whether by haptic or other sensory
means), anything becomes possible. There is an appreciable divergence
between the approaches to perception adopted by Bataille and Blanchot
and Serress treatment of the topic.
Be this as it may, the literary works of Bataille, Blanchot and Serres
that I have presented all share one surprisingly simple guiding principle.
The principle is this: skin whether it is living or dead, present or phantom must come into contact with another haptic surface in order for the
perceiver to make sense or nonsense of whatever happens subsequently.
Most importantly, this rubbing together of one or more surfaces must be
at once seen and tactilely perceived to have taken place by at least one of
the parties involved.
As my analyses show, Bataille, Blanchot and Serress literary works all
linger to some degree not only upon visual imagery, but also upon any tactile
detail that might be expected to coincide with those images (regardless of
whether or not the texts in question actually identify any such confluence).
This proclivity is especially notable in Bataille and Serress anecdotes, but
is also apparent in Blanchots prose from time to time. For example, in the
deathly aftermath of his escape from a Nazi firing squad, the protagonist of
Blanchots LInstant de ma mort continues to be haunted by le sentiment
de lgret qui est la mort mme ou, pour le dire plus prcisment, linstant
de ma mort dsormais toujours en instance.10 In other words, Blanchots
literary figure is haunted by the absence of any tactile sensation that can
equate with his enduring visions of being before the firing squad (and being
on the verge of death). The young maquisards lack of tactile involvement
in the image of impending death that his mind continues to flash before
his eyes does not make his unshakeable sentiment de lgret any less real
to him. This is because these mortal visions still demand a matching tactile
element to them, however impossible that demand may be. It is the haptic
character of this impossibility which ensures that these visions endure.
10
Blanchot, LInstant de ma mort, p.17.
Conclusion
287
Hapticity as Exclusion or Inclusion

The equation of hapticity and impossibility which Blanchot establishes
so vividly in LInstant de ma mort is central to the concept of the virtual
that I attempted to draw out in my analysis of Serress writings. In my
commentary of the fourth instalment of Petites chroniques du dimanche
soir, I remarked that Serres claims haptic contact between two surfaces
to be capable of forming a third, composite space a corps troisime
between these two surfaces.11 In this inherently fractious third space, sensory
data from both surfaces intermingles and may be perceived or otherwise
exchanged by either surface. I suggested that, in Serress works of theory
and prose, the hybridity of the corps troisime is presented as being simulacral to a certain extent. This is because the composite nature of the corps
troisime requires us to extrapolate not only spatially but also temporally
in order to understand the (haptic) sensory data that we have intercepted
by placing our skin in contact with another surface. More often than not,
our navigation of this interceptive process will be faulty, distorted by the
social, physical or emotional contexts in which it must take place. Under
these circumstances, our perceptions become fabulatory, simulacral of the
surfaces which incite them. Because there can be no certainty as to how
the haptic detail of Serress hybridised third space will be perceived by
either of the surfaces whose contact creates it, there is an inherent element
of chance as to whether the haptic data contained within this space will
be communicated properly, if at all. This unpredictability creates a blind
spot, an aspect of the Serresian corps troisimes empirical and temporal
multiplicities whose material effects cannot even be guessed at without
prior empirical experiences to inform that surmise.
I would now like to take this idea a step further. Based upon my analyses, I assert that the literary works of Bataille and Blanchot studied in this
book can be considered to be their writers creative illustrations of their
critical reasoning. Each of these texts illustrates why a corps troisime of
11
Serres and Polacco, Petites chroniques du dimanche soir, IV, pp.13637.
288 Conclusion
the kind that Serres postulates subsequently would be empirically impossible. It is the unavoidable blind spot that chances role in the perceptive
process creates and which Serres claims to be just one feature of the
corps troisimes space among many others which is at issue. The critical
works of Bataille and Blanchot imply that this randomly occurring blind
spot would in fact be the only perceptible feature or at least, the most
apparent characteristic of any corps troisime of the kind posited more
recently by Serres.
Perhaps counterintuitively, the rcits of Bataille and Blanchot refer
to essentially haptic paradigms in order to demonstrate the sensory chaos
which space such as that postulated by Serres would entail. As Histoire de
lil or Madame Edwarda, Thomas lobscur or La Folie du jour demonstrate,
Bataille and Blanchot associate tactility and by extension, hapticity, with
physical or emotional intimacy. All four of these texts depict the perils
of such intimacy, particularly between man and woman. To go by these
literary works alone, the single greatest threat that physical or emotional
intimacy poses is its ability to distort the accuracy of any sensation that
might be exchanged between two or more proximal surfaces, whether
they are both sentient or not. We need only look at the mortal fates of
Thomas, Anne and Irne, the three key protagonists in the first version of
Thomas lobscur, to witness how sensory distortion caused by haptic intimacy might become a three-dimensionally destructive phenomenon. In
instances of potentially haptic, optical and tactile perception, the critical
and literary works of Bataille and Blanchot remain relatively consistent in
their treatment and portrayals of physical proximity as a negative, materially harmful force.
In Serress theoretical works and anecdotes, however, physical proximity and intimacy are welcomed. Serress postulations of perception as
physical interception in Herms II in 1972 and his allusions in 2009 to
tribology and haptonomy as examples of tactility reaching into the virtual
realm attest to the endurance of his convictions on this subject. The sporting and artistic tales contained in Le Tiers-Instruit or Les Cinq Sens suggest
that Serres adopts a correspondingly consistent (though subtly evolving)
critical viewpoint in his more anecdotal writings concerning tactility and
hapticity: physical proximity remains a source of material good. When
Conclusion
289
we read La Guerre mondiale and examine the filmed barfight that Serres
describes, the positive attributes of proximity extolled by his earlier works
appear to be in severe decline. Until this point, Serress critical theories
and anecdotes tend to be closely linked. It is only when we read about the
Serresian rugby ball/quasi-objet transmitting haptic sensation by means of
a momentarily visible absence of contact with living skin that Serress quest
to diminish the earlier bar fights cinematic images of excessively haptic sensation makes sense. Serres shows through his text that, when sensations of
physical proximity can be made to arise at an experiential distance (albeit
by virtual means), so too can feelings of empathy. On this basis, physical
and emotional sensations of difference can be reduced without physical
contact, further reducing the risk of conflict.
Unlike Bataille and Blanchot, the Serres of La Guerre mondiale
gravitates towards the idea that the absence of tactility is in fact a vector of
haptic perception. Bataille and Blanchot see no contradiction in alluding
repeatedly to haptic sensory experiences in order to illustrate the impossibility of ever perceiving accurately by haptic (or any other perceptual)
means. Serres meanwhile treats the visible absence of tactile data in particular as being solicitous of haptic sensation. The absence of visible tactile
detail is an invitation for the perceiver to move closer to the other surface
or person whose optical details so captivate him or her, in the hope that
both perceiver and perceived may be better understood. It is this rationale which ensures that Serress theories and literary anecdotes follow a
logical chronology which, even when seemingly broken or disjointed, in
fact plots a continuous journey towards empirical revelation of one form
or another. The same cannot be said of Bataille or Blanchot. Bataille, for
example, shows some critical engagement with behavioural praxes which
may lead to revelation, particularly in texts such as LExprience intrieure.
The teleology inherent to empirical methodology proves too problematic
for Bataille to pursue such thought with any vigour, however. Blanchots
critique of perception never moves past its distrust of order and continuity
and fails to consider questions of praxis with a great deal of intellectual
consistency.
Remaining with the motif of consistency for a moment, it is often said
that all myths contain some grain of truth, however small. I contend that
290 Conclusion
the same can be said of the literary works of Bataille and Blanchot. In their
case, the grains kernel of truth is essentially haptic. Try as they might, neither writer can quite eradicate the haptic synergy between sight and touch
from their fictionalised bolstering of their critical stances. With each passing work of prose by Bataille or Blanchot, the haptic certainly becomes less
prominent, but it never disappears entirely. Taken with Batailles inability
to rid his narratives of haptic allusions, Blanchots failure to adhere to La
Folie du jours closing remark (Un rcit? Non, pas de rcit, plus jamais)12
suggests a confluence between subjectively experienced haptic sensation
and rcit that even the most abstractive of theoretical stances cannot efface.
Serres is similarly unable to eradicate the haptic from his work, but he
does not wish to. Instead, he integrates hapticity into his treatments of
perception and broader interdisciplinary thinking. Serress liberal use and
juxtaposition of personal and mythical anecdote in his writings are exemplary of this trait.
With this comparison between the three writers in mind, we realise
that, in the works of Bataille, Blanchot and Serres that I have examined,
critical treatise and literary prose make use of haptic motifs to markedly differing ends. Absent in much of Bataille and Blanchots works of
critical theory, instances of haptic perception are nevertheless employed
regularly in both writers literary prose. Ironically, the inclusion of haptic
sensation in Bataille and Blanchots literary works justifies the haptics
increasing exclusion from both writers critical texts concerning the human
body and the manner in which it perceives. In Serress anecdotes and
critical theories, however, haptic perception becomes increasingly integral to the manner in which he addresses issues of corporeity and perception. Moreover, Serres frequently employs anecdotes in order to explain
why hapticity should be a significant factor in his empirically derived
theorisations.
12
Blanchot, La Folie du jour, p.38.
Conclusion
291
Seeing and Feeling the Difference? Theory, Prose and

