The Vocabulary of Touch: Encountering Otherness through Contact Improvisation

一种参与的形式，一种产生接触的手势，触摸突出了身体的关系。触摸实践和概念化的方式的含义与广泛的背景和学科有关，包括认识论，文化研究，医学，政治，宗教和教育学。鉴于在教育和创造性学习中越来越多的边缘化和禁止触摸（Bannon & Holt 2012），触摸有可能被理解得很差，被监管并进一步降级到亲密领域。接触即兴（CI）的舞蹈形式，通常是基于两个舞者的触摸，提供了一个触摸的词汇，突出了丰富的资源，详细的现象学知识的触摸经验和使用，尚未被解开。通过同行促进的实践研究方法，该项目将研究不同的舞者如何体验触摸，询问CI技术的潜力，以支持触摸的创造性，认识论，社会和政治影响的重新思考。借鉴凯伦·巴拉德（Karen Barad，2003，2011，2012）的新唯物主义哲学，特别是她对触摸的理解，触摸是一个纠缠的过程，使人能够与他者（包括与自己内部的他者）相遇，这项研究将探讨不同的触摸技术如何促进身体之间和身体之间的现象的相互作用。争论，与曼宁（2007：xv），这'触摸[.]这个项目对21世纪的社会具有重要意义，在这个世纪，虚拟交流形式的大量增加突出了重新思考互动、交流、学习和聚会方式的迫切需要。该项目的成果包括：舞蹈触摸研讨会和实用的资源映射和分析触摸技术的调查，包括反思和道德指导，以告知和激励触摸在舞蹈和其他形式的伙伴关系中的进一步应用，如在教育和医疗保健中的体现学习的发展。

A form of engagement, a gesture that produces contact, touch foregrounds the relationality of bodies. The implications of the ways in which touch is practised and conceptualised are relevant to a broad range of contexts and disciplines including epistemology, cultural studies, medicine, politics, religion and pedagogy. In light of increasing marginalisation and prohibition of touch in education and creative learning (Bannon & Holt 2012), touch is at risk of being poorly understood, policed and further relegated to intimate spheres. The dance form of Contact Improvisation (CI), typically based on two dancers in touch, offers a vocabulary of touch which foregrounds a rich resource of detailed phenomenological knowledge on touch experience and use, yet to be unpacked. Through a peer-facilitated practice-as-research approach, this project will examine how different dancers experience touch, interrogating the potential of CI techniques to support a rethinking of the creative, epistemological, social and political effects of touch. Drawing on Karen Barad's (2003, 2011, 2012) new materialist philosophy - and in particular on her understanding of touch as an entangled process that enables an encounter with otherness (including with the other within oneself) - this research will explore how different touch techniques facilitate the intra-action of phenomena between and through bodies. Arguing, with Manning (2007: xv), that 'touch [...] enables the creation of worlds', this project has significant implications for 21st century society where the overwhelming increase of virtual forms of communication highlights the urgent need to re-think ways of interacting, communicating, learning and coming together. The project's outcomes include: dance-touch workshops and a practical resource mapping and analysing the touch techniques investigated, encompassing reflections and ethical guidance to inform and inspire further applications of touch in dance and other forms of partnering, as in the development of embodied learning in education and healthcare.