Li Gongming丨 Secretary of the Week: Let the touched world ... Enter historical research

The Innermost Feeling: A Cultural History of Touch, by Constance Klassen [Canada], translated by Wang Jiapeng / Tian Linnan, Shanghai People's Publishing House, September 2022 edition, 62.00 yuan

Neurologists tell us that touch shapes human physiology and mental health, and the first sensory to develop during fetal development is touch, and touch will gradually become numb in old age. Human touch and vision are closely linked, and in psychological and social interactions, touch is an important link to establish human emotions and a glue for social construction.

But does the sense of touch have its own history? Can tactile history form part of historical research? It may seem a bit risky to easily deny or affirm, but how can one imagine what tactile history refers to? What will it include? What is the medium through which the sense of touch enters history? In the research branch of history, the history of touch has not only failed to establish an independent status, but even in the historical research topics that are obviously related to the sense of touch. Even after Foucault, when "physical problems" flourished in French academic circles, it was difficult to see the emphasis on touch in the study of "body history" in French historiography that adhered to the tradition of the Annales School, let alone become "history". In the three volumes of Histoire du Corps (2005; translated by Zhang Zhu et al., East China Normal University Press, 2013), edited by Georges Vigarello and other French scholars, we can see the extremely rich presentation of body narratives in various historical contexts, and the embodiment of history is the main theme of the book, but strangely, the conceptual discussion and research perspective of touch do not appear in the book. From the perspective of historical anthropology, Swiss scholar Jakob Tanner affirmed the necessity of body history research in "Introduction to Historical Anthropology", and thus affirmed the importance of studying the history of violence and perceptual perception, but did not mention the study of tactile problems. (See Jacob Tanner, "Introduction to Historical Anthropology", translated by Bai Xikun, Peking University Press, 2008, pp. 102-107) In the field of emotional history research, touch seems to be an important research object, but whether it is the British scholar William M. Reddy's Guide to Emotional Research: A Framework for the History of Emotions (translated by Zhou Na, East China Normal University Press, 2020) or the German scholar Jan Plarnper's Human Emotions: Cognition and History (translated by Ma Bailiang and Xia Fan, Shanghai People's Publishing House, 2021), touch is not discussed. Discussing the emergence of "neurohistory" research influenced by neuroscience, Planpell refers to the influential queer theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativzl (2003). But just to show that Sedgwick's generation grew up in the post-structuralist currents of the late seventies and early eighties, and whose academic research is spiritually linked to the liberation movements of blacks, women, and homosexuals, the issue of "touch" does not become one of the perspectives in the following chapter "Perspectives on the History of Emotions." Sedgwick's path to the study of "touch emotions" led me to think that the study of the history of touch should be thought of in the context of radical intellectual frontiers.

Therefore, Canadian cultural historian Constance Classen's The Deepest Sense: A Cultural History of Touch (2012; translated by Wang Jiapeng and Tian Linnan, Shanghai People's Publishing House, September 2022) can be said to be of groundbreaking academic significance. As one review put it, "this deepest sense became the subject of extensive historical exploration for the first time." Judging from the content and narrative framework of the book, the author does intend to work towards the goal of "extensive historical exploration" centered on the sense of touch, because she firmly believes that in the simplest human posture, a kiss or a hand touch, there is a meaningful world. But she also understands the challenges and difficulties of writing a history in which the sense of touch is in the deepest part of our self-experience and our experience of the world, but it remains silent and does not even enter history. "In many historical records, the past has been so disembodied that it seems to be just a shadow puppet, and the ghosts will never feel the pain of a shoe pinching or a sword stab." ("Behind the Scenes", p. 1) is very emotional and accurate. She goes on to point out that the neglect of tactile experience is pronounced not only in history, but in all humanities and social sciences, and even in areas such as physical or medical history, where tactile – and sensory experience in general – is often underestimated or neglected. She even sees contemporary historians' neglect of tactile sources as a "decision" that may not be some personal choice, but a pervasive, unspoken consensus. (ibid., p. 2) In my limited reading studies, Klaason is true that attention to tactile nature is rarely seen in historical writings in various fields. Even Marc Bloch's The Royal Touch (1973), which the author refers to when he talks about the history of touch based on the work of the Annals School, in which Bloch attaches great importance to the "touch" scene in the pictorial historical material, such as the stained glass window painting describing the Abbey of Mont Saint-Michel in 1488, which depicts the French king walking into the park to treat many patients, "he touches them one by one with his right hand, from forehead to chin, from cheek to cheek" (Mark Bloch, Miracles of Kings: A Study of the So-called Supernaturality of English and French Royalism, translated by Zhang Xushan, Commercial Press, 2018, p. 122), or Saint Marcoule is found touching the cheek of a dressed French king with his divine hand in decorative images of Saint-Riquière's Cathedral (ibid., p. 254), but no further analysis is given of the sensory nature of touch.

So what makes it so difficult for the sense of touch—and the world that is touched—to enter the subject of historical research? The authors say that "we seem to be so often reminded not to touch that we are reluctant to even use our minds to explore the tactile world." It seems like a joke, but in fact, "often being reminded not to touch" is indeed a microscopic precept in real life, so adults often warn children in public places to "don't have too many hands". As for the reluctance to use the mind to explore the tactile world, of course, there are other real reasons. Klaasen does not explore this in detail in his book, except to mention that this neglect of touch has long existed in nineteenth-century historical writings, when the idea of "high" culture requiring the suppression of "vulgar" feelings was prevalent, and touch was regarded by scholars at the time as a rude and uncivilized way of perceiving, and historians had to do so. ("Behind the Scenes", p. 2) This is certainly an important perspective for academic history, but the problem is that the "consensus" on the neglect of "tactile" research in contemporary scholarship requires a more in-depth and specific analysis of various research topics. Although the author does not expand on the discussion, she can see a deep reflection from her discussion of the goal of her research and the awareness of the problem.

It should be said that, in addition to the perceptual way of describing history and any cultural interpretation that can bring history and any cultural interpretation to life and thus justify the historical study of the sense of touch, it is more important that "in order to understand the sensory life of a society, we must explore the various cultural values that the society gives meaning to the way people perceive the world." The history of touch means not only the search for experience, but also the search for meaning. (ibid., p. 3) Thus, "the purpose of the history of touch is to explore how the physical practices of any given period were connected to the cultural context of the time, and how this connection changed under the influence of various new factors." (ibid., p. 5) Revealing the cultural values and meanings of tactile history from the connection between physical practice and cultural context in historical contexts is in any way an optional branch of historical research.

In the case of medieval historical studies, "although there is much contemporary scholarship that studies the Middle Ages, we still need to understand the various tactile values that shaped sensibility and sociality of the period, and the embodied life, which was rejected by early historians to the point of making it seem to equate to barbarism." By exploring the fleshly sensations and symbols of the Middle Ages, The Deepest Senses both attempts to give the reader a sense of medieval life while at the same time attempting to show "the social and religious centrality of the sense of touch in this formative period of Western civilization" (ibid., p. 4). Therefore, the book begins in the Middle Ages, and for good reason. At the same time, it is worth noting that "much of the book emphasizes the long-standing persistence of collective practices and beliefs about touch" (ibid.). When the Middle Ages passed, the importance of touch faded from the cultural life of modernity, on the one hand, but on the other "it was re-indoctrinated, and as it withdrew from some areas, it also extended to others" (ibid., p. 5). The latter is a topic worth paying attention to and pondering. There are also many cultural memories of touch in our upbringing, and it is impossible to realize at the time that the collective practice and spiritual belief about touch can be traced back to medieval civilization. And in the current world of life experience, the rapid expansion of bodily discipline, tactile use, and taboos responds to Klaassen's problem of "re-indoctrination," in which the extreme embodiment of reality is rewriting the body narrative of contemporary history.

