Objects of Desire - The Eroticism of Touch by Hans-Jürgen Döpp

Author:Hans-Jürgen Döpp [Döpp, Hans-Jürgen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Parkstone International

Woman under a movable clothes, bronze.

Woman pulling up stockings, Vienna bronze. Ca. 1920.

A monk – and what he is thinking of, Vienna bronze. Ca. 1900.

Bordello scene, in the background – the Madam collecting the money. Medallion the 18th century. The hard to recognize wine glass in the woman’s hand indicates that she is a prostitute. Rear: Tortoiseshell with intarsia. (Top and bottom)

Tactile communication represents the first and most primitive language of the child, on which verbal language is later built. This is why people refer to the sense of touch as ‘the mother of all senses.’ Thus our verbal language is just a continuation of our physical language. They both have the same purpose: to establish a relationship with other human beings. Love and hate are feelings. The real significance of the word ‘feeling’ is connected with the first tactile experiences. (Thus the German word “Gefühl” (feeling) also designates the sense of touching something). If we like something, we want to touch it – or to ‘feel’ it in a sexual sense. Because in the sexual act, Montagu explains, human beings experience a sensation through their skin that is so strong it can almost equal the sensation of birth itself. Often, he says, women “use the sexual act in order to be held in someone’s arms. What they desire above all else is to be close to someone; the sexual act is only the price that they agree to pay. The satisfaction of the orgy is forbidden them.”

Contrary to the indirect experiences of the eyes and ears, the sense of touch allows us to experience things directly in our bodies. Touch is different from the other senses “because it requires the direct and unshared presence of the body we are touching, as well as the participation of our own body with the one we are touching.” Finally, we believe in the reality of an object only when we can touch it. Even religious belief demands some kind of substance and cannot be satisfied without objects to touch: thus the relics and other objects of veneration of saints are made up of parts of bodies, bones or ashes, clothes or an object of daily use.

This veneration of relics is explained by the idea that the remains of saints have preserved a specific power, so much so that the fact of touching or embracing them can effect a transfer of this specific and amazing power to the person who touches them.

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