Alone with Others: An Essay on Tact in Five Modernist Encounters

By: Katja Haustein

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Synopsis: Times of crisis expose how we experience social, physical, and emotional forms of distance. Alone with Others explores how these experiences overlap, shaping our coexistence. Departing from conventional debates that associate intimacy with affection and distance with alienation, Haustein introduces tact as a particular mode of feeling one's way and making space in the sphere of human interaction. Reconstructing tact's conceptual history from the late eighteenth century to the present, she then focuses on three specific periods of socio-political upheaval: the two World Wars, and 1968. In five reading encounters with Marcel Proust, Helmuth Plessner, Theodor Adorno, François Truffaut, and Roland Barthes, Haustein invites us to reconsider our own ways of engaging with other people, images, and texts, and to gauge the significance of tact today. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.