Touching at a Distance

Studies the capacity of Shakespeare's plays to touch and think about touch Theatre has a remarkable capacity: it touches from a distance. The spectators are moved, even though the fictional world presented to them will never come into direct contact with their real lives. This study explores the notion of touch as a productive proximity that is characterised by unbridgeable distance in Shakespeare's plays. By playing with touch and its metatheatrical implications, Shakespeare raises questions that make his theatrical art point towards modernity and the writings of philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Derrida, Luce Irigaray and Jean-Luc Nancy. Through close readings, Touching at a Distance explores questions including: how are communities to form when traditional institutions begin to crumble? And what is the role and the capacity of language in a world that has lost its seemingly unshakeable belief and trust in meaning? Johannes Ungelenk is Junior Professor for Literary Theory and Comparative Literature at the University of Potsdam, Germany.