Adam Takacs - Touch and Contact. Towards a Phenomenology of “Stigmatic” Time

Season 9 continues with a recording from our 2024 annual conference, Embodiment and History. This episode features a presentation from Adam Takacs Abstract: The traditional phenomenological approach to the body is premised on a constitutive analysis of touch and movement. On this basis, it is possible to trace the configuration that entangles the affective experience of the “lived body” with the objectified conditions of the world as given in space, orientation and perspective. It is also on this basis that one can conclude that the body, as Merleau-Ponty claims, possesses an “operative intentionality” that endows it, through its own habitualities, with a specific temporality and memory. This talk aims to go one step further in this direction. I will argue that in interpreting the body’s own time, it is also worth considering the context implied by its relationship with the physical environment. To highlight this, I will introduce the notion of “contact” as distinct from touch, as a phenomenological feature that testifies to the body’s intense and intricate coexistence with things. I try to show that, at the level of physical contact, the body is subject to temporal processes which inevitably affects its living structure, exposing it to the interplay of erosion and resilience. By showcasing a time that leave material marks or ontologically “stigmatizes”, I will argue that this condition, through the facticity and phenomenality of bodily ageing, inscribes the primordial mode of embodiment in the fabric of collective history. Further Information: This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2024, co-organised with University of the West of England. The conference was held in Bristol on the theme of 'Embodiment and History'. Biographical information of speakers is taken from the programme of that event and therefore may not be up-to-date. The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast. About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/ About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/