International Studies in Philosophy Monograph Series

2008

Memory of Touch, For Love of the Other

Tahseen Béa
Pages 5-82

Memory of Touch

Is the memory of touching always disguised by senses that forget where they come from? Creating distance through a mastery that constitutes the object as a monument built in place of the subject’s disappearance. The memory of touching? The most insistent and the most difficult to enter into memory. The one that entails returning to a commitment whose beginning and end cannot be recovered. Memory of the flesh, where that which has not yet been written is inscribed, laid down? That which has a place, has taken place, but has no language. The felt, which expresses itself for the first time. Declares itself to the other in silence. One must remember this and hope that the other remembers. Lodge it in a memory that serves as its bed and its nest, while waiting for the other to understand. Make a cradle for him inside and out while leaving him free, and keep oneself in the memory of the strength that revealed itself, that acted. (Irigaray, 215–16)