Copyright 2011 Mineo Takamura TACTILITY AND MODERNITY: THE SENSE OF TOUCH IN D. H. LAWRENCE, ALFRED STIEGLITZ, WALTER BENJAMIN, AND MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY BY MINEO TAKAMURA DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2011 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Professor Nancy Blake, Chair Professor Dale Bauer Professor Jean-Philippe Mathy Associate Professor Robert Tierney Abstract The aim of this dissertation is to examine the unique importance of tactile perception in Western Modernism, focusing on three individuals and an artistic group, namely, D. H. Lawrence, Walter Benjamin, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and an artistic circle centering around Alfred Stieglitz. In the tradition of Western culture, touch is often regarded as the “lowest” sense while vision is privileged as the “intellectual sense.” Through a comparative analysis of Modernist art, literature, and philosophy, I argue that the emphasis on touch in the early twentieth century challenges this hierarchy of perceptions while destabilizing the distinction between the animal and the human, and between the primitive and the civilized. I particularly focus on the oppositional relationship between modern technology and the organic image of touch, arguing that the increased discourse of touch occurs concomitantly with the rapid development of visual technology in the modern age. This study consists of four distinct but thematically interrelated chapters. Chapter 1 discusses the discourse of touch in D. H. Lawrence‟s late works on art composed between 1925 and 1930, with a particular focus on his travel writing on the Etruscan civilization and his essays on Cézanne. Chapter 2 examines the collective discourse and imagery of touch in Alfred Stieglitz and his artistic circle, including Max Weber, Waldo Frank, Paul Rosenfeld, and William Carlos Williams. Chapter 3 explores the Modernist dialectic between the organic and the technological in Walter Benjamin‟s work in terms of its relationship to his ambivalent conception of the tactile sense, focusing on the centrality of touch in his theories of history, mimesis, and translation. Chapter 4 describes the prototypical image of touch in Modernism by analyzing Merleau-Ponty‟s ambiguous notion of tactile chiasm, and discusses the influence of ii Cézanne and Proust on his tactile conception of space and time. Through these four chapters, this study attempts to describe the Modernist revolution of discourse on perception. iii Acknowledgments It is a great pleasure to express my gratitude to those who assisted me in various ways in completing this project. Primarily, I would like to thank my advisor, Professor Nancy Blake, whose advice and encouragement made this complex and highly interdisciplinary task possible. Without her assistance and advice from a comparatist perspective, this work could not have been completed. My committee members, professors Dale Bauer, Jean Philippe-Mathy, and Robert Tierney, have given abundant feedback on every chapter of my dissertation. I sincerely appreciate their generous assistance throughout the course of my writing. In addition to the above-mentioned professors, this work is indebted to many scholars at the University of Illinois who enriched my academic life. Professor Lawrence Schehr‟s course on Proust played a significant role in nourishing my thought on the Modernist characterization of time. Professor Michael Palencia-Roth taught me about the theory and practice of comparative literature as well as the discipline‟s ethical and historical implications. Furthermore, Professor David Goodman, now recently deceased, encouraged me to think through Walter Benjamin‟s complex philosophy. My thanks also go to professors at the University of Tokyo, whose graduate school I had attended before coming to Illinois in 2005. I am especially eager to mention my ex-advisor Professor, Takaki Hiraishi. The rigorous method of critical reading that I learned from him has remained one of my most important resources in my academic life. The courses offered by professors Motoyuki Shibata and Masahiko Abe were also significant factors in my intellectual development. My colleagues and friends at the University of Illinois have provided support and guidance throughout the course of my Ph.D. My friends in the Program of Comparative and iv World Literature, including Junjie Luo, Gautam Basu Thakur, and Chia-rong Wu, provided both academic and moral support to me. A dissertation workshop that I organized with Eric Dalle, Sevinç Türkkan, and Ana Vivancos helped me to read and think about my work objectively. In the final stage of my dissertation, Nathan Fredrickson played a crucial role through his meticulous