the Virtual
For Serres, hapticity in the proprioceptive, Patersonian or virtual, Nancyan
senses of the term can bridge perceptible difference in almost every instance,
though gaps will remain. For Bataille and Blanchot, any of the four variants
of haptic perception that I have presented will render already perceptible
difference more manifest still. Paradoxically, the writings of Bataille and
Blanchot suggest that such sensory revelations in fact blind us across all
of our perceptual registers to the very facts that these sensations of difference purport to bring to our conscious attention. In spite of this major
divergence of opinion, Bataille, Blanchot and Serres appear to agree that
the question of difference is one which transcends empirical, corporeal
reality: it has an unquantifiable, virtual dimension to it. To judge by the
philosophical and literary texts by Bataille, Blanchot and Serres studied
in this book, virtuality has become an ever more appreciable presence in
portrayals of human perception by literary prose or as descriptions in critical
analyses. In response, postulations of hapticity and the various syntheses
of sight and touch that the term might designate have become subsumed
within increasingly transcendental schematisations of human perception.
The arc of reasoning which underpins the haptic postulates advocated by Riegl, Marks, Nancy and Paterson confirms this evolution. From
the early 1900s and Alos Riegl presenting the haptic in terms of a static,
genderless viewer peering at a painted canvas or sculpted surface, we have
reached the proprioceptive and projective hapticity described recently by
Mark Paterson. Using brain scans, we can now see how sight and touch
function in concert with the rest of our perceptive functions and how all
are controlled by and interact with the brain. The appeal of a haptic surface to our eyes and to our tactile faculties can therefore be measured fairly
accurately in the 2010s. This was categorically not the case in Riegls era,
necessitating a more interpretive and socially determinative approach
to theorisations of perception and art history. This is not the only change.
In the present day, haptically perceptible body movements can be converted
(or virtualised) into machine code, transmitted hundreds or thousands of
292 Conclusion
miles away via satellite and internet and then converted back into haptic
data through computer controlled, force-feedback devices. All of this can
occur in synchrony with the visions which incite and correspond with
those actions. This generation and use of haptic data which would have
been impossible in Riegls time nevertheless exhibits certain elements
of Laura U. Markss concept of haptic visuality, of close-up visual details
gleaned from filmed surfaces inciting our desire to touch them. Facets of
Jean-Luc Nancys concepts of excription and virtual, sensory zonage are also
evoked by these decorporealised bundles of haptic data.13
The manifold possibilities of converting a piece of binary-encoded
haptic sensation back into analogue haptic sensation and/or images at
a remote distance underscore the material metamorphosis that hapticity is beginning to undergo as a result of the internets virtual bridging
of physical distance. This is a change which evidently only Serress
increasingly proprioceptive and now virtual approaches to hapticity have
begun to (or are able to) take account of. Were they still alive, it is hard to
imagine what Bataille or Blanchot would have thought of the alternately
technological and virtual hapticity that Paterson describes in The Senses
of Touch, for example.
Some Final Words and No End of Haptic Feeling

In summary, the critical theories, literary anecdotes and prose of Bataille,
Blanchot and Serres that I have analysed plot several distinct steps in an
appreciable evolution of attitudes towards haptic perception which has
taken place in French philosophical and literary circles during the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. There are many points of disjuncture
13
The notion of committing haptic data to an internet servers hard drives bolsters
Nancys assertion that [l]e corps, sans doute, cest quon crit (Nancy, Corpus, p.76;
emphasis in original).
Conclusion
293
between the literary and critical approaches employed by the three writerphilosophers whose works I have studied here. There are even marked discontinuities between the manners in which Bataille, Blanchot and Serres
present instances of haptic perception in the critical and literary strands of
their own writing. Nevertheless, if we read each authors texts in chronological order, an increasing congruence between critical theory and literary
prose in matters of haptic sensation becomes apparent. This could well be
the result of each writer better understanding his own ideas with the passage of time, or simply rethinking his previous opinions. Still, the degree
of rapprochement between Serress theorisations of haptic perception and
related anecdotes early in his career is far in advance of any philosophical
confluences between the critical theories and prose of Bataille or Blanchot
at a similar stage.
In their peripatetic journeys between the poles of critical thought
and literary and personal anecdote, Bataille, Blanchot and Serres all seek
to establish a creative path which addresses philosophical approaches to
the acts of writing and perceiving. The growing integration between critical thought and anecdote attested to by Serress writings coincides with
increasingly fruitful attempts to digitise and decorporealise human sensation itself. As Serress recent musings concerning Lucretius remind us,
however, these circumstances are merely the concretisation of millenniaold postulations linking physical sensation to corporeal transcendence via
perceptible simulacra. Over time, Lucretiuss theories were written down for
future generations to discuss in relation to their own (potentially haptic)
sensations, much as Serres does today in his works of theory and anecdote.
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Index
abstraction 56, 93, 11316, 123, 163 (n.124),

170, 176, 18687, 194, 199, 210,
22022, 23839, 24344, 257,
262, 267, 271, 279, 281, 290
alterity 16, 26, 138, 163
Artaud, Antonin 83
artistry 513, 16, 19, 2122, 28 (n.73),
2930, 37, 100, 230 (n.109), 271,
288, 291
see also cinema, film, painting,
photography and screen
Assad, Maria L. 187, 192 (n.18), 209, 216,
218 (n.86), 219 (n.89), 220, 231
(n.115), 242 (n.135), 247 (n.143),
263 (n.179), 266
attraction 44, 61, 7677, 83, 89, 95, 111,
119, 124, 132, 146, 150, 154, 167
balance 18, 41, 5152, 61, 81, 9495,
9798, 196, 202, 212, 23738, 243,
24546, 278, 282
see also perception/kinaesthetic,
perception/proprioceptive and
perception/vestibular
Barthes, Roland 58 (n.48), 5960, 85
Bataille, Georges vii, 13, 23, 3135,
3739, 41107, 109, 123, 12729,
130, 135, 138, 141, 14752, 154,
158, 16162, 16567, 17273, 176,
178 (n.163), 179, 18283, 18586,
189 (n.10), 193, 20203, 208,
21013, 215, 221, 22527, 231, 234,
24041, 24344, 24647, 255,
25859, 262, 267, 27071, 27374,

