{"id":18247,"date":"2016-07-26T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-07-26T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=25"},"modified":"2016-07-26T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-07-26T00:00:00","slug":"hands-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/07\/hands-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Hands"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

T<\/span>oward the end of his book on hands<\/a>, British psychoanalyst Darian Leader summarizes one of the main themes of the work: \u201cKeeping our hands busy has always been a central human activity\u201d (107). That busyness can take the form of a touch that draws us close, the grasping fist of the infant who doesn\u2019t intend to attack but to incorporate, the saving hand that draws the dangling heroine to safety, the hand that caresses. Ancient rhetoricians knew that words must become flesh, become manual, which is why Cicero\u2019s enemies displayed his severed hands as well as his head after his murder: The hands that gestured crowds into Republican frenzies had been neutralized. Leader approvingly cites Aristotle\u2019s claim that while we can live without sight or hearing, we cannot live without touch (12).<\/p>\n

Hands \u201cserve us\u201d as \u201cinstruments of executive action, our tools\u201d: \u201cWe show our hands to vote, to seal an agreement, to confirm a union,\u201d so much so that \u201cthe hand is often used to stand for the human agent that bears it\u201d (3-4). Yet \u201cour hands are precisely what disobey\u201d (4). Willful, murderous hands detached from the rest of the body\u2014that\u2019s the stuff of countless horror films. The same appendage that is a \u201csymbol of human agency and ownership\u201d is at the same time \u201ca part of ourselves that escapes us\u201d (5). <\/p>\n

The split of the human person symbolized by the hand begins early. An infant regards his hand with surprise, as if it belongs to another, and the hand exemplifies the fact that the line between body and other is blurred: \u201call of our bodily functions in infancy are linked to our caregivers, and so the love, rage, pain, despair, pleasure and frustration elicited during our interactions with them may become embedded in the bodily functions and zones themselves. Feeding, nappy changing, potty training and, little by little, sleeping all involve more than just the biological body of the child. They link the mouth, the skin, the genitals, the ears, the eyes and the respiratory system to those who caress us, feed us, clean us, wipe us, look at us, talk to us, read to us and sing to us\u201d (25). The purely biological human is a myth; there is no clean line between biological and \u201creal\u201d life, with all its social and psychic interactions. The hard-wiring and the soft-wiring are the same (12).<\/p>\n

We use our hands to link us back to the past, to \u201crefind\u201d the primordial satisfactions of infancy. An infant\u2019s \u201cfingers are . . . included in the actual act of sucking at breast or bottle. . . . It seems as if the sensations activated by sucking, and perhaps swallowing, are sought by the infant in addition to the actual milk they are associated with. They sensations take on a weight of their own.\u201d The effort to refind \u201cwill mark every aspect of human life\u201d: \u201cIf a newborn baby gulps down milk, how long will it be before they are asking for a \u2018very hot medium skinny flat white with chocolate on top\u2019\u201d (23-24). We don\u2019t try to refind any particular object; what we long for is the satisfaction of re-experiencing \u201cthe same\u201d (24). <\/p>\n

Idle hands are the devil\u2019s playground, so they must be kept busy. They might migrate back to the body, re-establishing the oral-manual nexus of early infancy. They might violate the protocols of polite social behavior\u2014scratching in the wrong places, picking a nose or mining an ear, rubbing the face (Leader leans on Elias\u2019s study of the civilizing process here). Paradoxically, keeping the hands busy is essential to social relations. Leader is interested in how active hands separate us from one another, and stresses the necessity of that separation: \u201cLife has never just been about connecting, but also about disconnecting\u201d (107). We grasp for the Grail, but we must also learn to lay aside, to drop, to give up the Ring. Grasping is instinctive, a fundamental drive. We must learn<\/em> to un-grasp, since we can save our lives only by losing it. Letting go often involves an act of violence, though one that is tragically necessary if we\u2019re going to grow up: \u201cMany children are able to push things away before letting go of them, as if the rage or defiance in the first action has to be spent to allow a genuine separation\u201d (36).<\/p>\n

\u201cCulture,\u201d Leader suggests, \u201chas always been about finding ways to create a distance from those around us\u201d (91). Over the centuries, various hand-held devices have assisted this necessary absence-in-presence. Sitting around the hearth, people knitted or wove. Fans and snuffboxes and handkerchiefs gave 18th-century socialites something to do with their hands, serving both to isolate each from each and as potential medium of union (the dropped kerchief, the lost fan). <\/p>\n

Along this path, Leader addresses the contemporary problem with which his book begins and ends: technology. Like fans, \u201cPhones, computers and tablets allow an abstraction from our proximity to others and the demands that this involves. As mediators, they allow us to be somewhere else.\u201d They can however alienate us if \u201cthey form part of a kind of manual circuit, which moves back toward the stimulation of the body.\u201d That \u201calienation may keep us from ourselves, and pain can bring us back, when the hands return to the body.\u201d This separation and even the potential alienation isn\u2019t all bad. It enables us \u201cto localize and operate with the tension and agitation that inhabit us\u201d (107-8). He doesn\u2019t think Google Glass or voice-activated technologies have much of a future, since we are a manual species, our cultural power and personal agency incarnated in our hands.<\/p>\n

Leader covers a lot of ground. Freud, Piaget, and Lacan put in their expected appearances. He writes insightfully of fairy tales, marketing, movies, and masturbation. It\u2019s a scintillating performance even for those who are skeptical about psychoanalytic theory. But Leader\u2019s argument about contemporary technology is unconvincing. It depends on the premise that smartphones and tablets are \u201chand devices,\u201d analogous to knitting needles, fans, and kerchiefs. That\u2019s half right, or less. Fans didn\u2019t require visual attention; fans occupy the hand, but allow the holder to glance coquettishly at the Count across the room, eyes aflutter. Knitters and doodlers stay busy with their hands, leaving their minds free to concentrate on the teacher, preacher, or radio program. I\u2019m amazed at the dexterity of practiced cell phone users, but it\u2019s not automatic like knitting. It engages the hands, plus<\/em> the eyes and mind. It\u2019s a much more intense form of abstraction from one\u2019s surroundings, more like reading a book than manipulating beads or marbles.<\/p>\n

Leader offers to explain what effect technology has on the way we use our hands, a surprising question that leads to a fascinating book. But the question is too narrow, and that leaves him too cheerily sanguine about the interpersonal effect of our devices.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Toward the end of his book on hands, British psychoanalyst Darian Leader summarizes one of the main themes of the work: \u201cKeeping our hands busy has always been a central human activity\u201d (107). That busyness can take the form of a touch that draws us close, the grasping fist of the infant who doesn\u2019t intend […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1616,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hands","category-psychology"],"yoast_head":"\nHands<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Toward the end of his book on hands, British psychoanalyst Darian Leader summarizes one of the main themes of the work: \u201cKeeping our hands busy has always\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/07\/hands-3\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta 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