reading of my work. I also would like to thank members of Japanese teaching assistants, as well as the directors of Japanese language program at the University of Illinois, Professors Makoto Hayashi and Misumi Sadler, who helped me to find a balance between teaching and writing. Some parts of this dissertation have been presented at conferences. I would like to thank Professors Alex E. Blazer, Judith C. Brown, and M. Elizabeth Sergeant, who chaired the panels in which I presented in the 39th Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture Since 1900, Indiana University‟s 2011 graduate conference “Collections and Collaborations,” and the 12th D. H. Lawrence International Conference at Sydney, respectively. Their questions about and suggestions for my papers helped to improve the quality of my work. I happily acknowledge that this work benefited from the Grant-in-Aid for Fellows from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) that I received from 2008 to 2010 as well as from the University of Tokyo‟s Program for Evolving Humanities and Sociology, from which I received a grant in 2011. These grants lessened my financial concerns and facilitated the completion of my work. Last, but by no means least, I would like to express my gratitude to my family, especially my beloved wife and daughter, Kumi and Mii. Without their patience, care, and understanding, I could not have successfully completed my work. I also wish to extend my appreciation to my father and mother, Kowashi and Yumiko, my brother and sister, Yasushi and Michie, and my v grandfathers and grandmothers, Yoshitsugu, Tamotsu, Makiko, and Hisako. Unfortunately, on the next day of my oral defense, I was notified that my grandfather Yoshitsugu had cancer. He has been an amateur but devoted scholar of Martin Heidegger and remained a great inspiration for me. With the hope that this work will be an encouragement to him, I dedicate my dissertation to his name. vi Table of Contents Introduction……………………………………………………………………………….1 Chapter 1: Tactility and Art: D. H. Lawrence‟s Sketches of Etruscan Places and His Late Writings on Cézanne..…………….………………………………………........22 Chapter 2: The Stieglitz Circle and the Tactile Photography………………………........62 Chapter 3: Tactility and Anachronism: Walter Benjamin and the Modern Transformation of Touch……..………………………………………...........................137 Chapter 4: The Tactile Time and Space: Maurice Merleau-Ponty‟s Chiasm…………..184 Conclusion……….…………………………………………………………………......232 Bibliography……….…………………………………………………………………...239 vii Introduction Near the end of his 1951 Autobiography, William Carlos Williams reflects upon the “transition” period of Modernism, in which “painting and the poem became so closely allied.” Describing the revolutionary change of style that “the painters following Cézanne” brought to visual works of art, Williams insists that they “began to talk of sheer paint: a picture a matter of pigments upon a piece of cloth stretched on a frame.” This material quality, Williams argues, characterizes both paintings and poems of the period: “It is the making of that step, to come over into the tactile qualities, the words themselves beyond the mere thought expressed that distinguishes the modern, or distinguished the modern of that time from the period before the turn of the century” (380). He maintains that awareness of tactile materiality in poetic and pictorial expressions emerged with the rise of Modernism. Exploring the nexus between touch and modernity that Williams suggested, the present study seeks to critically examine the history of the tactile perception in Western modernism. Although the sense of touch is an intrinsically atemporal and universal physical phenomenon, its vitalistic and primordial implications inspired Modernist art, literature, and philosophy in a unique manner. Rather than constructing a coherent narrative on the history of the sense during the period, I focus on three individuals and an artistic group, namely, D. H. Lawrence, Walter Benjamin, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and an artistic circle around Alfred Stieglitz that includes Williams, in order to analyze how the sense of touch inform their thoughts and creations. Among these individuals, one may find more differences than similarities; they worked in different fields, lived in different countries, and had different styles. Yet, as I will demonstrate in this study, their discourse and imagery of touch exquisitely resonate with one another beyond differences of 1 genres and languages, forming an important aspect of the project of Western modernism. Here, I should quickly stress that although this study includes discussions of theoretical works, I do not abstract their ideas of touch and