Touch: Sensuous Theory and Multisensory Media
by Laura U. Marks.
University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN, 2002.
280 pp., illus. Trade, $54.95; paper, $19.95.
ISBN: 0-8166-3888-8; ISBN: 0-8166-3889-6.
Reviewed by Dene Grigar
Texas Womans University,
Dallas, TX,
dgrigar@twu.edu
Haptic, from the Greek haptos, refers to the sense of touch and implies
taking hold of an object, grasping, binding it, or hanging on to it.
Rhetorically speaking, it describes argumentation as in setting upon
an opponents word and attacking it. Current usage of the word
can be found in computer engineering and the biological sciences in
conjunction with virtual reality and the function of receptors residing
under the skin, respectively. For these, haptic connotes an interaction
achieved through force, a phenomenon that can be objectively studied,
quantified, and mastered.
The full flavor of this word and its many uses is important to note
when reading Laura U. Marks new book Touch: Sensuous Theory and
Multisensory Media, which utilizes haptic as an approach to critiquing
art. In this collection of thirteen essays, Marks rejects these definitions
and, instead, borrows from early 20th Century art critic, Alois Riegl,
who uses the word to theorize about the tactility of art. Expanding
this theory into a methodology for critiquing film and digital media,
as well as the visual arts, Marks describes haptic perception as a process
involving tactile, as well as "kinesthetic and proprioceptive functions"
(2), one that renders the relationship between critic and art "erotic"
like that between lover and beloved (xvi). Devoid of violent connotations,
Markss notion of touch suggests the critic glides gently across
a intimate subject rather than collides roughly with a distant object.
Eroticism, therefore, emerges as a major trope in the book. The first
chapter, "Video Haptics and Erotics," lays out Marks
theory and methodology of haptic perception and visuality, while the
four parts and the remaining twelve chapters that follow are intended
to demonstrate haptic critique.
At first glance, because it removes the critic from an antagonistic
relationship with a subject, rejects language of violence, and resists
objectification of the subject, Marks theory resembles feminist
methodology. However, her innovation to this approach and to Riegls
critical theory, as wellindeed, the strength of the bookis
that Marks offers a way to incorporate multiple sensory perception in
the service of understanding art. In light of the recent appeal to auditory,
tactile, olfactory and kinesthetic senses by visual arts, film, and
new media, which Marks describes in detail in various chapters, a theory
utilizing an approach that itself relies upon multiple senses makes
a whole of sense. Both scholars and critics will find much in Marks
book useful and her ideas, seductive.
Her strongest chapters are those she saves for last and that move her
away from a direct critique of artthat is, those essays
in parts three and four relating to the science of smell and digital
technology. She confesses early on that she has always been fond of
"tiny things" (xx). Beginning with her explanation of the
material make up of odors and how the brain perceives them in chapter
7 s to the synergistic behavior of subatomic particles in chapter
eleven, Marks demonstrates an ease with explaining scientific phenomena,
not to mention enacts the very process of haptic perception she calls
for. In these two sections she hits her stride.
Weaknesses of the book is presaged by Marks herself in the introduction.
Because all but three essays in this volume were previously published
in part or whole in various journals as far back as 1993 when she was
a student and critic for various non-scholarly venues, language and
style appear at times disjointed and ideas, outdated. For example, formal
academic language in the introduction gives way to hip lingo in chapter
five. The style of chapter 4, which begins with a letter written to
a filmmaker, an approach so engaging and innovative, may put off some
academic scholars who like their scholarly presses publishing traditionally
written books. Proclamations about the upstaging of video by interactive
art in chapter ten is at odds with recent developments in digital technology
as seen in Apples release of the iMac. Additionally, assumptions
Marks makes in regards to literary art (it is "dry" not "wet"),
death ("materiality is mortality"), the issue of nature versus
nurture ("we are genetically prone to invent rather than rely on
instinct") and gay mens club scene ("voyeuristic")
are out of place with the many brilliant assertions she makes ("it
is a poor theory that destroys pleasure").
Despite these minor issues, Touch offers a fresh and much needed approach
to art, one that should appeal to scholars and critics tired of wrestling,
struggling, grappling, penetrating, and just plain beating up their
subjects.