Primordial Haptics, 1925-1935
Hands, Tools and the Psychotechnics of Prehistory
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3137110 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Max Stadler (0000-0001-8236-8869, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 28 |
| Issue | 1-2 |
| Pages | 60-90 |
| Publication date | 2022-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Body & Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1357-034X • E-ISSN: 1460-3632 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/1357034x211008239 |
| OpenAlex | W3182198245 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 18 |
Psychotechnics', Weimar Germany's science du jour, typically is framed as a symptom of 'technological media' - obscuring the persistent significance of 'dexterity', 'skill' and 'manual labour' at the time. More broadly, there is a tendency to construe 'the haptic' as predominantly a casualty of modernity: skilled hands replaced by conveyor belts; skilled hands defended by the rearguard actions of arts-and-crafts movements; skilled hands destroyed by industrialized warfare. Drawing on contemporary investigations into the 'organ of touch', this essay aims to complicate this picture by reconstructing the proto-ergonomic project of Friedrich Herig, a German engineer, amateur prehistorian and expert on craft labour who rose to distinction in the 1920s as a designer of 'ideal' hand tools. Herig's eclectic sources of inspiration reveal that matters of 'touch', far from obsolete, were intimately bound up with matters of tools - their design, uses and putative origins - and thus, with matters of (manual) labour
Aesthetics · Amateur · Archaeology · Art · Craft · German · Modernity · Political science · Prehistory · Sociology · Visual arts · Art, Politics, and Modernism · Cybernetics and Technology in Society · History · Law · Philosophical and Theoretical Analysis
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |