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Tactile PoeticsTouch and Contemporary Writing

By Sarah Jackson

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£100.00

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About this book

A new critical perspective on the relationship between text and tact in 20th- and 21st-century literature and theory

  • Listen to a podcast by Sarah Jackson for BBC Radio 3
  • Conceptualises the relationship between touching and writing through a theory of 'tactile poetics'
  • Offers in-depth analysis of a range of literary genres including short fiction, poetry, autobiography, correspondence and the novel
  • Examines writings on touch by Anzieu, Cixous, Derrida, Freud and Nancy
  • Explores the intersections between creative and critical thinking and writing

The intimate links between the page and the skin have been explored by writers for centuries. Yet despite the current interest in the surface of the body, the relationship between touching and writing remains neglected. Drawing on new debates in deconstruction and psychoanalysis, this book provides an original and timely intervention in the field. Exploring insights from Jacques Derrida and Hélène Cixous, and through close readings of work by writers such as Anne Carson, Siri Hustvedt and Michael Ondaatje, Tactile Poetics investigates the law of tact that always interrupts contact, and examines the different ways that literary texts work to 'touch' their readers.

Reviews

ground-breaking
Tactile Poetics takes excellent care of the intellectual and imaginative possibilities of its subject. Jackson's lucid, subtle engagement with touch and associated topics combines a poet's sensitivity, scholar's rigour and thinker's curiosity. Her book belongs alongside classic studies by Anzieu, Connor and Nancy.
Tactile Poetics　is an original and compelling study. It is also, in its singularly gentle manner, a work of pressing importance. Interweaving lucid and thought-provoking expositions of Anzieu, Merleau-Ponty, Derrida, Nancy and others, with deft and inventive readings of an adventurous range of recent fictional and poetic texts, Jackson’s book shows how the subject of touch is at the heart of contemporary writing and theory.
Table of contents
Acknowledgements; Introduction: Each Word of Skin; 1. Writing Bodies: Hustvedt’s Textual Skin; 2. Expeausition: Ondaatje’s Skin-Effects; 3. The Law of Tact: Freud and H.D.; 4.So Close: Writing that Touches; 5. Dis-tanz: 29 Tangos; 6. Hand Delivered: From A to X; 7. Digital Technologies and Prosthetic Possibilities; 8. Phantom Limbs: Bowen’s ‘Hand in Glove’; Bibliography
About the author

Sarah Jackson

Sarah Jackson is Associate Professor in Arts and Environment and Vice Chancellor’s Fellow at Northumbria University. Working at the intersections of literature, art and technology in order to address questions of social and environmental justice, her books include Pelt (2012; awarded the Seamus Heaney Prize for Poetry 2013); Tactile Poetics: Touch and Contemporary Writing (2015); and Literature and the Telephone: Conversations on Poetics, Politics and Place (2023). Bringing together creative and critical practice, her current work focuses on geopoetics, displacement and sound.