Touching the Untouchable

The structural figure — running from Aristotle's De Anima 424a (haptou kai anaptou: "touch has for its object both what is tangible and what is intangible") through the entire philosophical tradition of touch — that the object of touch is not only the tangible but also the intangible. The limit, the surface, the skin, the threshold — these are what touch tries and fails to touch. Touching the untouchable is therefore the structural condition, not the accidental failure, of any thinking-of-the-limit. Developed by Derrida in *On Touching—Jean-Luc Nancy* (2000) as one of the master figures of the book; structurally connected to law-of-tact (the quasi-transcendental "thou shalt not touch too much"), haptocentrism (the tradition that forgets this constitutive untouchability), and haptical-differance (Derrida's positive name for the spacing inside contact).

What the Concept Does

The concept performs three argumentative tasks:

Reads Aristotle's De Anima 424a as inaugurating the problematic. Aristotle: "Touch has for its object both what is tangible and what is intangible (hē haphē tou haptou kai anaptou)" (Peri psychēs 424a). Once this aporetic thesis is uttered, "it will resonate down to the twentieth century, even within discourses apparently utterly foreign to any Aristotelianism" (p. 27). The four aporias of touch (422b–424a) — whether touch is one sense or many; whether flesh is organ or medium; whether contact requires no interval; whether all objects of sense have the same mode of perception — are not anomalies to be resolved but the structural form of any thinking of touch.
Names the limit / skin / surface as the untouchable. "We can only touch on a surface, which is to say the skin or thin peel of a limit . . . But by definition, limit, limit itself, seems deprived of a body. Limit is not to be touched and does not touch itself; it does not let itself be touched, and steals away at a touch, which either never attains it or trespasses on it forever" (p. 6). The limit is what makes contact possible (without limit, no surface to touch) and impossible (the limit itself steals away).
Makes "touching the untouchable" the figure for thinking the limit as such. Nancy's recurring formula: "touching the limit, thus touching the untouchable, or touching without touching, or touching in passing the touchable or touched" (p. 210, Derrida's gloss). This generalizes from touch as one sense among others to touching as the figure for any thought-of-the-limit. To think the limit is to think the structural failure of any thought to coincide with what it touches — this is what Derrida elsewhere calls the différance of the self-same. The "as such" of any "as such" is the untouchable.

What It Rejects

The phenomenological as such that takes the limit as a phenomenal datum (a "here" given to intuition). The limit is not phenomenologically given; it withdraws at the moment of approach.
The naive immediacy of contact: that touch gives the touched without remainder. Aristotle 424a already says: the object of touch includes the intangible.
The Christian-mystical toque of the soul (John of the Cross): the immediate, full, infinite touch of the divine on the soul. This is, per Derrida, the truth of haptocentrism — the limit-case in which the untouchable is supposedly touched in mutuus contactus. Derrida resists this culmination.
Reductions of "untouchable" to a derivative cultural-religious prohibition. The "law of the untouchable" is quasi-transcendental, prior to any ritual abstinence: "Thou shalt not touch too much, thou shalt not let yourself be touched too much" is "inscribed a priori, like a first commandment, the law of originary prohibition, in the destiny of tactile experience" (p. 58). Ritual prohibitions come afterward, "and only on the background of an untouchability as initial as it is vital, on the background of this 'thou shalt not touch, not too much,' which wouldn't have awaited any religion, ritual cult, or neurosis of touch" (p. 58).

Stakes

For the wiki's reading of Aristotle: the four aporias of touch (De Anima 422b–424a) are structural figures, not problems-awaiting-solution. Aristotle's aporēseie names a thinking that cannot be passed-through or surpassed: "by definition, one is never through with aporias worthy of their name" (p. 6).
For the wiki's reading of chiasm and reversibility: MP's chiasm of the visible/tangible / touching/touched is itself a partial exit from haptocentrism (the figure of écart + non-coincidence) but also remains intuitionistic in privileging the coincidence moment. The untouchable in MP is named (the invisible of the visible) but is not, per Derrida, given its structural primacy.
For the philosophy of the limit: thinking-the-limit is structurally homologous to touching-the-untouchable. The limit is not touchable: hence Derrida's reading of Nancy's "touching the limit, intact" as the post-haptocentric register.
For the deconstruction of Christianity: the toque que toca al alma is the haptotheological culmination — the supposed immediate, infinite touch of the divine on the soul. Touching-the-untouchable, structurally read, prevents this culmination from being completed: even the divine touch (per a deconstructive reading) cannot touch the untouchable as such.
For the wiki's reading of MP's écart: see ecart — MP's écart is the closest MP-side approximation to the structural untouchability of the limit; the comparison would yield productive tension.
Confidence: high. The Aristotelian anchor (424a) is textually exact; Derrida's structural reading is consistent across the book.

