ABSTRACT
Touch is not a sense at all; it is in fact a metaphor for the impingement of the world as a whole upon subjectivity, to touch is to comport oneself not in opposition to the given but in proximity with it. Yet, away from the promises of new pleasures, there is the faint but unmistakable underlying need for connection, a yearning for contact and proximity in a potentially isolating and alienating world, perhaps exacerbated by the emphasis on hollow consumerism in late capitalism. Despite the widespread medieval practice throughout Europe of the ‘laying on of hands’, massage as an ancient practice only comes to prominence in Western medicine at the turn of the twentieth century. Among the variety of therapies involving touch, Reiki involves non-touch as well as touch. Touching within therapeutic settings is potentially cathartic, expressive, and opens up a potentially non-verbal communicative pathway between bodies that brings them into proximity.