27779, 28293
abject, l 4647, 52, 58, 81, 8586, 89,
91, 98, 138, 147, 158, 162, 167, 182,
227, 24446, 258, 259, 282
Acphale, l 31, 60, 152, 241
Descartes, Ren, beliefs of 4950
htrogne, l (the heterogeneous)
25, 55, 60, 264 (n. 181)
htrologie, l (heterology) 31, 5456,
73, 100, 264 (n. 181)
image, l 42, 44, 48 (n. 18), 49, 60,
62, 72, 76, 7980, 9496
informe, l (the indistinct, the shapeless) 31, 5759, 61, 73, 99, 101,
115, 16768, 189 (n. 10), 210, 279
(n. 7)
il pinal, l 31, 4954, 74, 86, 100,
212, 282
scatologie, la (Scatology) 56, 73
sublime, le 4647, 52, 81, 8586,
89, 93, 98, 138, 147, 159, 162,
167, 176, 179, 182, 227, 24446,
25859, 282
Bident, Christophe 103 (n.148),
106 (n.2)
Blanchot, Maurice vii, 13, 23, 3335,
3739, 10383, 18586, 19293,
195, 20203, 208, 210, 213, 215,
221, 22527, 231, 240, 243,
24546, 251, 255, 258, 260,
262, 265, 267, 27071, 27374,
27779, 28193
302 Index
fascination, la 3334, 112, 11720,
123, 127, 131, 136, 14344, 149, 157,
158, 160, 161, 170, 175, 177, 18081,
203, 28283
image, l 33, 11119, 12324 (n. 41),
127, 131, 13638, 14144, 14849,
15561, 16970, 180, 18889, 229,
248 (n. 44), 273, 286
intervalle, l (perceptual lag) 12021,
124
neutre, le (the neuter; the neutral) 11920, 126 (n. 46), 127
nuit, la (night) 109, 127, 144, 162
rapport du troisime genre, le (relationship of the third kind) 33,
12123, 12527, 135, 16870,
17273
blind spot 24, 27, 4853, 61, 73, 76, 87,
93, 101, 11920, 123, 135 (n.61),
14647, 231, 239, 28788
blushing 6667, 70, 78, 9495, 14748
Brown, Steven D. 204 (n.52), 20809,
259 (n.168)
Bruns, Gerald L. 10910, 127, 144
(n.82), 151 (n.95), 154 (n.105),
159 (n.120), 173 (n.151)
cinema 1115, 30, 63, 131, 136 (n.62),
15259, 163, 167, 227, 252 (n.154),
253, 275, 289;
see also artistry, film, painting,
Collin, Franoise 127, 157 (n.112)
communication 19, 25, 34, 36, 45, 61, 77,
102 (n.144), 10910, 112, 118,
124, 128, 132, 149, 155, 18990,
193, 200, 215, 218, 230, 261,
266 (n.185), 287
Connor, Steven 197 (n.32, n.33),
228 (n.107), 254 (n.158), 256,
257 (n.166)
Crowley, Martin 120 (n.30), 122 (n.36),

170 (n.145)
Dagognet, Franois 163 (n.124)
death 11, 32, 60, 65, 69, 7273, 7577,
86, 88, 92, 10203, 108, 129, 152,
155, 160, 171, 17580, 186, 213, 252,
265, 273, 27678, 281, 286
Deleuze, Gilles 3 (n.3), 192 (n.17)
Derrida, Jacques 23, 48, 174 (n.154), 176
(n.159), 212 (n.71)
Didi-Huberman, Georges 3 (n.3)
diffrence, la (difference) 1314, 1617,
25, 28 (n.73), 37, 39, 56 (n.45),
65, 75, 83 (n.107), 88, 9798, 105,
109, 111, 129, 130, 151, 15556, 158
(n.115), 16162, 178, 183, 189, 192
(n.17), 198, 212, 217, 244, 258,
265, 27071, 276, 28485, 289,
291
discontinuity 8, 16, 30, 4445, 48, 51,
54, 58, 70, 10809, 152, 162, 166,
179, 185, 193, 199200, 211 (n.68),
247, 263, 264 (n.181), 28283,
289, 29293
distance 4, 7, 12, 20, 21, 34, 38, 70, 11415,
11820, 12426, 136, 141, 150, 164,
170 (n.145), 181, 204, 20708,
21213, 217, 223, 22728, 24142,
253, 26870, 272, 275, 27778,
289, 292
doigt, le (finger) 20, 46, 49, 6364,
8687, 93, 153, 158, 199, 22223,
226, 251, 268
see also perception/tactile
Elsner, Jas 16
empiricism 2, 22, 2528, 3031, 3637, 57,
93, 113, 121, 127 (n.50), 132, 158,
18182, 18687, 192, 19495, 199,
205, 21011, 216, 220, 231, 23435,
Index
239, 244, 246, 248, 25354, 258,
262, 272, 274, 276, 283, 28788,
289, 29091
ethics 11, 32, 37, 6365, 69, 213, 281, 285
eyes see yeux
feeling see perception
feet see pied
ffrench, Patrick 56 (n.45), 58, 6061,
77 (n.93), 78 (n.98), 85, 101,
106 (n.3), 128, 151 (n.95)
film 10 (n.21), 1215, 21, 30, 37, 71, 136,
15257, 200, 23234, 24954,
272, 275, 280, 289, 292
see also artistry, cinema, painting,
finger see doigt
Fitch, Brian T. 41 (n.2), 73,
74 (n.85, n.86), 84 (n.112),
8586, 87 (n.119), 88 (n.122), 98
(n.140, n.141), 99 (n.142)
fluidity 72, 79, 8687, 9798, 13132,
149, 163, 198, 203, 216, 224,
234, 235 (n.121), 24243, 247
Foucault, Michel 124 (n.41)
Freud, Sigmund 16, 24 (n.61)
gender 1516, 22, 28, 30, 35, 51, 53, 6266,
6970, 7273, 7581, 8384,
8688, 92, 95, 9798, 102, 103
(n.147), 130, 132, 135, 146, 147,
15051, 161, 169, 176 (n.158), 178,
225, 242, 271, 276, 284, 291
see also sexuality
geometry 19, 37, 192 (n.18), 19495, 201,
230, 248
Godin, Christian 262 (n.178)
Guattari, Flix 3 (n.3), 192 (n.17)
Harris, Paul A. 195, 230, 245 (n.140)
hearing see perception/auditory
303
Hnaff, Marcel 234 (n.120), 266 (n.185)
Hollier, Denis 48 (n.19, n.20),
69 (n.71), 78 (n.98), 85
Hurault, Marie-Laure 142, 143 (n.80),
169 (n.142)
Husserl, Edmund 19, 105
imbalance 26, 61, 69, 85, 9495, 101, 245
see also perception/kinaesthetic,
perception/proprioceptive and
perception/vestibular
impossibility 4849, 69, 71, 89, 91, 9596,
10708, 115, 12122, 128 (n.51),
133, 137, 146, 149, 151, 17071, 181,
221, 226, 279, 28687, 289
indifference 25, 133, 136, 145, 149, 151,
164, 18889, 209, 264 (n.181),
269, 277
insanity 6971, 75, 77, 81, 91, 141, 159
(n.120), 166, 169, 228
internet 1, 1920, 37, 38, 39, 26062, 264,
269, 273, 27981, 292
see also screen
intersubjectivity 15, 97 (n.137), 189,
19394, 211
irises 74, 86, 88, 14950, 166
see also yeux
irrationality 31, 55, 98, 103, 128, 142, 159,
161, 166, 170, 259, 269
Iversen, Margaret D. 3 (n.4)
James, Genevive 198 (n.35), 235 (n.121),
267
juxtaposition 21, 189, 209, 21920, 251, 290
knowledge 35, 37, 39, 4243, 57, 73,
99100, 121, 133 (n.58), 165,
18182, 187, 188, 20203, 205, 211
(n.68), 21213, 215, 21920, 231,
239, 244, 246, 249, 253 (n.156),
26162, 266, 283
304 Index
Landes, Donald A. 25
language
inscriptive 22, 2528, 30, 3334, 38,
57, 5961, 65 (n.61), 10002,
10810, 113, 11519, 12224, 128,
146, 154 (n.105), 159, 167, 170
(n.145), 172, 173 (n.151), 177
(n.161), 181, 187, 191 (n.13), 195,
196 (n.27), 20102, 216, 21821,
227, 231, 238, 240, 242 (n.135),
24446, 250, 252, 267, 271,
276, 27778, 282, 284, 287,
28993
spoken 23, 36, 45, 57, 6469, 8688,
9394, 106, 108, 110, 112, 11920,
12326, 127 (n.48), 146, 148,
166, 172, 191 (n.13), 195, 20708,
23638, 24347, 25859, 282, 284
Lea, Jennifer 23334
Levinas, Emmanuel 106, 114 (n.16), 181
Libertson, Joseph 114, 128
Lozier, Claire 47, 65 (n.61), 72 (n.77),
81 (n.105), 85
luck 26, 59, 82, 95, 109, 11112, 193, 197,
224, 227, 234, 249, 257 (n.166),
262 (n.178), 274, 283, 287
main, la (hand) 1920, 22, 35, 4648,
6970, 7677, 84, 86, 8889,
91, 93, 13637, 144, 14649, 151,
15356, 160, 169, 20102, 206,
22223, 237, 24245, 251, 256,
27173, 276
see also perception/tactile
Marks, Laura U. 2, 1117, 1920, 2324,
2930, 33, 38, 4344, 48 (n.17),
51, 56, 59, 63, 65, 7071, 89, 95, 97,
102, 104, 11112, 114, 11619, 125,
13031, 152, 15455, 158, 161, 164,
167, 170, 185, 19293, 199200,
209, 217, 220, 224, 227, 253,
268, 272, 27576, 281, 285,

