My past two posts have been clarifying the concept of "untouchable" and how it functions in relation to queerness. "Untouchable" denotes a state of suspended knowledge (about queer subjectivity and experience) that allows me to then turn to feeling and affect as epistemological methods. - First, I worked out a definition of "untouchable" as the raw data about queer subjectivity and experience that cannot be quantified. (later in the chapter, I will explain that in order to engage (or “interface”) with this data, we need abstraction and formalization. - Then, I looked for analogies of the "untouchable" in other fields (history and science) that display the impulse to verify, correct, or recover. In literary studies, this impulse for satisfaction is observed in “paranoid” or “suspicious” reading practices, which attempt to find "hidden meaning" in texts in a way that constrains inquiry.

These past two weeks, I've been working on the introduction, because it occurs to me that I need a solid definition of queerness before moving on to describe how queerness is untouchable. So I defined the core condition of queerness being "the desire for touching," a desire that is ultimately frustrated, deferred, or eluded (analogous to Jose Munoz's concept of queer horizon, the state of being "not yet here"). Being queer is, at its core, a desire for connection---with oneself or with others---that is continually thwarted by the oppression, categories, and heteronormativity of dominant culture.

The "desire for touching," without being able to fully touch, as the definition of queerness, is also where the digital and queer intersect. Digital media creates the illusion that we have access to data, to information, but all we have access to is a formalized relationship to that data. We encounter the digital object through mediation, through an interface, mice, GUIs, keyboards, etc. It is the same with queernes, which we can only engage within formalized or opaque structures---the formal experiments of queer writers.

I'm trying to begin the chapter with this meditation on the intersection of the digital and queerness. Right now, I'm doing so by providing a few close readings, right at the start, which define queerness as a thwarted desire for touching. In the example I've chosen, by Jordy Rosenberg's Confessions of the Fox, I use an evocative quote that characterizes sexual desire not on touch, but how precluding touch activates other sensations that are more physical, more intense, than touch. Then I jump to a hypertext novella, These Waves of Girls by Caitlin Fisher, and discuss how the narrative pull of clicking through the text enacts a desire for closure or understanding that is never fully satisfied.

It occurs to me now that I need to go a little more into the Waves example, include a bit of media archaeology, the formal and forensic (Matt Kirschenbaum) levels of materiality, and a bit about how hypertext works, to fully round out this point. I'm drawing a parallel between what Rosenberg is doing with refusing touch and what Fisher is doing by frustrating touch. They are both searching for alternative modes of connections, modes that active a fuller sensorium.

So the introduction might be structured thus: - an opening statement on how touch relates to queerness and the digital - a definition of queerness as deferred desire for touching - introducing two case studies that demonstrate how queerness engages this idea of deffered touch in text and digital media.

After this introduction, which is only meant to pique interest and set ideas into motion, I will move on to exploring the "untouchable" state of queerness in depth.