The Aesthetics and Politics of Touch in Literature and Other Media

触摸是会传染的。身体接触和感官印象触发了传播过程，这可能会产生从电气化到厌恶的身体和情感共鸣。文学和相关媒体提供了空间，形式和技术来表现和反映触摸的数字。这些数字显示自己的多态性和模糊性，他们引起的问题，生产和接受。在更广泛的感官生理学中，触摸不仅可以被理解为与严格的触觉有关，而且可以被理解为与整个身体及其更大的感官储备有关，无论是主动模式还是被动模式。因此，作为一种感官现象的触摸显示出与特定环境的特别复杂的关系。正是这种复杂性使得接触的时刻对于该网络将进行研究的文学，媒体和文化研究领域具有吸引力。在与其他当前研究项目的对话中，涉及性，物质性和感官性，该网络旨在通过关注三条相互关联的调查线来重新配置和拓宽触摸的概念：1）该网络从历史的角度调查触摸的功能，询问性（及其限制）在塑造政治和社会角色方面所扮演的角色。在这种背景下，文学和其他艺术形式如何回应和组织接近和距离的关系是有趣的。2)从系统的角度来看，该网络还研究了与非预测性思维和隐性知识形式有关的触摸的思想图形。3)该网络进一步从美学和媒体的角度探索触摸，例如，调查触觉和数字之间的关系。该项目的方法是基于一个扩大的文学概念和文化研究的方法，认为文学与其他媒体和文化习俗的相互关系。参与学科包括现代文学研究（比较文学;英语，德语，浪漫和斯拉夫研究）以及媒体和文化研究，哲学和社会学。

Touching is contagious. Physical contact and sensual impressions trigger processes of transmission, which may generate physical and affective resonances ranging from electrification to disgust. Literature and related media offer spaces, forms and techniques to represent and reflect on figures of touch. These figures reveal themselves as polymorphous and ambiguous and they elicit questions of both production and reception. Within the broader physiology of the senses touching can be understood as relating not only to the strictly tactile sense, but instead to the whole body and its greater sensual repertory, in active as well as in passive modes. Touch as a sensual phenomenon thus displays a particularly intricate relation to specific contexts. It is this intricacy that makes moments of touch compelling for the fields of literary, media and cultural studies in which the network will conduct its research. In dialogue with other current research projects addressing tactility, materiality and sensuality, the network aims to reconfigure and broaden concepts of touch by focusing on three interconnected lines of inquiry: 1) The network investigates the function of touch from a historical perspective, interrogating the roles that tactility (and its restriction) have played in relation to figuring political and social imaginaries. It is of interest, in this context, how literature and other art forms respond to and organize relationships of proximity and distance. 2) From a systematic perspective, the network also examines figures of thought that relate touch to forms of non-predicative thinking and tacit knowledge. 3) The network further explores touch from an aesthetic and media perspective, for instance, investigating the relationship between the tactile and the digital. The project's methodology is based on an expanded concept of literature and on approaches derived from cultural studies that view literature in reciprocal relation to other media and cultural practices. Participating disciplines include modern literary studies (Comparative Literature; English, German, Romance, and Slavonic Studies) as well as media and cultural studies, philosophy and sociology.