Semefulness: a social semiotics of touch

This paper explores the multiple significances (semefulness) of touch, as experienced by us as embodied subjects. Prompted by the development of a range of touch-based technologies, I consider the current writings about touch in a range of fields and how these have contributed to contemporary understandings of the meanings of touch. I then explore a number of these meanings – connection, engagement, contiguity, differentiation, positioning – for their contribution to our understanding of the world and of our own embodied subjectivity. I also explore the deployment of these meanings by contemporary technologies.

[1]  F. Fanon.  Black Skin, White Masks , 1952, My Black Stars.

[2]  J. Derrida.  Writing and Difference , 1967 .

[3]  M. Heidegger.  The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays , 1977 .

[4]  P. Anderson.  Touching: The Human Significance of the Skin , 1978 .

[5]  D. Spence.  Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. , 1978 .

[6]  Michael J. Moravcsik,et al.  Technics and Praxis@@@The Question concerning Technology and Other Essays , 1980 .

[7]  F. Guattari,et al.  A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia , 1980 .

[8]  W. Schiff,et al.  Tactual Perception: A Source Book , 1983 .

[9]  MORE THAN A TOUCH: COMMUNICATING WITH A BLIND AND DEAF PATIENT , 1985, Nursing.

[10]  Carolyn Steedman,et al.  Landscape for a good woman : a story of two lives , 1986 .

[11]  G. Spivak.  In other worlds: Essays in cultural politics , 1987 .

[12]  D. Cosgrove,et al.  New directions in cultural geography , 1987 .

[13]  P. Stoller.  The Taste of Ethnographic Things: The Senses in Anthropology , 1989 .

[14]  D. Haraway.  Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature , 1990 .

[15]  J. Butler.  Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity , 1990 .

[16]  M. Mcneil.  Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature , 1992 .

[17]  D. Howes,et al.  The varieties of sensory experience : a sourcebook in the anthropology of the senses , 1992 .

[18]  J. Derrida.  From Of Grammatology , 1992 .

[19]  Kay J Anderson,et al.  Inventing places : studies in cultural geography , 1992 .

[20]  Constance Classen,et al.  Worlds of Sense: Exploring the Senses in History and Across Cultures , 1993 .

[21]  Marie Price,et al.  The Reinvention of Cultural Geography , 1993 .

[22]  Thomas R. Lindlof.  Qualitative Communication Research Methods , 1994 .

[23]  Homi K. Bhabha.  The Location of Culture , 1994 .

[24]  A. Balsamo.  Technologies of the Gendered Body: Reading Cyborg Women , 1995 .

[25]  Nigel Thrift,et al.  Mapping the Subject: Geographies of Cultural Transformation , 2005 .

[26]  Hiroshi Ishii,et al.  Tangible bits: towards seamless interfaces between people, bits and atoms , 1997, CHI.

[27]  S. Millar.  Reading by touch , 1997 .

[28]  D. Haraway,et al.  Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium. FemaleMan_Meets_OncoMouse , 1997 .

[29]  The Role of Touch in Facilitated Communication , 1997, Journal of autism and developmental disorders.

[30]  F. Ascione,et al.  Cruelty to animals and interpersonal violence : readings in research and application , 1998 .

[31]  K. Stewart.  A Space on the Side of the Road , 1998 .

[32]  J. Tambling.  How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics by N. Katherine Hayles (review) , 2001, Modern Language Review.

[33]  Gaurav S. Sukhatme,et al.  The Haptic Museum , 2000 .

[34]  Valerie Walkerdine,et al.  Growing Up Girl: Psycho-Social Explorations of Gender and Class , 2001 .

[35]  Michael Bérubé,et al.  Bending Over Backwards: Disability, Dismodernism and Other Difficult Positions , 2002 .

[36]  Matthew Chalmers,et al.  Seamful design: showing the seams in wearable computing , 2003 .

[37]  Torø Graven,et al.  Aspects of object recognition: When touch replaces vision as the dominant sense modality , 2003 .

[38]  D. Howes,et al.  Sensual Relations: Engaging the Senses in Culture and Social Theory , 2003 .

[39]  N. Denzin.  Performance Ethnography: Critical Pedagogy and the Politics of Culture , 2003 .

[40]  M. Chalmers,et al.  Seamful and Seamless Design in Ubiquitous Computing , 2003 .

[41]  D. Haraway.  The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness , 2003 .

[42]  C. Ellis.  The Ethnographic I: A Methodological Novel about Autoethnography , 2003 .

[43]  The Vital Touch: How Intimate Contact with Your Baby Leads to Happier, Healthier Development , 2004 .

[44]  A. Pease,et al.  The Definitive Book of Body Language , 2004 .

[45]  Mike Featherstone,et al.  Automobilities , 2004 .

[46]  Torø Graven.  Recognizing tactile representations of familiar objects: the influence of pre-cuing when touch replaces vision as the dominant sense modality , 2004 .

[47]  Ana Viseu,et al.  Simulation and augmentation: Issues of wearable computers , 2003, Ethics and Information Technology.

[48]  Bernard A. Conway,et al.  Haptic Interfaces for Wheelchair Navigation in the Built Environment , 2004, Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments.

[49]  Constance Classen,et al.  The Book of Touch , 2005 .

[50]  Stephen Brewster,et al.  Providing external memory aids in haptic visualisations for blind computer users , 2005 .

[51]  N. Denzin,et al.  The Sage handbook of qualitative research, 3rd ed. , 2005 .

[52]  Paul Vickers.  Lemma 4: Haptic Input + Auditory Display = Musical Instrument? , 2006, HAID.

[53]  Sarah Pink,et al.  The future of visual anthropology , 2006 .

[54]  Pedro Rebelo,et al.  Wearable music in engaging technologies , 2006, AI & SOCIETY.

[55]  Erin Manning,et al.  Politics of Touch: Sense, Movement, Sovereignty , 2006 .

[56]  Mark Paterson,et al.  The Senses of Touch: Haptics, Affects and Technologies , 2007 .

[57]  B. Torres.  Making A Killing: The Political Economy of Animal Rights , 2007 .

[58]  Erik Geelhoed,et al.  Communication-Wear: User Feedback as Part of a Co-Design Process , 2007, HAID.

[59]  Kelvin E. Y. Low.  Empire of the Senses: The Sensual Culture Reader , 2007 .

[60]  A. Cranny-Francis.  Ecce techno, or, suiting the biomechanical platform: immersion and contemporary embodiment , 2007 .

[61]  N. Thrift.  Non-Representational Theory: Space, Politics, Affect , 2007 .

[62]  Tonya Reiman.  The power of body language : how to succeed in every business and social encounter , 2007 .

[63]  N. Thrift.  Non-representational theory , 2007 .

[64]  Sarah Kettley.  Peacocks and wallflowers: (in)visibility with digital jewellery , 2008 .

[65]  Fiona Candlin.  Museums, Modernity and the Class Politics of Touching Objects , 2008 .

[66]  Gabriela Boangiu,et al.  The future of visual anthropology: engaging the senses. by Pink, Sarah , 2008 .

[67]  Tactual explorations: a tactile interpretation of a museum exhibit through tactile artworks and Augmented Reality , 2008 .

[68]  Stephen Barrass,et al.  Clothing the homunculus , 2008 .

[69]  Robert Zimmer,et al.  Touch technologies and museum access , 2008 .

[70]  Enemy of the State , 2009 .

[71]  M. Serres.  The Five Senses: A Philosophy of Mingled Bodies , 2009 .

[72]  Louise Barkhuus,et al.  Empowerment through seamfulness: smart phones in everyday life , 2011, Personal and Ubiquitous Computing.

[73]  Cristina Chimisso,et al.  The Five Senses: A Philosophy of Mingled Bodies , 2010 .

[74]  Art, Museums and Touch , 2010 .

[75]  E. Lambourn.  A history of the world in 100 objects , 2011 .

[76]  Sally Banes,et al.  The Senses in Performance , 2012 .

[77]  Lennard J. Davis,et al.  The Disability Studies Reader , 2013 .

[78]  ANOREXIA NERVOSA: PSYCHOPATHOLOGY AS THE CRYSTALLIZATION OF CULTURE , 2013 .