REINVENTING TOUCH IN THE ITCH BY LAURENCE NOBECOURT

This article examines the question of touch in Laurence Nobécourt's La Démengeaison. It seeks to connect Nobécourt's text to recent research on the tactile and more broadly the haptic function of literature. In this article, I will show that skin forms a border in the text, which prevents touch and contact with the world. I will discuss firstly the ways in which the surface/depth paradigm is applied to the untouchable skin of the narrator, excluding her from humanity. Thus, in the second part of my analysis, I will reflect on the ways in which the skin's touchability is reconfigured through the narrator's compulsive itching, and particularly through the exploration of the skin's erogenous dimension. Although this reconfiguration fails in the diegesis and leads only to violence, I will argue that the text succeeds in its haptic aesthetics, and its attempt to touch the reader. © 2023. Edinburgh University Press.