A touch of doubt : on haptic scepticism Frontmatter Contents Acknowledgements Sensation & Hesitation: Haptic Scepticism as an Ethics of Touching Es wird Leib es empfindet : Auto Affection Doubt and the Philosophers Hands When to Touch and What to Doubt: Zeroing In on the Tactile Surplus The (Un)Touchable Touch of Pyramus and Thisbe: Doubt and Desire A Magic Touch: Performative Haptic Acts in Biblical and Medieval Jewish Magic Noli me tangere: The Profaning Touch That Challenges Authority Touching Doubt: Haptolinguistic Scepticism An Atom of Touch: Scepticism from Hegel to Lacan The Weak Relations of Touch and Sight through the Passage of Lapsed Time List of Contributors List of Figures Index What can we know about ourselves and the world through the sense of touch and what are the epistemic limits of touch Scepticism claims that there is always something that slips through the epistemologists grasp. A Touch of Doubt explores the significance of touch for the history of philosophical scepticism as well as for scepticism as an embodied form of subversive political religious and artistic practice. Drawing on the tradition of scepticism within nineteenth and twentieth century continental philosophy and psychoanalysis this volume discusses how the sense of touch uncovers contradictions within our knowledge of ourselves and the world. It questions 1) what we can know through touch 2) what we can know about touch itself and 3) how our experience of touching the other and ourselves throws us into a state of doubt. This volume is intended for students and scholars who wish to reconsider the experience of touching in intersections of philosophy religion art and social and political practice