To touch and to be touched

The chapter focuses on Aikido practice (not instruction), a domain of human interaction in which intersubjectivity occurs centrally through touching moments. Aikido practitioners simulate martial situations – implying that fighters touch each other – through the participation categories of attacker, counterattacker, and whole-body-movements. As soon as the bodies make contact, practitioners generate a shared whole-body-movement through two symmetric actions: to touch and to be touched. The counterattacker becomes the toucher leading the shared movement, followed by the touched-attacker. I examine how the attacker actively follows the movement by spreading the counterattacker’s movement throughout his whole body. I also present the distinction between two methods for organizing the bodily interaction through touch: touching-in-stillness and touching-in-movement. I argue that the coordination of whole-body movements through touch occurs in a form of sequentiality merged with simultaneity. The analysis relies on video recordings of Aikido practice recorded in Japan and France.