From experiencing to experience: an 'innocent' touch of modernity

The starting point for this utterance is the conviction that a trip into the depths of the human body has proved to be the most momentous and shocking experience that modernity elaborated. It initially required that the frontier set between knowledge and experience be revised, and the reflection-inclined 'me' be confronted with its sensual body. A special part in the process was played by the combination of the 'power of sight' with a 'fear of touch'. This is not, however, only about the eye and the hand slithering over the surface, but also, about a persistent strife for seeing and simultaneously touching what is deep. The consecutive sections of the texts, entitled: In search of the body; Stare and touch; Innocence; Fear of touch I/II/III, the authoress goes from the Carthesian ambivalence concerning the trip into underneath the flesh's surface, which also becomes an ambivalence of experiencing and cognition, through to how they are revised in science (Rosalind Franklin), art (Anna Günter) and poetry (Stanislaw Baranczak) of the latter half of the 20th century.