Collecting as a haptic experience. Theoretical reflections

Abstract

We have got used to associating collecting in the first place with the sense of sight, and
only then with touch, hearing, taste or smell. Yet, it needs the employment of all kinds
of senses, the sight not always being the most important. Walter Benjamim in his reflections on collecting emphasizes the role of touch in collectors’ practices, he calls the collector
”a toucher”. The sense of touch in the western culture is the most forgotten and marginalized
of all senses. This paper attempts at making theoretical reflections on the specificity of the
collector’s haptic experience and the role of touch in collecting. It presents the epistemological dimension of touching and the connection of touch with the mētis type of knowledge, the
aesthetic experience and the ways the collector experiences the past and creates intimate
relations with objects.