Intimate Subjects

A thought-provoking history of touch in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britain. This book tells the history of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Britain through a single sense--touch. In this time and place, historian Simeon Koole argues, our sense of ourselves and others as physical bodies changed as new encounters made us both more intimate and more vulnerable. Taking us inside different spaces--subway cars, tea shops, classrooms, police stations, foggy London streets--Koole shows how the experience of touch was transformed. At its core, Intimate Subjects is about the nexus of embodiment and modernity. In addition to analyzing specific spaces, he also examines how the emerging disciplines of neurology and experimental psychology sought to understand the connections between sensation and selfhood. Tracing understandings, experiences, and practices of touch, this book shows us how personal space--and its disruption--shapes history.