Problem-Space

The concept addresses how to think the limit, the surface, the skin, the threshold — what makes contact possible by withdrawing from contact. The same problem-space is addressed in:

Aristotle, De Anima 422b–424a — the four aporias of touch as inaugural problem.
MP, The Visible and the Invisible — the invisible as condition of visibility; the écart / non-coincidence of the chiasm.
Nancy, The Sense of the World (1993) ch. "Painting" — "Painting is always on the threshold. It makes up the threshold between intactness and touching"; "Touching is sense as threshold."
Nancy, Noli me tangere (2003) — the Christian topos read against the haptotheological reading.
Derrida, Aporias (1993) — the figure of the aporia generalized.
Heidegger on the Anwesen / Es gibt — the withdrawal (Entzug) of being at the moment of its giving. Cross-tradition cousin via the figure of withdrawal.
The fragile skin of the world (Nancy's late title, 2020): the world has no skin of its own; its skin is "the factorial of all our skins" — see fragile-skin-of-the-world.

Connections

develops aristotle — De Anima 424a (haptou kai anaptou) as the inaugurating thesis.
condition of intelligibility of law-of-tact — the quasi-transcendental "do not touch the untouchable" presupposes that there is an untouchable.
condition of intelligibility of haptical-differance — Derrida's positive thesis: contact requires différance, which is the spacing of the untouchable inside contact.
contrasts with haptocentrism — the tradition that forgets the constitutive untouchability and elevates touch to the sense of presence.
enacts ecart — MP's écart is the MP-side approximation; the comparison is productive.
enacts fragile-skin-of-the-world — the world's skin is precisely the untouchable (no own-skin, the factorial of all skins).
enacts melee-nancy — Nancy's mêlée as entanglement-disentanglement structures the untouchable / touchable seam.
develops syncope-nancy — Nancy's syncope is the temporal-rhythmic form of the untouchable's withdrawal at contact.
develops partage-nancy — sharing-out is the post-haptocentric figure of the untouchable as between.
requires hand-of-god — the theologized organ that claims to touch the untouchable (the mutuus contactus); the structural figure resists this claim.
anchors claims#touching-the-untouchable-structural-condition (candidate).

Open Questions

What is the relation between the untouchable and the unrepresentable / the unsayable? Aristotle's haptou kai anaptou is structurally parallel to Plato's epekeina tēs ousias (beyond being), Plotinus's One "beyond essence," the Kantian unconditioned, Heidegger's Entzug. Are these all variants of the same structural figure or do they belong to distinct registers?
Does the toque que toca al alma of John of the Cross succeed or fail at touching the untouchable? Chrétien (read in §11) treats the mutuus contactus as a successful touch of the divine on the soul. Derrida resists this. The question of whether the haptotheological culmination is coherent under deconstructive scrutiny remains open.
Does touch in death (the corpse, the dying body, mourning) belong to touching the untouchable? Psyche dead-extended in her coffin is intangible for herself (§1). The figure of mourning Psyche / mourning of life itself converges with the untouchable structurally; but the relation between death as untouchable and limit as untouchable is not fully thematized.
Is there a political register of the untouchable? Derrida gestures at the untouchable status of e.g. the law (the law is respectable because it is untouchable, in the Kantian sense). The political-juridical sense of "untouchable" (caste, sacred, taboo, sovereign immunity) is touched on but not developed.

Sources

derrida-2000-on-touching-nancy — primary attestation. Opening "When our eyes touch" (pp. 6–7); §1 (Psyche the untouchable); §3 (Aristotle 435b on excessive touch and animal life); §4 (the law of tact, the vow of abstinence); §6 (Plato-Plotinus-Aristotle haptic figures for intellectual contact); §9 (Nancy's touching the limit, intact); §13 (touch as limit-experience). The Aristotelian anchor at 424a is De Anima on touch's object including the intangible.