Noli me tangere

Mè mou haptou - Noli me tangere - Do not touch me: This is the phrase that the resurrected Christ addresses to Mary Magdalene in the scene from the Gospel of John, only to disappear again shortly after. In this dramatic moment between death and resurrection, presence and absence, faith and disbelief, Jean-Luc Nancy identifies a key moment in the biblical narrative, as well as in the act of touching itself.

Through the visual representations of the scene by Rembrandt, Dürer, Titian, and Pontormo, Nancy analyzes the play of hands, the arabesques of fingers, and the associated paradoxes of meaning and significance, while also reflecting on the nature of the image itself, as the painting demands distance and forbids any touching.

The titular essay is another contribution to Nancy's larger project of deconstructing Christianity and can be read as a continuation of the movement of unwriting the body that began in Corpus.