29192
haptic visuality 1114, 16, 20, 2930,
33, 38, 63, 65, 7071, 89, 95, 97,
102, 111, 131, 152, 15455 (n.109),
157, 158 (n.115), 167, 268, 275, 285,
292
mathematics 18, 36, 5758, 260, 262, 264,
269, 270, 274, 279, 281
Mayn, Gilles 41 (n.2), 48, 72 (n.77),
73, 80 (n.103), 86
measurement 25, 55, 73, 84, 124, 145, 200,
212, 239, 241, 267, 291
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 3 (n.3), 19, 106,
191 (n.13)
myth 37, 5253, 201, 264, 266, 280, 284,
28990
Nancy, Jean-Luc 2, 2236, 4344, 51,
56, 5960, 65, 70, 83, 8889, 100,
10304, 112, 116 (n.19), 11719,
125, 130, 159, 168, 178, 185, 19192,
199, 206 (n.57), 208 (n.62),
213 (n.73), 216 (n.80), 220, 223
(n.94), 245 (n.142), 263, 264
(n.181), 265 (n.184), 271, 276,
281, 284 (n.9), 29192
excription, l (exscription) 2630,
3234, 38, 5961, 80, 83, 100, 117,
159, 168, 17274, 177, 181, 245
(n.142), 271, 276, 292
Reiz, das 24 (n.61)
se-sentir-sentir, le 24, 26, 83 (n.108),
191 (n.16), 216 (n.80)
zonage, le 25 (n.63), 70, 83, 103, 264,
292
zone, la 2328, 64, 83 (n.107, n.108),
112, 118, 191, 199, 216, 228 (n.107),
255, 263, 276
Nietzsche, Friedrich 48 (n.19), 133, 186,
25254
Index
objectivity 8, 111, 119, 122, 126, 141, 156,
190, 208, 262, 26667, 276
objet, l (object) 33, 4243, 55, 105, 109,
11417, 12122, 125, 165, 170
(n.144), 181, 188, 19091, 19597,
199200, 20209, 218, 239, 262,
268
il, l (eye) see yeux
Olin, Margaret 14 (n.31), 15 (n.41)
OMS (Organisation mondiale de la
sant) see WHO
ontology 2, 38, 83 (n.107), 8586, 106
orteil, l (toe) 4547, 49, 99, 212, 246
see also pied
painting 5, 10, 12, 30, 36, 171 (n.146),
22533, 271, 275, 284, 291
see also artistry, cinema, film, photography and screen
paradox 22, 33, 39, 48, 9798, 106, 112,
135, 138, 142, 147, 15051, 165, 170
(n.145), 186, 189, 273, 27778, 291
Paterson, Mark 2, 1722, 24, 2930, 37,
41, 4344, 51, 56, 59, 65, 8889,
10304, 111, 11618, 125, 130,
14041, 146, 161, 170, 185, 189
(n.10), 19293, 199200, 209,
212 (n.71), 214, 220, 241, 246,
27679, 281, 29192
PHANToM (Personal Haptic Interface Mechanism) 1920, 276
Telematic Dreaming 2122, 276
see also perception
Paulson, William 241 (n.134), 243
perception
auditory 24, 67, 7071, 7879, 80,
88, 9899, 103, 112, 13133, 135,
175, 179, 215, 218, 224, 233, 23637,
240, 273, 274 (n.202), 281
cutaneous 1718, 20, 22, 108, 111, 127,
130, 13234, 13637, 13940, 142,
305
14546, 14850, 15457, 16366,
17576, 179, 199, 233, 237, 28081
see also perception/tactile and skin
gustatory 45, 69, 98 (n.140), 103,
112, 135, 237, 273, 274 (n.202), 281
kinaesthetic 13, 1718, 25, 64, 111,
140, 158 (n.115), 175, 199, 214, 241
(n.134), 276, 281
olfactory 18, 42, 68, 77, 112, 179, 224,
273, 274 (n.202), 281
proprioceptive 1718, 30, 33, 37, 39,
41, 43, 46, 69, 82, 85, 8889,
96100, 103, 111, 14041, 146,
149, 151, 199200, 204, 209, 212,
21415, 228, 24041, 243, 246,
265, 27273, 276, 278, 281, 285,
29192
tactile see main, doigt, pied, orteil,
perception/cutaneous and skin
vestibular 1718, 25, 140, 199, 276, 281
visual see yeux
phnomnologie, la (phenomenology)
3 (n.3), 1516, 1819, 30, 106,
19091 (n.13)
philosophy 2, 1819, 22, 33, 3539, 52,
5458, 61 (n.57), 73, 90, 92,
10001, 103, 126, 172, 178, 186,
189, 196, 199, 202, 205, 207, 214,
217, 219, 239 (n.130), 241 (n.134),
26465, 270, 27677, 27980,
29193
photography 12, 27, 30
see also artistry, cinema, film, painting
and screen
pied, le (foot) 19, 4647, 96, 138, 164,
174, 206, 21112, 222
see also orteil and perception/tactile
poetry 109, 113, 181, 183, 202, 235 (n.121)
potentiality 42, 49, 51, 95, 99, 101, 107,
112, 114, 120 (n.30), 122, 13233,
141, 143, 158, 17073, 174 (n.50),
306 Index
17677, 18082, 186, 192 (n.17),
193, 21011, 214, 218, 22021,
23031, 234, 238, 240, 242, 245,
247, 252, 25455, 257, 259 (n.168),
260, 267, 27375, 280, 288, 293
Prli, Georges 173 (n.151)
projection 12, 17, 19, 2122, 2930, 51,
7980, 111, 14243, 148, 15354,
15657, 163, 195, 20809, 23031,
233, 25053, 257, 25960, 275, 291
proximity 45, 7, 14, 1922, 32, 34, 42,
61, 7071, 77, 80, 89, 102, 107,
11415, 11820, 124, 126 (n.46),
128 (n.51), 139, 14243, 14749,
15052, 156, 16264, 167, 170,
200, 20809, 218, 223, 227, 238,
242, 249, 250, 253, 257, 272,
27577, 278, 28889
rapport, le 28, 53, 65, 115, 126, 14142, 169
(n.142), 170, 195, 197, 204, 234
(n.120), 254, 263, 268, 274
rationalism 2627, 30, 39, 43, 57, 58
(n.48), 73, 97, 10001, 107, 119,
122, 133, 13537, 14041, 166, 171,
186, 235
Ravel, Emmanuelle 115, 116 (n.18, n.20),
170 (n.144), 177 (n.161),
182 (n.170)
repulsion 61, 7778, 83, 95, 154
rhythm 18, 83, 9599, 10102, 132, 134,
21112, 240 (n.132), 24243, 245,
247, 264
Riegl, Alos 213, 14 (n.31), 1517,
1924, 2931, 4144, 48 (n.17),
54, 55 (n.40), 63, 65, 88, 102,
11112, 114, 116, 11819, 125, 130,
14243, 15456, 158, 161, 164,
170, 171 (n.146), 185, 188, 19293,
199200, 209, 217, 220, 224, 227,
270, 27576, 281, 29192
Kunstwollen, das 1617 (n.46)

