Embracing water, healing pine : touch-walking and transcorporeal worldings

Abstract

This article considers touch as an embodied worlding practice in the context of humans intentionally seeking tactile trans-species contact. In particular, it examines three co-researchers’ tactile relations with tree(s) and water which were explored by “touch-walking,” an immersive method developed for this study. The method opened possibilities for examining transcorporeal sensory matterings and affective flows between the researcher’s body, co-researchers’ bodies and more-than-human bodies. This experimental micro-research brings knowledge about how people form deeply meaningful relationships with natural bodies, making worlds by cherishing tactile contact with them. Theoretically, we “posthumanize” touch by bringing insights from cultural touch and skin studies, feminist new materialisms and affect theory. We propose that our co-researchers’ specific companionships entail multilayered, more-than-human intimacies. The co-becomings fostered by tactile and sensual more-than-human intimacies are affective, material, and psychic. The study inspired us to propose that rethinking ways of engaging with matter through touch may advance alternative environmental ethics and necessitates the development of further multisensory research methodologies.