Losing touch: pedagogies of incorporation and the ability to write

摘要

The idea of “touch” is often used to point to the exemplary performance of skilful actions. While such a notion seemingly references the sensuous nature of that skill, it tends to mask the embodied acquisition of that capacity, implying intuitive ability rather than technique perfected through practice. Ironically, it also masks the significance of tactility in the process of developing this “touch”. In the context of a child learning to write, this is especially important. This article explores the importance of touch in learning to construct written text. It argues that its physicality is profoundly “ecological”: writing entails a variety of relations of touch with diverse material objects. These relations have to be ordered into what we call the line of touch, which produces the sensual continuity of subject and these objects necessary for the “grace” of textual production. Drawing on the work of Merleau-Ponty and recent theorisation of embodiment, this article considers the ways in which tactility allows the body to “remember” text embodying not simply the shape and directionality of letters when handwriting, but the knowledge of the letters themselves. This process represents a form of “muscular memory”, “knowledge in the hands”, in which children necessarily “lose” the awareness of touch to achieve the automaticity required for the task of composition. The relations and lines of touch also have a pedagogic quality. A child does not simply or naturally acquire the capacity to write; they are taught to do so, and the pedagogies that effect this process are instrumental to their embodied competence. Touch and the incorporation of the sensibility of this technology through iteration are crucial aspects of literacy practice, yet, as this article will examine, are undervalued within the theory and practice of literacy pedagogy.View full textDownload full textKeywordstouch, pedagogy, embodiment, writingRelated var addthis_config = { ui_cobrand: "Taylor & Francis Online", services_compact: "citeulike,netvibes,twitter,technorati,delicious,linkedin,facebook,stumbleupon,digg,google,more", pubid: "ra-4dff56cd6bb1830b" }; Add to shortlist Link Permalink http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10350330.2011.591995