objectivism 48, 2223, 111
Reiz, das 7 (n.12), 8 (n.14), 24 (n.61)
subjectivism48
science 3537, 5256, 73, 122, 133 (n.58),
19396, 20203, 205, 20910,
21416, 21920, 22223, 239,
241 (n.134), 248, 253, 26769,
27172, 278
screen 12, 21, 154, 15657, 163, 227
(n.102), 24950
see also internet
sensation see perception
sensuality 5, 51, 64, 68, 70, 72 (n.77),
75, 7781, 8487, 9495, 97, 147,
15354, 186
Serres, Michel vii, 13, 23, 3539, 18283,
185293
algorithme, l (algorithm), importance of 239 (n.130), 279
Arlequin (Harlequin), skin of 37,
26667
Balzac, Honor de, influence
of22830
Bonnard, Pierre, discussion of paintings by 36, 22533, 271, 284
Brillouin, Lon, influence of 190
corps troisime, le (the third body, the
body between) 214, 266, 28788
football 37, 20809, 240
haptonomie, l (haptonomy)
20607, 214, 288
hornet sting 36, 23638, 27071
hylomorphism, Aristotelian concept
of218
image, l 188, 195, 217, 22526,
22830, 237, 250, 252, 264, 266,
268, 273, 275, 281, 286, 289, 292
interception 188, 193, 26768, 273,
288
Index
interdisciplinary approach of 36, 187,
194, 20102, 21516, 219, 222, 230,
235, 266, 269, 274, 283, 290
interfrence, l 189, 194
Latour, Bruno, interviews with 36,
187, 202, 215
Lucrce (Lucretius), influence of 201,
217, 224, 262 (n.178), 26970,
293
Polacco, Michel, radio show with
36, 20607
quasi-objet, le (quasi-object) 20406,
20809, 255, 257, 259 (n.168),
273, 289
quasi-point, le (virtual sensory
node) 191, 268
rseau, le (sensory or information
network) 187, 19091, 204, 218,
268
rugby 38, 204, 205 (n.53), 20809,
240, 254, 25560, 27273, 280,
289
tribologie, la (tribology) 21314, 288
troisime objet, le (object of the third
kind)197
sexuality 32, 51, 53, 58, 60, 6374, 7581,
8389, 92, 9598, 102, 103
(n.147), 130, 135, 138, 14950,
169, 242
see also gender
shivering 8183, 8586, 89, 92, 94, 147,
24345, 25559, 273
simulacrum 11516, 20001, 21617,
21921, 224, 22628, 23034, 239,
26667, 269, 275, 283,
287, 293
skin 13, 1718, 29, 32, 4648, 52, 64,
6670, 7782, 84, 8688, 9598,
112, 13031, 13637, 140, 14345,
150, 15354, 157, 159, 161, 16366,
192 (n.18), 20001, 21314, 217,
307
22429, 23140,
255, 26567, 269, 273, 284,
28687, 289
see also perception/cutaneous
smell see perception/olfactory
society 3 (n.3), 11, 15, 21, 27, 29, 35, 3739,
43, 47, 55, 6670, 78 (n.98),
90, 9899, 104, 106, 125, 160,
192 (n.17), 193, 195, 204 (n.52),
20506, 213, 223, 234, 239, 255,
25960, 26263, 26566, 269,
274, 279, 281, 28487, 291
speech see language/spoken
Starobinski, Jean 135 (n.61), 137 (n.64),
163 (n.124)
Steinmetz, Jean-Luc 73 (n.81)
subjectivity 5 (n.8), 6 (n.11), 7, 8, 111,
119, 122, 126, 15556, 19596, 205,
210, 214, 216, 218, 223, 237, 248,
26263, 269, 290
Surya, Michel 49 (n.23), 50 (n.24), 83
(n.107)
swimming 37, 9697, 99, 12933,
13538, 140, 145, 147, 150, 160, 169
(n.139), 24047, 26465, 272
synaesthesia 25, 112, 264 (n.181)
taste see perception/gustative
tears 53, 6264, 69, 7273, 8688,
9192, 14849
temporality 8, 16, 20, 2728, 30, 36, 64, 85,
99, 10810, 11417, 11921, 12324,
141, 144, 147, 150, 15253, 15556,
158, 177, 179, 18587, 19192,
19698, 200, 203, 219 (n.89), 220,
224, 229, 243, 245, 24748, 250,
254, 256, 26264, 26869, 275,
28182, 289, 293
theatre 98, 186, 25253, 254, 259, 260,
266
toe see orteil
308 Index
topology 193, 19596, 199, 20102, 215,
21819, 230, 23940, 247 (n.143),
256
transcendence 2, 20, 22, 26, 28, 32, 3435,
46, 66, 69, 70, 8385, 8990, 92,
96 (n.135), 98, 126, 16162, 178,
189, 19294, 21113, 216, 227,
25657, 259 (n.168), 27273, 282,
291, 293
Tucker, Ian 19192 (n.17), 203 (n.49),
211 (n.68), 221, 237 (n.127)
violence 32, 3738, 6365, 7173, 82, 89,
96 (n.135), 9899, 102, 134, 149,
151, 162, 179, 213, 244, 24853,
26266, 272, 285, 289
virtual, the 1922, 2528, 3638, 50, 140,
186, 191, 192 (n.17), 193, 202, 204,
206, 208, 21011, 21617, 22021,
225, 227, 234, 238, 249, 252, 256,
25864, 266 (n.185), 26869,

