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Human Studies

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01.12.2007 | Research Paper

That Which “Has No Name in Philosophy”: Merleau-Ponty and the Language of Literature

verfasst von: Daphna Erdinast-Vulcan

Erschienen in: Human Studies | Ausgabe 4/2007

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Abstract

In this paper I address some related aspects of Merleau-Ponty’s unfinished texts, The Visible and the Invisible and The Prose of the World. The point of departure for my reading of these works is the sense of philosophical disillusionment which underlies and motivates them, and which, I argue, leads Merleau-Ponty towards an engagement with art in general and with literature in particular. I suggest that Merleau-Ponty’s emerging conception of ethics—premised on the paradox of a “universal singularity” and concerned with the concrete experience of the individual subject, rather than with abstractions and formal categories—can best be articulated through the formalist concept of “defamiliarization,” the fundamental performativity of all literature, and the dialogic relations which, though inherent in all discourse, become most powerfully evident in the dynamics of reading.

Vorheriger Artikel Husserl’s Way to Authentic Being

Nächster Artikel Technology and Intimacy in the Philosophy of Georges Bataille

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As pointed out by an anonymous reader of this essay, the work of Blanchot and Bataille is also highly relevant in this context. I suggest, however, that what is at issue is not just the spectrum of rich resonances and echoes among French philosophers from the 1930s to the 1970s, but a wider fraternity of thinkers of which Bakhtin, too, is a prominent member.

Notable instances of this concern for the ethical implications which are understated or implicit in Merelau-Ponty's work are Gary B. Madison (1998) and Glenn Edwards McGee (2000).

Though published posthumously, The Prose of the World is another unfinished fragment, dating from the early 1950's. It was part of a planned work which was to include The Origin of Truth, eventually entitled The Visible and the Invisible.

A similarly liminal conception of subjectivity underlies Bakhtin’s dialogism: “A person,” he writes, “has no internal territory, he is wholly and always on the boundary” (1961, pp. 287–288). If inter-subjectivity is prior to subjectivity, we can no longer relate to the self as a territorial enclosure. Living on borderlines is what we should all do.

For this illuminating conversation, see M.C. Dillon (1990), Gary Brent Madison (1990), and David Michael Levin (1990).

The analogous reversibility of the visual, the tactile and the discursive has been extensively discussed by Jeffrey Wayne Froman (1982).

The New Critics of the 1940s, and Brooks as one of their Founding Fathers, have served as convenient straw-figures for a wide range of post-structuralist literary and cultural theories, and some of the criticism leveled at their work is undoubtedly sound, but—I would argue—one would be hard put to find more subtle, articulate, and responsive readers of poetry. Elitist, ensconced in their ivory-towers of culture, and rather deaf to the voices of history they may have been, but their writings on poetry are still classics, and Brooks’ “heresy of paraphrase” is a good case-in-point.

Austin, J. L. (1962/1975). How to do things with words (2nd ed.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Bakhtin, M. M. (1919–21). Toward a philosophy of the act (trans: Liapunov, V.). In Holquist, M. & Liapunov, V. (Eds.). Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993.

Bakhtin, M. M. (1961). Toward a reworking of the Dostoevsky book. In C. Emerson (Ed.) Problems of Dostoevsky’s poetics (Appendix II, pp. 283–302). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.

Brooks, C. (1947). The heresy of paraphrase. In The well wrought urn: Studies in the structure of poetry (pp.176–196). London: Dennis Dobson Ltd.

Davis, D. H. (1991). Reversibly subjectivity: The problem of transcendence and language. In M. C. Dillon (Ed.), Merleau-Ponty vivant (pp. 31–46). Albany: State University of New York Press.

Dillon, M. C. (1990). Ecart: Reply to Claude Lefort’s “Flesh and otherness”. In G. A. Johnson & M. B. Smith (Eds.), Ontology and alterity: Alterity in Merleau-Ponty (pp. 14–26). Chicago: Northwestern University Press.

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Lefort, C. (1990). Flesh and otherness. In G. A. Johnson, & M. B. Smith (Eds.), Ontology and alterity: Alterity in Merleau-Ponty (pp. 3–23). Chicago: Northwestern University Press.

Levin, D. M. (1990). Justice in the flesh. In G. A. Johnson, & M. B. Smith (Eds.), Ontology and alterity: Alterity in Merleau-Ponty (pp. 35–44). Chicago: Northwestern University Press.

Levinas, E. (1982). Ethics and infinity: Conversations with Philippe Nemo (trans: Cohen, R. A.). Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press.

Madison, G. B. (1990). Flesh as otherness. In G. A. Johnson & M. B. Smith (Eds.), Ontology and alterity: Alterity in Merleau-Ponty (pp. 27–34). Chicago: Northwestern University Press.

Madison, G. B. (1998/2001). The ethics and politics of the flesh. In D. H. Davis (Ed.), Merleau-Ponty’s later works and their practical implications: The dehiscence of responsibility (pp. 161–185). New York: Humanity Books.

McGee, G. E. (2000). Merleau-Pontyan ethics: Intimations of a different phenomenology of value. In L. Hass & D. Olkowski (Eds.), Rereading Merleau-Ponty: Essays beyond the continental-analytic divide (pp.197–207). New York: Humanity Books.

Merleau-Ponty, M. (1951/1964). On the phenomenology of language. In Signs (pp. 84–97) (trans: McCleary, R. C.). Chicago: Northwestern University Press.

Merleau-Ponty, M. (1952/1964). Indirect language and the voices of silence. In Signs (pp. 39–83) (trans: McCleary, R. C.). Chicago: Northwestern University Press.

Merleau-Ponty, M. (1959/1964). The philosopher and his shadow. In Signs (pp. 159–181) (trans: McCleary, R. C.). Chicago: Northwestern University Press.

Merleau-Ponty, M. (1964/1968a). The visible and the invisible (trans: Lefort, C., & Lingis, A. (Ed.)). Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

Merleau-Ponty, M. (1964/1968b). Working notes to the visible and the invisible (trans: Lingis, A.). In C. Lefort (Ed.), The Visible and the invisible. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

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Titel: That Which “Has No Name in Philosophy”: Merleau-Ponty and the Language of Literature
verfasst von: Daphna Erdinast-Vulcan
Publikationsdatum: 01.12.2007
Verlag: Springer Netherlands
Erschienen in: Human Studies / Ausgabe 4/2007
Print ISSN: 0163-8548
Elektronische ISSN: 1572-851X
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-007-9069-2

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