Politics of Touch

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Political philosophy has long been bound by traditional thinking about the body. Through an engagement with the state-centered vocabulary of this discipline, Politics of Touch examines the ways in which bodies continually run up against existing political structures. In this groundbreaking work, Erin Manning reconsiders how politics attempts to paralyze the body through the idea of the national body politic. In Politics of Touch, Manning develops a new way to conceive the role of the senses, and of touch in particular. Exploring concepts of violence, gender, sexuality, security, democracy, and identity, she traces the ways in which touch informs the body. In an original and expansive analysis of tango--a tactile, rhythmic, and improvisational dance--Manning asserts the necessity of considering the sensing body in motion in order to think about its political implications. With a fresh vision and an original theoretical basis, Manning shows the body as its own ontological category, and in doing so redefines our understanding of the sense of touch in philosophical and political terms. Erin Manning is assistant professor of fine arts at Concordia University and the author of Ephemeral Territories (Minnesota, 2003).