Touch

Josipovici moves from a Charlie Chaplin film to passages from Proust, from the world of sport to the world of addiction, from medieval pilgrimages to the cult of relics, from a wedding photograph of his grandparents to some of Chardin's most enigmatic paintings. Through these seemingly disparate topics he provides engaging and wise commentary on connection and communication in life. Contrasting the senses of sight and touch, Josipovici notes that although sight seems to give us the totality of what we behold, it is only when we walk or feel our way across the distances that things become more than images and begin to constitute the world in which we, as touchers and not mere observers, are included. If we depend on sight - which seems to offer a frictionless domination over reality - we may avoid the pains and uncertainties of living, but we also lose our involvement with life.