E-Co-Affectivity by Marjolein Oele;

Author:Marjolein Oele;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 2020-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Conclusion

This chapter has tried to show that human skin is an important affective interface that enables, mediates, and secretes our rational, sensitive, and emotional being. Much more than a simple barrier or superficial surface, its permeability and its co-evolution with our brain, our culture, and our technology speak to the centrality of its existence for our being, which is far deeper interwoven with both human and nonhuman others than could ever have been imagined.

This dermatological interface is not merely passive, but—in a middle-voiced fashion—chooses and (re)generates our time, place, and being. Providing both spatial and temporal synthesis, our skin both reassembles the cohesion between periphery and center and renews synthetic cohesion between our memory, our finite future, and our present. I have ended this chapter on a cautionary political note, speaking of the need to defy what I have called epidermal death zones, zones of pure suffering, and pleading for the establishment of structures of trust.

The next, and final, chapter seeks to take into account all of the forms of affectivity that I have discussed in this and previous chapters (plants, animals, placentas, and human skins), and attempts to extend the analysis of skin to a material interface that encapsulates many forms of life: that of soil—the skin of the earth.151 Moving the middle voice from the interface of one living being to that of the interface where we all connect and meet up, what would follow accordingly? If we follow the analysis of pathos as we have traced it so far, where do we end up when we truly admit our metaphysical, biological and sensitive belongingness (“home”) while simultaneously recognizing important differences? In the grand scheme of things, might compassion be an important conceptual tool to grasp our webbed existence (what I will call our e-co-affectivity), and where does this bring us in terms of ethical and political responsibility?

If I return to where I began this chapter, being inspired by the skin-to-skin contact with my newborn daughter and the new spatial and temporal configuration it brought, I hope that image can guide us to the next chapter, but in an expanded sense. The task would be to reflect on material interfaces more deeply, more expansively, immersing ourselves in thought along the common edges of living beings tied together to the skin of the earth, merging and emerging alongside each other in a world full of contingency.

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