To flower of skin. Touch as a Gesture and Agent in Los cuerpos del verano (2012), by Martín Felipe Castagnet

Abstract

The skin is the largest organ of the body and acts as a protective layer to keep its structures intact, but what would a human existence without a body and therefore without skin mean? Argentine writer Martín Felipe Castagnet explores this possibility in his science fiction novel Los Cuerpos del Verano (2012). His text highlights the importance of the skin as the body's wrapper, but also as the first state of identification and sensitive communication system with the environment. I propose that when reading the novel through the theory of Skin-Ego (2003) by the French psychoanalyst Didier Anzieu, touch emerges as a gesture characteristic of vital experience and as an agent of social interaction. Seen this way, those who "float" without reincarnating in the novel seem sunk in a nostalgic isolation where they constantly yearn to recover, above all, touch.