Compearance

To begin with a quotation from Being and Nothingness is here intended to be not so much a provocation, but rather a consideration of the fact that the “place” of contact, designated by Sartre through the caress, manifests itself once again under the oppositional dualism between in-itself and for-itself. Indeed, if we analyze Sartre’s passage, we can immediately observe that the “contact’‘is not the place of the with, but that of the against. Hence, the purported relation of existence is again reduced to the instrumental possession of the other and, correlatively, even the activity/passivity relationship lies in the pure desiring power that vanishes, or rather gets annihilated, in the transcendence of the Ego. The Sartrean attempt to escape from the logic of finality, through the analysis of the body, can be deemed to have failed. To some extent, it is as if the supposed vanishing of the cogito had suffered a backlash in itself, thus affirming again the hegemonic and totalizing madness of thought. Nevertheless, touching eludes thought; as Derrida wrote, its law is precisely a law of touch. It cannot be touched or be reached by an exercise of thought that unfolds its meaning. In short, touching the “touching” lies in an impossibility that, rather than reducing it to pure nothingness—and thus once again restoring a vision of essence—defers it ultimately to finiteness. Therefore, surely, rather than Sartre’s words, we should dwell—albeit briefly—on Lévinas’ ones, which highlight, through dense and vibrant lines, the impersonal and finite character of the touching: