ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to provide the structures of antithesis which tend to frame the debate in order to argue that it is precisely Bresson's preoccupation with the intangible and the incorporeal that leads him to focus on materiality, sensation and the body. It suggests that cinema of Bresson is grounded in an interest in the sense of touch. The chapter argues that both Bresson and Nancy make recourse to the real in order to think—in terms which are specific to cinema—a presentation of worldly, material sense for which the figure of touch becomes central. It argues that Bresson's approach to the sense of touch is similarly deconstructive and that this relates to the way in which he, like Nancy, interrogates the ontotheology of the body. Bresson explores the relation between body and soul in Pickpocket, the film continually probes, questions, and rubs up against the ontotheological limits of the body.
