ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the implications of the eclipse of touch during the coronavirus pandemic in terms of digital communications and ecological connection. It examines the fate of tactile culture in the move from the Western Anthropocene of technology, dominated by optocentrism, to the possibility of a post-pandemic symbiocene where haptic and digital connection might collaborate in a new poetical and ethical alliance. The author addresses how the prohibition of touch, with self-isolation and social distance, exposes the primal physical and spiritual need to touch and be touched by others.