27277, 281, 283, 28789, 29192
walking 46, 76, 82, 88, 9496, 146, 164,
175, 212, 246, 274
Webb, David 196 (n.27), 271
WHO (World Health Organisation) 38,
261, 273
writing see language/inscription
yeux, les (eyes) 47, 11, 14 (n.31), 18,
26, 34, 42, 44, 4851, 53, 7175,
7778, 8689, 9193, 95, 98,
13031, 134, 138, 14044, 14750,
16566, 168, 171, 173, 176, 177
(n.161), 195, 200, 217, 227, 235,
239, 242, 25051, 265, 269, 275,
279, 286, 291
see also irises, perception/kinaesthetic
and perception/proprioceptive

Edited by Peter Collier
This series aims to publish monographs, editions or collections of

papers based on recent research into modern French Literature. It
welcomes contributions from academics, researchers and writers in
British and Irish universities in particular.
Modern French Identities focuses on the French and Francophone
writing of the twentieth century, whose formal experiments and
revisions of genre have combined to create an entirely new set of
literary forms, from the thematic autobiographies of Michel Leiris and
Bernard Nol to the magic realism of French Caribbean writers.
The idea that identities are constructed rather than found, and
that the self is an area to explore rather than a given pretext, runs
through much of modern French literature, from Proust, Gide and
Apollinaire to Kristeva, Barthes, Duras, Germain and Roubaud.
This series reflects a concern to explore the turn-of-thecentury turmoil in ideas and values that is expressed in the works of
theorists like Lacan, Irigaray and Bourdieu and to follow through the
impact of current ideologies such as feminism and postmodernism on
the literary and cultural interpretation and presentation of the self,
whether in terms of psychoanalytic theory, gender, autobiography,
cinema, fiction and poetry, or in newer forms like performance art.
The series publishes studies of individual authors and artists,
comparative studies, and interdisciplinary projects, including those
where art and cinema intersect with literature.
Volume 1

Victoria Best & Peter Collier (eds): Powerful Bodies.

Performance in French Cultural Studies.
220 pages. 1999. ISBN 3-906762-56-4 / US-ISBN 0-8204-4239-9
Volume 2

Julia Waters: Intersexual Rivalry.

A Reading in Pairs of Marguerite Duras and Alain Robbe-Grillet.
Volume 3

Sarah Cooper: Relating to Queer Theory.

Rereading Sexual Self-Definition with Irigaray, Kristeva, Wittig
and Cixous.
231 pages. 2000. ISBN 3-906764-46-X / US-ISBN 0-8204-4636-X
Volume 4

Julia Prest & Hannah Thompson (eds): Corporeal Practices.

(Re)figuring the Body in French Studies.
Volume 5

Victoria Best: Critical Subjectivities.

Identity and Narrative in the Work
of Colette and Marguerite Duras.
Volume 6

David Houston Jones: The Body Abject: Self and Text in

Jean Genet and Samuel Beckett.
Volume 7

Robin MacKenzie: The Unconscious in Prousts A la recherche

du temps perdu.
Volume 8

Rosemary Chapman: Siting the Quebec Novel.

The Representation of Space in Francophone Writing in Quebec.
Volume 9

Gill Rye: Reading for Change.

Interactions between Text Identity in Contemporary French
Womens Writing (Baroche, Cixous, Constant).
Volume 10 Jonathan Paul Murphy: Prousts Art.

Painting, Sculpture and Writing in A la recherche du temps perdu.

Volume 11 Julia Dobson: Hlne Cixous and the Theatre.

The Scene of Writing.

Volume 12

Emily Butterworth & Kathryn Robson (eds): Shifting Borders.

Theory and Identity in French Literature.
VIII + 208 pages. 2001.
ISBN 3-906766-86-1 / US-ISBN 0-8204-5602-0
Volume 13 Victoria Korzeniowska: The Heroine as Social Redeemer in

the Plays of Jean Giraudoux.

144 pages. 2001. ISBN 3-906766-92-6 / US-ISBN 0-8204-5608-X
Volume 14 Kay Chadwick: Alphonse de Chteaubriant:

Catholic Collaborator.

Volume 15 Nina Bastin: Queneaus Fictional Worlds.

Volume 16 Sarah Fishwick: The Body in the Work of Simone de Beauvoir.

Volume 17 Simon Kemp & Libby Saxton (eds): Seeing Things.

Vision, Perception and Interpretation in French Studies.

Volume 18 Kamal Salhi (ed.): French in and out of France.

Language Policies, Intercultural Antagonisms and Dialogue.

Volume 19 Genevieve Shepherd: Simone de Beauvoirs Fiction.

A Psychoanalytic Rereading.

Volume 20 Lucille Cairns (ed.): Gay and Lesbian Cultures in France.

Volume 21 Wendy Goolcharan-Kumeta: My Mother, My Country.

Reconstructing the Female Self in Guadeloupean Womens Writing.

Volume 22 Patricia OFlaherty: Henry de Montherlant (18951972).

A Philosophy of Failure.

Volume 23 Katherine Ashley (ed.): Prix Goncourt, 19032003: essais critiques.

Volume 24 Julia Horn & Lynsey Russell-Watts (eds): Possessions.

Essays in French Literature, Cinema and Theory.

223 pages. 2003. ISBN 3-03910-005-X / US-ISBN 0-8204-5924-0
Volume 25 Steve Wharton: Screening Reality.

French Documentary Film during the German Occupation.

Volume 26 Frdric Royall (ed.): Contemporary French Cultures and Societies.

Volume 27 Tom Genrich: Authentic Fictions.

Cosmopolitan Writing of the Troisime Rpublique, 19081940.

Volume 28 Maeve Conrick & Vera Regan: French in Canada.

Language Issues.

186 pages. 2007. ISBN 978-3-03-910142-9
Volume 29 Kathryn Banks & Joseph Harris (eds): Exposure.

Revealing Bodies, Unveiling Representations.

Volume 30 Emma Gilby & Katja Haustein (eds): Space.

New Dimensions in French Studies.

Volume 31

Rachel Killick (ed.): Uncertain Relations.

Some Configurations of the Third Space in Francophone Writings
of the Americas and of Europe.
Volume 32 Sarah F. Donachie & Kim Harrison (eds): Love and Sexuality.

New Approaches in French Studies.

Volume 33 Michal Abecassis: The Representation of Parisian Speech in

the Cinema of the 1930s.

Volume 34 Benedict ODonohoe: Sartres Theatre: Acts for Life.

Volume 35 Moya Longstaffe: The Fiction of Albert Camus. A Complex Simplicity.

Volume 36 Arnaud Beaujeu: Matire et lumire dans le thtre de Samuel Beckett:

Autour des notions de trivialit, de spiritualit et dautre-l.

377 pages. 2010. ISBN 978-3-0343-0206-8
Volume 37 Shirley Ann Jordan: Contemporary French Womens Writing:

Womens Visions, Womens Voices, Womens Lives.

Volume 38 Neil Foxlee: Albert Camuss The New Mediterranean Culture:

A Text and its Contexts.

349 pages. 2010. ISBN 978-3-0343-0207-4
Volume 39 Michael ODwyer & Michle Raclot: Le Journal de Julien Green:

Miroir dune me, miroir dun sicle.

289 pages. 2005. ISBN 3-03910-319-9
Volume 40 Thomas Baldwin: The Material Object in the Work of Marcel Proust.

Volume 41 Charles Forsdick & Andrew Stafford (eds): The Modern Essay

in French: Genre, Sociology, Performance.

Volume 42 Peter Dunwoodie: Francophone Writing in Transition.

Algeria 19001945.

Volume 43 Emma Webb (ed.): Marie Cardinal: New Perspectives.

Volume 44 Jrme Game (ed.): Porous Boundaries: Texts and Images in

Twentieth-Century French Culture.

164 pages. 2007. ISBN 978-3-03910-568-7
Volume 45 David Gascoigne: The Games of Fiction: Georges Perec and Modern

French Ludic Narrative.

Volume 46 Derek ORegan: Postcolonial Echoes and Evocations:

The Intertextual Appeal of Maryse Cond.

329 pages. 2006. ISBN 3-03910-578-7
Volume 47 Jennifer Hatte: La langue secrte de Jean Cocteau: la mythologie
personnelle du pote et lhistoire cache des Enfants terribles.

332 pages. 2007. ISBN 978-3-03910-707-0
Volume 48 Loraine Day: Writing Shame and Desire: The Work of Annie Ernaux.

315 pages. 2007. ISBN 978-3-03910-275-4
Volume 49 John Flower (d.): Franois Mauriac, journaliste: les vingt premires

annes, 19051925.

352 pages. 2011. ISBN 978-3-0343-0265-4
Volume 50 Miriam Heywood: Modernist Visions: Marcel Prousts A la recherche

du temps perdu and Jean-Luc Godards Histoire(s) du cinma.

277 pages. 2012. ISBN 978-3-0343-0296-8
Volume 51 Isabelle McNeill & Bradley Stephens (eds): Transmissions:

Essays in French Literature, Thought and Cinema.

221 pages. 2007. ISBN 978-3-03910-734-6
Volume 52 Marie-Christine Lala: Georges Bataille, Pote du rel.

178 pages. 2010. ISBN 978-3-03910-738-4
Volume 53 Patrick Crowley: Pierre Michon: The Afterlife of Names.

242 pages. 2007. ISBN 978-3-03910-744-5
Volume 54 Nicole Thatcher & Ethel Tolansky (eds): Six Authors in Captivity.

Literary Responses to the Occupation of France during World War II.

Volume 55 Catherine Dousteyssier-Khoze & Floriane Place-Verghnes (eds):

Potiques de la parodie et du pastiche de 1850 nos jours.

361 pages. 2006. ISBN 3-03910-743-7
Volume 56 Thanh-Vn Ton-That: Proust avant la Recherche: jeunesse et gense

dune criture au tournant du sicle.

285 pages. 2012. ISBN 978-3-0343-0277-7
Volume 57 Helen Vassallo: Jeanne Hyvrard, Wounded Witness:

The Body Politic and the Illness Narrative.

243 pages. 2007. ISBN 978-3-03911-017-9
Volume 58 Marie-Claire Barnet, Eric Robertson and Nigel Saint (eds):

Robert Desnos. Surrealism in the Twenty-First Century.

390 pages. 2006. ISBN 3-03911-019-5
Volume 59 Michael ODwyer (ed.): Julien Green, Diariste et Essayiste.

259 pages. 2007. ISBN 978-3-03911-016-2
Volume 60 Kate Marsh: Fictions of 1947: Representations of Indian

Decolonization 19191962.

238 pages. 2007. ISBN 978-3-03911-033-9
Volume 61 Lucy Bolton, Gerri Kimber, Ann Lewis and Michael Seabrook (eds):

Framed!: Essays in French Studies.

235 pages. 2007. ISBN 978-3-03911-043-8
Volume 62 Lorna Milne and Mary Orr (eds): Narratives of French Modernity:

Themes, Forms and Metamorphoses. Essays in Honour of David
Gascoigne.

365 pages. 2011. ISBN 978-3-03911-051-3
Volume 63 Ann Kennedy Smith: Painted Poetry: Colour in Baudelaires

Art Criticism.

253 pages. 2011. ISBN 978-3-03911-094-0
Volume 64 Sam Coombes: The Early Sartre and Marxism.

330 pages. 2008. ISBN 978-3-03911-115-2
Volume 65 Claire Lozier: De labject et du sublime: Georges Bataille, Jean Genet,

Samuel Beckett.

327 pages. 2012. ISBN 978-3-0343-0724-6
Volume 66 Charles Forsdick and Andy Stafford (eds): La Revue: The Twentieth-

Century Periodical in French.

379 pages. 2013. ISBN 978-3-03910-947-0
Volume 67 Alison S. Fell (ed.): French and francophone women facing war /

Les femmes face la guerre.

301 pages. 2009. ISBN 978-3-03911-332-3
Volume 68 Elizabeth Lindley and Laura McMahon (eds):

Rhythms: Essays in French Literature, Thought and Culture.

238 pages. 2008. ISBN 978-3-03911-349-1
Volume 69 Georgina Evans and Adam Kay (eds): Threat: Essays in French

Literature, Thought and Visual Culture.

248 pages. 2010. ISBN 978-3-03911-357-6
Volume 70 John McCann: Michel Houellebecq: Author of our Times.

229 pages. 2010. ISBN 978-3-03911-373-6
Volume 71 Jenny Murray: Remembering the (Post)Colonial Self:

Memory and Identity in the Novels of Assia Djebar.

258 pages. 2008. ISBN 978-3-03911-367-5
Volume 72 Susan Bainbrigge: Culture and Identity in Belgian Francophone

Writing: Dialogue, Diversity and Displacement.

230 pages. 2009. ISBN 978-3-03911-382-8
Volume 73 Maggie Allison and Angela Kershaw (eds): Parcours de femmes:

Twenty Years of Women in French.

313 pages. 2011. ISBN 978-3-0343-0208-1
Volume 74 Jrme Game: Poetic Becomings: Studies in Contemporary French
Literature.

263 pages. 2011. ISBN 978-3-03911-401-6
Volume 75 Elodie Lagt: LOrient du signe: Rves et drives chez Victor Segalen,

Henri Michaux et Emile Cioran.

242 pages. 2008. ISBN 978-3-03911-402-3
Volume 76 Suzanne Dow: Madness in Twentieth-Century French Womens

Writing: Leduc, Duras, Beauvoir, Cardinal, Hyvrard.

217 pages. 2009. ISBN 978-3-03911-540-2
Volume 77 Myriem El Mazi: Marguerite Duras ou lcriture du devenir.

228 pages. 2009. ISBN 978-3-03911-561-7
Volume 78 Claire Launchbury: Music, Poetry, Propaganda: Constructing French

Cultural Soundscapes at the BBC during the Second World War.

223 pages. 2012. ISBN 978-3-0343-0239-5
Volume 79 Jenny Chamarette and Jennifer Higgins (eds): Guilt and Shame:

Essays in French Literature, Thought and Visual Culture.

