On the Haptic Dimension of Cinema: The Role of Absence

The haptic dimension of cinema has been described in several theoretical studies that revalue the role of corporeality in filmic perception, as opposed to the idealist tradition approaches, which tend to promote the intelligible to the detriment of the sensitive. For defenders of the haptic dimension of cinema, film reception is multisensory, implying a dialogue (pre-reflective and direct) between the audiovisual senses and the haptic senses. This theoretical stance is not without difficulties: even accepting the paradoxical character of notions such as “haptic visibility”, the theses on this dimension of cinema sometimes run the risk of falling into radicalisms that are no less problematic than those that these same theses try to rebut. An alternative approach, which we will deepen in this paper, consists of circumscribing the haptic dimension using concepts such as avatar, virtuality, and absence, starting precisely from the observation that cinema, in its classical technical conception, as an audiovisual medium, offers us no more than images and sounds.