Regarding the object, scope, methodology, and problem awareness of the "history of tactile culture", Klassen showed an enterprising and cautious attitude. The eight chapters of the book are entitled "Sitting Around the Hearth", "God to Touch", "Difficult Times", "Female Touch", "Animal Skin", "Tactile Art", "Modern Touch" and "The Feeling of the New Age", spanning from the Middle Ages to the early 20th century, from family life to social processes, from individual experience to collective mentality. However, she consciously realized that the book "is not intended to provide a comprehensive history of tactile culture." Whether tactile, cultural or temporal, there are inevitably cracks in the materials used. (Ibid., p. 6) In fact, the peculiarities and difficulties of the study of the history of touch lie in the breadth of its object and the constraints of historical sources, and although tactile sensations are documented in many literatures, they are not always recorded, as the author puts it, "perhaps the values of flesh and sensation are so important and universal in defining life that they are often taken for granted and not mentioned" (ibid., p. 10). It should also be added that when talking about "recording", it is necessarily linked to the material medium, except for the remains of handprints in caves or mud bricks, the materialization of touch is very rare, let alone a history of physical touch. The touch descriptions left in written and pictorial sources are fragmented and non-central. Thus, the history of touch is often the history of some kind of inferred. It must walk the path, from a suggestive wording to a typical practice, to an artifact or place that contains a lot of information, and even inward to its own unique but shared physical experience, rather than a linear way from narrative to narrative, from event to event. It is not just some kind of bottom-up history. It is also a kind of history from the inside out, from culture to culture—a history that requires exploring the various cultural dimensions of our deepest feelings. (ibid.) The so-called "inferred history" is a history that is hooked in the folds of history with fragmented evidence and ambiguous information, that is, a history that must be reconstructed with sensitivity and prudence. From the perspective of new cultural history research, the bottom-up and outside-out perspective constitutes an important feature of tactile cultural history research, and the goal of research is to "feel the deepest" at various cultural levels.

To explore the feelings and meanings of this culture, it is necessary to overcome not only the difficulty of studying historical materials, but also the values and aesthetics hidden in the heart of the researcher. Klassen says that before recognizing the value of touch at any given period, it is precisely the deep-rooted connection between touch and irrationality, primitivism that needs to be overcome; Also do not romanticize it as a provider of warm tactile experiences in contrast to the indifferent visual value of modernity. This reminds me of the tactile sensations of interviewing Aboriginal Aborigines in Australia's Northern Territory and the Central Desert more than 20 years ago, and the process of shaking hands, painting and dancing together is a strange tactile cultural experience. In retrospect, the two concepts of primitivism and romanticism are indeed quite accurate, and the strangeness I felt at that time was actually derived from the emergence of these two ideas. Klaasen mentions that Stephen Connor's Book of Skin (2004) reminds us that "the cultural significance and sensory properties of human skin are diverse" and is a very relevant way to how I felt about the relationship between skin color and touch at the time. Here, Klaasson reminds us that in addition to the historical approach of the Annales School, there is also an academic context in the study of tactile cultural history, which is the methodological approach of the anthropology of the senses, which was pioneered in the 1990s by the Canadian anthropologist David Howes and others. Sensory anthropology promotes attention to how sensory experiences shape people's understanding of the world and their interactions with the world in collective, patterned ways (Howes 1991; 2003; 2005), "can make us sensitive to the many ways humans communicate and express themselves through non-verbal forms." (Ibid., p. 9)

Now we can feel in the book how the author leads the reader into the "deepest feelings". For example, when we talk about travel now, it's hard to immediately associate it with kissing. But Erasmus, describing a trip to England at the end of the fifteenth century, wrote: "When a visitor comes, the first act of hospitality is a kiss... In fact, no matter which direction you turn, you will never be without kisses. Oh Faust, if you've ever tasted those kisses so sweet and fragrant, you really want to be a traveler... All my life in England" (Erasmus 1962:203). (Chapter I, p. 5) In addition, for many people in the Middle Ages, physical contact such as kisses and handshakes could be a ritual of commitment, more meaningful and binding than simply signing a document. This is partly because written documents are incomprehensible to the illiterate majority of the population, but I also believe that trust generated in physical contact is also a culture of contract. For example, in the study of textile history, of course, there are many discussions on the material properties of clothing, but it is indeed difficult to find research that links clothing with the touch of the skin and the sociological and political implications contained in it in the limited books I have read. Klaessen saw not only in the rough wool touch of the peasant's coat the peasant's wort, the difficulties that the peasants might encounter in life and their low social status and so-called vulgar nature, not only in the smooth silk that caressed the bodies of the rich and aristocratic and in a sign of the right to a comfortable life and the so-called more refined and gentle nature, but also in a deeper way the inverse relationship between the habituality of touch and social transformation: since the poor are accustomed to a certain extent by prolonged exposure to cold and rough feelings, For the affluent class, then, it means that there is no need to alleviate the hardships that are not really felt. (p.13) This is a brutal class-political truth that comes to the touch and reminds us of the unscrupulous praise of the poor as having strong rulers and the rich. Today we tend to think that only the blind need to move in touch, but in the long dark nights of medieval winter, family members had to communicate with each other through touch, sound, slapping, jabbing and pinching, and even habitually placing furniture against the wall to avoid accidents when moving around in dark rooms. When opening a book on architectural history, I'm afraid few authors will write about what it's like to "love you walking alone in dark alleys", and Klaassen will tell us that walking through the winding streets and dark alleys of medieval neighborhoods, one is likely to find that touch is as informative as smell and vision - "Many medieval house walls must have been touched by the hands of passers-by, and when horses and carriages slowly come along narrow streets, pedestrians may find themselves having to press their entire bodies against the walls to make space." (p.17) Without a realistic imagination of physical contact with the environment, the sense of touch between man and the wall would not enter the historical narrative of architecture.

