On Touching: Jean-Luc Nancy

by Jacques Derrida, Christine Irizarry (Translator)

Using the philosophy of Jean-Luc Nancy as an anchoring point, Jacques Derrida in this book conducts a profound review of the philosophy of the sense of touch, from Plato and Aristotle to Jean-Luc Nancy, whose ground-breaking book Corpus he discusses in detail. Emmanuel Levinas, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Edmund Husserl, Didier Franck, Martin Heidegger, Francoise Dastur, and Jean-Louis Chrétien are discussed, as are René Descartes, Diderot, Maine de Biran, Félix Ravaisson, Immanuel Kant, Sigmund Freud, and others. The scope of Derrida's deliberations makes this book a virtual encyclopedia of the philosophy of touch (and the body). Derrida gives special consideration to the thinking of touch in Christianity and, in discussing Jean-Luc Nancy's essay "Deconstruction of Christianity," devotes a section of the book to the sense of touch in the Gospels. Another section concentrates on "the flesh," as treated by Merleau-Ponty and others in his wake. Derrida's critique of intuitionism, notably in the phenomenological tradition, is one of the guiding threads of the book. On Touching includes a wealth of notes that provide an extremely useful bibliographical resource. Personal and detached all at once, this book, one of the first published in English translation after Jacques Derrida's death, serves as a useful and poignant retrospective on the work of the philosopher. A tribute by Jean-Luc Nancy, written a day after Jacques Derrida's death, is an added feature.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, France, Bodies, Theory

400 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Jacques Derrida was a French philosopher best known for developing deconstruction, a method of critical analysis that questioned the stability of meaning in language, texts, and Western metaphysical thought. Born in Algeria, he studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he was influenced by philosophers such as Heidegger, Husserl, and Levinas. His groundbreaking works, including Of Grammatology (1967), Writing and Difference (1967), and Speech and Phenomena (1967), positioned him at the center of intellectual debates on language, meaning, and interpretation.
Derrida argued that Western philosophy was structured around binary oppositions—such as speech over writing, presence over absence, or reason over emotion—that falsely privileged one term over the other. He introduced the concept of différance, which suggests that meaning is constantly deferred and never fully present, destabilizing the idea of fixed truth. His work engaged with a wide range of disciplines, including literature, psychoanalysis, political theory, and law, challenging conventional ways of thinking and interpretation.
Throughout his career, Derrida continued to explore ethical and political questions, particularly in works such as Specters of Marx (1993) and The Politics of Friendship (1994), which addressed democracy, justice, and responsibility. He held academic positions at institutions such as the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and the University of California, Irvine, and remained an influential figure in both European and American intellectual circles. Despite criticism for his complex writing style and abstract concepts, Derrida’s ideas have left a lasting impact on contemporary philosophy, literary theory, and cultural criticism, reshaping the way meaning and language are understood in the modern world.

Reviews

[Jules · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very dense bc it’s Derrida (obviously) so it took me ages to finish. I was going to give the book three stars the whole way through but the final few sections were incredibly moving to me (I didn’t expect Derrida to contain such moving prose!). If you’re interested in the phenomenology of touch and are already familiar with Derrida’s ideas you may enjoy.

Here are some of my favourite passages:

“None of this takes place except by risking death at every moment. This other heart self-touches you only to be exposed to death. We are here at the heart of a finite thinking. It thinks for the heart is a place of thinking and not only the place of feeling… you are also my death. You kept it for me, you keep me from it always a little, from death. Keep me from it still a little longer, if you please, just a little longer.”

“You, metronome of my heteronomy, will always resist that which in my self-touching could dream of the reflexive or speculative autonomy of self presence or of self consciousness, absolute knowledge. The interruption of a dialectic is you, when I self-touch you. That is why I love you and sometimes so painfully, at the heart of pleasure itself.”

“When we say love, we must never exclude from it of course the modality called hate, jealousy, death dealt to the other, to you, at the very moment which I ask ‘keep me a little from death’”.

[Dana · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Let's rush toward the ending and recapitulate. I'm now sincerely asking that this book be fo rgotten or effaced, and I'm asking this as I wouldn't have done-with as much sincerity-for any of my other books. Wipe it all away, and start or start again to read him-N ancy-in his corpus.

For my part, what to give him? A kiss? On the eyes? It should remain invisible to any third party. "

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here Derrida is returning his focus to some themes that preoccupied his earlier writings from the '50s through the early '70s--especially the limitations and productivity of phenomenology.

What is new here is a reconsideration of the connections between bodily perception, meaning, and the use of language. Above all, he demonstrably problematizes the rigid hierarchy of literal/theoretical language over metaphorical language. Interestingly, this he reveals this through difficulties in trying to express within phenomenology how perception happens (above all, touch, with it's supposed immediacy): here, literalism constantly breaks down into or tacitly relies upon the metaphorical. The theoretical immediacy of touch is expressed only in the linguistic mediacy of metaphor. But metaphor (trope and word-play generally, too) turns out to be more immediately lived, or rather captures the reader/listener in the living of touch and perception.

At the same time, Derrida is entering into the concerns of Merleau-Ponty and R. Barbaras: the fact that truth and experience happen for and as living beings. The dynamism of life, being alive--again highlighted through touch--is neither wholly immediate nor mediate, but is nevertheless something that must be expressed in any account of truth and experience.

There is far more here than this (including the discussion of Christianity, feminism, Judaism, etc.). As such this book would be best suited for those familiar with Derrida (and the earlier phenomenological tradition).

The opening and closing of this book are deeply personal and literary. There are the typical jokes and impossibly dense passages, too. But overall, its par for the Derrida course, stylistically.

[Mar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una maravilla escrita de una forma hiper compleja, habré releído 20 veces los capítulos que me interesaban. No me quiero hacer le chulite, fue todo un aprendizaje entender lo que Derrida entiende como el tacto.

Creo que la peña que genera saberes debería hacer un esfuerzo por hacer accesibles sus contenidos, generar textos paralelos para que cualquiera pueda comprender lo que ellas proponen.

Amore, las cuatro frikis de siempre tenemos que empezar a *anarquizar* el conocimiento, porque democratizado ya está, pero ya sabemos de que va la democracia:

"¡Puedes sacar libros incompresibles de las bibliotecas! ¡Deberías estar agradecide! ¡Suerte leyendo textos casi cifrados cariiii!"

Asi que bueno, la idea asi más xula que saco es que el capitalismo, el patriarcado, el colonialismo.... te venden el cuento de que ‘tocando se conquista’, pero eso es más fake que unas uñas de gel mal puestas. Que no, cariño, que no puedes tocar lo intangible, porque le otre siempre tiene su misterio, su fantasía que es IMPOSIBLE de atrapar. Somos intocables en nuestra plenitud, ¿entiendes? Aunque te acerques mucho, nunca podrás tocar nuestras vibes, ni nuestra rabia travesti 💅

[Mo2this]

psyche is extended

[Tan Hernández Mendoza]

I really want to read this book because I'm interested in phenomenology

[Mariam Rawwas · Rating 3 out of 5]

More explicitly phenomenological than most of Derrida's work - perhaps more indebted to Merleau-Ponty than to Nancy.