What attracts me to Peter Cicariello and Stephen Vincent's works is a
haptic dialogue and this can go some way to haptic narrative. With Peter
Cicariello I could say there is a direct dialogue with photography and
poetry.

A while back I read an academic paper which claimed that photography is
purely optical as opposed to the haptic sense and cited Deleuze in
support of this claim. Aside from the fraudulent citing of Deleuze who
the academic writer has obviously not read, it did raise an interesting
claim that narrative as well operates as an optical sensation, if one
were to follow the discursive consequences of a such a fraudulent claim.
In structuralist narratology the story and discourse distinction does
appear to take on such an optical structure giving narrative a sort of
filmic gaze that sets the diegetic frame. However, it is in my thinking,
a mistake to claim that the basic distinction of structuralist
narratology rest on the story and discourse distinction but rather rests
on the categories of lyric and narrative where, following Aristotle,
lyric is removed from the analysis. This, in effect, gives privilege to
narrative as diegesis (telling the story) against mimesis as the purely
lyrical which may be effectively removed from narrative analysis.
Against this I would argue that mimesis which is in direct contact with
stories and as such is actual narrative is the real force that gives
narrative life. In light of this it is not possible to think narrative
as the telling of a story as a discrete category of diegesis. In this it
then follows that narrative can be haptic and in fact must be haptic if
one is to write a novel. Without haptic narrative it is not possible to
write a novel narrative and this requires the identical contact of lyric
and narrative. Lyric takes on a different position which is essential to
novel writing in this understanding rather then a surplus which can be
removed to expose a supposedly naked plot.

Anyway, another quote from Minor White on the interface between
photographer, subject and photographic print and another article I
found.

"Counting zones, exploring options and the like, actually IS contact
with the subject. They "feel" their way into contact with the subject by
mentally exploring its photographic possibilities. They report that
deeper understandings can and do occur during their struggles with
images on the groundglass to take advantage of exposure and contrast
control by means of the luminance meter." [The new zone system manual,
White et al, p46.]

Note: For artists and poets, haptic is actual. Deleuze's virtual
transcendental which comes afterwards is often poorly understood here by
too many academic commentators.


Hybridity and instability are the hallmark of Michael Ondaatje’s
novels, ... the novel makes on the reader is visual, auditory and “
haptic”
w3.u-grenoble3.fr/representations/articles_pdf_hs1/Delmas.pdf