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Synthesis as mediation: inner touch and eccentric sensation

ABSTRACT The article inquires into how the tactile sense became a promising area of investigation in media theory, particularly to counteract notions of linear, mechanical culture. I take two starting points: (1) Modern psychology and the arts, unlike Post-Kantian philosophy, are interested in the structure and efficiency of synthetic processes as an effect of a certain medial constitution of sensual perception. (2) Since antiquity, the sense of touch is hardly ever connected with immediacy. On the contrary, since Aristotle it possesses a deeply mediating and reflexive character. Aristotle grasps the sense of touch in two ways: as koine aisthesis, common sense – which will later also be known as the sensus communis – and as ‘inner touch’, which synthesizes the individual sense perceptions. This notion of the sense of touch still resonates in Marshall McLuhan’s interest in the haptic sense: ‘Tactile’ is the word he uses to refer to those percepts that require a strong inner involvement of the perceiving subject. Drawing on Gestalt theory (modern psychology) and avant-garde art, McLuhan unites the two strands of discourse. The article therefore traces a number of versions of the conception of tactility since antiquity and focuses on two distinct fields: physiology and psychology of prosthetics and the classical avant-gardes of the early twentieth century, particularly Raoul Hausmann’s thought experiments with Ernst Marcus’ concept of ‘eccentric sensation’. It argues that with media theory in a strong sense the antique tradition that considered skin and flesh as medium is connected with Avant-garde sensibilities and helps to develop a diagnostic perspective on the effects of media technologies on human agency.