231 pages. 2010. ISBN 978-3-03911-563-1
Volume 80

Vera Regan and Caitrona N Chasaide (eds): Language Practices

and Identity Construction by Multilingual Speakers of French L2:
The Acquisition of Sociostylistic Variation.
189 pages. 2010. ISBN 978-3-03911-569-3
Volume 81 Margaret-Anne Hutton (ed.): Redefining the Real: The Fantastic in

Contemporary French and Francophone Womens Writing.

294 pages. 2009. ISBN 978-3-03911-567-9
Volume 82 Elise Hugueny-Lger: Annie Ernaux, une potique de la
transgression.

269 pages. 2009. ISBN 978-3-03911-833-5
Volume 83 Peter Collier, Anna Magdalena Elsner and Olga Smith (eds):

Anamnesia: Private and Public Memory in Modern French Culture.

359 pages. 2009. ISBN 978-3-03911-846-5
Volume 84 Adam Watt (ed./d.): Le Temps retrouv Eighty Years After/80 ans

aprs: Critical Essays/Essais critiques.

349 pages. 2009. ISBN 978-3-03911-843-4
Volume 85 Louise Hardwick (ed.): New Approaches to Crime in French

Literature, Culture and Film.

237 pages. 2009. ISBN 978-3-03911-850-2
Volume 86 Emmanuel Godin and Natalya Vince (eds): France and the

Mediterranean: International Relations, Culture and Politics.

372 pages. 2012. ISBN 978-3-0343-0228-9
Volume 87 Amaleena Daml and Aurlie LHostis (eds): The Beautiful and the

Monstrous: Essays in French Literature, Thought and Culture.

237 pages. 2010. ISBN 978-3-03911-900-4
Volume 88 Alistair Rolls (ed.): Mostly French: French (in) Detective Fiction.

212 pages. 2009. ISBN 978-3-03911-957-8
Volume 89 Brnice Bonhomme: Claude Simon: une criture en cinma.

359 pages. 2010. ISBN 978-3-03911-983-7
Volume 90 Barbara Lebrun and Jill Lovecy (eds): Une et divisible? Plural Identities

in Modern France.

258 pages. 2010. ISBN 978-3-0343-0123-7
Volume 91

Pierre-Alexis Mvel & Helen Tattam (eds): Language and its Contexts/
Le Langage et ses contextes: Transposition and Transformation of
Meaning?/Transposition et transformation du sens?
272 pages. 2010. ISBN 978-3-0343-0128-2
Volume 92 Alistair Rolls and Marie-Laure Vuaille-Barcan (eds): Masking

Strategies: Unwrapping the French Paratext.

202 pages. 2011. ISBN 978-3-0343-0746-8
Volume 93 Michal Abecassis et Gudrun Ledegen (ds): Les Voix des Franais

Volume 1: travers lhistoire, lcole et la presse.

372 pages. 2010. ISBN 978-3-0343-0170-1
Volume 94 Michal Abecassis et Gudrun Ledegen (ds): Les Voix des Franais

Volume 2: en parlant, en crivant.

481 pages. 2010. ISBN 978-3-0343-0171-8
Volume 95 Manon Mathias, Maria OSullivan and Ruth Vorstman (eds): Display

and Disguise.

237 pages. 2011. ISBN 978-3-0343-0177-0
Volume 96 Charlotte Baker: Enduring Negativity: Representations of Albinism in

the Novels of Didier Destremau, Patrick Grainville and Williams Sassine.

226 pages. 2011. ISBN 978-3-0343-0179-4
Volume 97

Florian Grandena and Cristina Johnston (eds): New Queer Images:

Representations of Homosexualities in Contemporary Francophone
Visual Cultures.
246 pages. 2011. ISBN 978-3-0343-0182-4
Volume 98

Florian Grandena and Cristina Johnston (eds): Cinematic Queerness:

Gay and Lesbian Hypervisibility in Contemporary Francophone
Feature Films.
354 pages. 2011. ISBN 978-3-0343-0183-1
Volume 99 Neil Archer and Andreea Weisl-Shaw (eds): Adaptation: Studies in

French and Francophone Culture.

234 pages. 2012. ISBN 978-3-0343-0222-7
Volume 100 Peter Collier et Ilda Tomas (ds): Batrice Bonhomme: le mot, la

mort, lamour.

437 pages. 2013. ISBN 978-3-0343-0780-2
Volume 101 Helena Chadderton: Marie Darrieussecqs Textual Worlds: Self,

Society, Language.

170 pages. 2012. ISBN 978-3-0343-0766-6
Volume 102 Manuel Bragana: La crise allemande du roman franais, 19451949:

la reprsentation des Allemands dans les best-sellers de limmdiat
aprs-guerre.

220 pages. 2012. ISBN 978-3-0343-0835-9
Volume 103 Bronwen Martin: The Fiction of J.M.G. Le Clzio: A Postcolonial
Reading.

199 pages. 2012. ISBN 978-3-0343-0162-6
Volume 104

Hugues Azrad, Michael G. Kelly, Nina Parish et Emma Wagstaff (ds):

Chantiers du pome: prmisses et pratiques de la cration potique
moderne et contemporaine.
374 pages. 2013. ISBN 978-3-0343-0800-7
Volume 105 Franck Dalmas: Lectures phnomnologiques en littrature franaise:

de Gustave Flaubert Malika Mokeddem.

253 pages. 2012. ISBN 978-3-0343-0727-7
Volume 106 Batrice Bonhomme, Aude Prta-de Beaufort et Jacques Moulin (ds):

Dans le feuilletage de la terre: sur luvre potique de Marie-Claire
Bancquart.

533 pages. 2013. ISBN 978-3-0343-0721-5
Volume 107 Claire Bisdorff et Marie-Christine Clemente (ds): Le Cur dans tous

ses tats: essais sur la littrature et lart franais.
230 pages. 2013. ISBN 978-3-0343-0711-6
Volume 108 Michal Abecassis et Gudrun Ledegen (ds): carts et apports des

mdias francophones: lexique et grammaire.

300 pages. 2013. ISBN 978-3-0343-0882-3
Volume 109 Maggie Allison and Imogen Long (eds): Women Matter / Femmes
Matire: French and Francophone Women and the Material World.

273 pages. 2013. ISBN 978-3-0343-0788-8
Volume 110 Fabien Arribert-Narce et Alain Ausoni (ds): LAutobiographie entre

autres: crire la vie aujourdhui.

221 pages. 2013. ISBN 978-3-0343-0858-8
Volume 111 Leona Archer and Alex Stuart (eds): Visions of Apocalypse:

Representations of the End in French Literature and Culture.

266 pages. 2013. ISBN 978-3-0343-0921-9
Volume 112 Simona Cutcan: Subversion ou conformisme? La diffrence des sexes

dans luvre dAgota Kristof.

264 pages. 2014. ISBN 978-3-0343-1713-9
Volume 113 Owen Heathcote: From Bad Boys to New Men? Masculinity, Sexuality

and Violence in the Work of ric Jourdan.

279 pages. 2014. ISBN 978-3-0343-0736-9
Volume 114 Ilda Tomas: Arc-en-ciel: tudes sur divers potes.

234 pages. 2014. ISBN 978-3-0343-0975-2
Volume 115 Lisa Jeschke and Adrian May (eds): Matters of Time: Material

Temporalities in Twentieth-Century French Culture.

314 pages. 2014. ISBN 978-3-0343-1796-2
Volume 116 Crispin T. Lee: Haptic Experience in the Writings of Georges Bataille,

Maurice Blanchot and Michel Serres.

316 pages. 2014. ISBN 978-3-0343-1791-7

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Modern French Identities