As members of human society, perhaps the most difficult task we face daily is that of touching one another–whether the touch is physical, moral, emotional, or imaginary. Contact is crisis. As the anthropologists say, “Every touch is a modified blow.” The difficulty presented by any instance of contact is that of violating a fixed boundary, transgressing a closed category where one does not belong.

Anne Carson
Putting Her in Her Place: Women, Dirt, and Desire
from Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek