Anesthesia of Soul by Spirit

The partiality of our ‘to be’ does not know itself as such. At first, the sensitive perception that I have of myself can be lived as neuter and be merged into an abstract universality. Meeting with a human which is different from myself by nature and recognized as such can give back to this perception its immediate and concrete character. This does necessarily mean that I can perceive myself as sexuate only in the other but, rather, that acknowledging the otherness of the other sends me back to my particularity. The meeting with the other reveals the fact that the sense of touch can do without mediation. Touch is mediating by itself and, as such, it can stretch indefinitely, its sensitive quality gradually vanishing. It is the flesh of the other, as long as I feel desire for it, which stops the indefinite drifting of the sensitive touch. And this possibility results from the difference between two fleshes which compels them to unite with one another without ever becoming one.