Skin, Space, Place

  • Trish McTighe
Chapter
Part of the New Interpretations of Beckett in the Twenty-First Century book series (NIBTFC)

Abstract

A container for the body, the skin is the largest sensory organ and therefore the most open to touch. It forms a comparatively vast, haptic boundary between body and world, putting the body in touch with the world as well as putting the body in touch with itself: the skin feels and communicates pain, pleasure, itch, burn, shiver, and a plethora of other sensations. Steven Connor, drawing on Michel Serres, views skin not merely as a surface, but as a milieu: a meeting point where “world and body touch, defining their common border.” 1 The skin is both physiological—a sensory apparatus—and imaginary: a containing border, which demarcates inner and outer, “I” and “you.” In this way, we have both an inner and an outer skin—an outer skin of the body and an inner one of the mind, an imaginary container for selfhood.

Keywords

Television Screen External Space Outer Skin Dark Space Actual Mother 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Notes

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© Trish McTighe 2013

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  • Trish McTighe

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