‘The piece of you I know best is already dead’. Reflections on skin, embodiment, and subjectivity

Abstract

This essay explores the paradoxical nature of touch that never touches and the role of skin in establishing our separateness from the world. While both topics have been discussed at length by philosophers and psychoanalysts, I introduce two additional themes: skin that is dead on the surface and comes off in microscopic scales (as it happens at the biological level) and skin that is altered by dermatological problems. When framed like this, the skin stratifies and blurs the boundaries of the subject; especially the latter type of unruly, painful skin introduces a kind of discomfort that allows one to rethink the relationship between surface and depth, inside and outside, self and other. As a result, these dichotomies lose their antagonistic and hierarchical dimensions. What emerges instead is an inextricably interconnected weave or even a topological space where nothing is hidden under the surface because the surface is all that we have. Jacques Derrida, Sigmund Freud, Didier Anzieu, Elizabeth Grosz and Julia Kristeva serve as the main theoretical references in this text. Supporting illustrations include an excerpt from Jeanette Winterson’s novel Written on the Body, John Updike’s experience of psoriasis, and the topological space known as Klein’s bottle. The feminist aspect of this essay is rooted in the recognition that the depth-surface dichotomy is part of the patriarchal logic that privileges masculinity while rendering femininity shallow, flat, and superficial.