The touch of material life is only the "economic foundation" part of the history of tactile culture, and its spiritual "superstructure" is also full of "the deepest feelings". Do not think that physical labor alone feels tiring and toiling, medieval writers would have felt that writing was as physically demanding and painful as doing farm work in the fields, and that even reading was an experience of the body, not just an intellectual act. (p.25) As for the physical punishment of learning in school, it is widely believed that beatings and flogging help to instill knowledge into the body, a feeling that is not too new to us even today. In the Middle Ages, the most important sense of touch was, of course, closely linked to faith. God is touchable, "by its very nature, the medieval cosmology is tactile." Heaven always seems to be filled with light, music and fragrance, but the original quality of the universe is considered to be the contrasting forces of heat and cold, wet and dry. All these qualities can only be experienced through touch, making touch the only sensation open to the fundamental nature of reality" (p. 38). Like a sculptor, God shaped Adam's body directly with His hands, St. John rested in the bosom of Jesus, and the flesh of Jesus in the late Middle Ages became a special focus of Christianity, encouraging people to experience the crucifixion imaginatively with their own bodies. So some people prayed to know the exact number of wounds on Jesus' body, and the answer was 5,475, and the pain accumulated was unimaginable. "Medieval religious texts used tactile language not only to provoke feelings of pain, but also to convey the immediacy of God's love." Visual is superficial compared to touch, and Hadewijch of Brabant, in discussing the tactile nature of divine love, succinctly states: "The most secret name [of love] is touch" (pp. 40–41). In biblical narratives, the body and sense of touch of Jesus are widely known themes: washing the feet of his disciples, healing diseases with touch, being kissed by Judas, and being whipped by Roman soldiers. Thus corresponds to the embodied practice of worship: folded hands, drawing crosses, bowing, kneeling, sharing communion, praying; Experiencing physical pain in practice was a way of approaching God, so there were always countless scars on the bodies of saints from the thirteenth century until the fourteenth century when the flagellant movement reached its peak in Germany and the Low Countries. It is quite peculiar that not only saints, but also recognized scoundrels and traitors who die after being tortured, their mutilations, clothing, and even the dirt under the gallows are feverishly collected and worshipped, which shows that the combination of popularity and the suffering of the dead body can stimulate the public's imagination about the sense of touch. The body touched by the saint and the objects handed down by the saint also have a sense of sacredness, and the ritual of sharing is the most solemn memory of the sense of touch, even by hanging the icon on the body, such a tactile cultural memory is not strange to us. In the art of painting, the connection between sight and touch, although it may seem a bit tortuous, is equally effective and infectious to express the feeling of touch through various images, or to evoke tactile sensations by depicting physical contact and body movements, and through close-up depictions of things.

The decline of the centrality of tactile culture is undoubtedly caused by countless new changes in the development of the entire society, such as the transformation of social communication networks by economic development, the development of the printing industry, the popularization of visual culture, the establishment and dissemination of many modern comfortable lifestyles, and changes in social and life etiquette, all of which have contributed to the declining importance of touch in life. But, as the author has said earlier, the importance of touch has faded from the cultural life of modernity on the one hand, but on the other hand has been re-indoctrinated and extended to some areas. As if as an alternative to medieval religious sites, Klassen ended up using the department store as a stage to satisfy people's tactile hunger, "the sensory world of the department store is a synesthetic world, where all sensory effects shine and merge into a fascinating whole" (p. 278). However, at that time, she may not have had time to feel and think about the rapid development of e-commerce and logistics, and it is difficult to imagine how this new shopping trend will completely eliminate the feel experience in the shopping process.

The last thing that comes to mind is that both in the face of this noisy world and in the face of a silent mind, as Bruno Latour quotes at the end of an article, "Yes, touch them, interpret them, apply them". In any case, the touched world must be brought into the halls of historical research.