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101. Chiasmi International: Volume > 15
Anna Petronella Foultier Merleau-Ponty’s Encounter with Saussure’s Linguistics: Misreading, Reinterpretation or Prolongation?
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The prevailing judgement concerning Merleau-Ponty’s encounter with Saussure’s linguistics is that, although important for the evolution of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of language, it was based on a mistaken or at least highly idiosyncratic interpretation of Saussure’s ideas. Significantly, the rendering of Saussure that has been common both in Merleau-Ponty scholarship and in linguistics hinges on the structuralist development of the Genevan linguist’s ideas. This article argues that another reading of Saussure, in the light of certain passages of the Course of General Linguistics forgotten by the structuralists, and of the manuscripts related to the published works, shows to the contrary that Merleau-Ponty’s account was sustainable. An understanding of Saussure’s ideas that does not flinch from their paradoxical features can elucidate the French phenomenologist’s views on language and expression. Moreover, the “linguistic turn” in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophical development, identified by James Edie for example, does not seem to have been so clear-cut as has previously been believed; the influence of Saussure’s thought had certainly begun before Merleau-Ponty wrote Phenomenology of Perception.
102. Chiasmi International: Volume > 15
Beata Stawarska Uncanny Errors, Productive Contresens. Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenological Appropriation of Ferdinand de Saussure’s General Linguistics
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Stawarska considers the ambiguities surrounding the antagonism between the phenomenological and the structuralist traditions by pointing out that the supposed foundation of structuralism, the Course in General Linguistics, was ghostwritten posthumously by two editors who projected a dogmatic doctrine onto Saussure’s lectures, while the authentic materials related to Saussure’s linguistics are teeming with phenomenological references. She then narrows the focus to Merleau-Ponty’s engagement with Saussure’s linguistics and argues that it offers an unusual, if not an uncanny, reading of the Course, in that it identifies a phenomenological dimension within the text, against the grain of the dominant structuralist claim. This phenomenological dimension is corroborated by the authentic sources of Saussure’s linguistics, even though the latter were beyond the philosopher’s own power to know. Merleau-Ponty’s unorthodox reading of the Course as being broadly compatible with the tradition of Husserlian phenomenology has been dismissed as an error (Ricoeur, 1967) and a contresens (Mounin, 1968), but Stawarska proposes that such deviant appropriations of foundational texts are the ones to cherish the most, since they effectively dismantle the received dogmas and official doctrines stuffing the cabinets of canonical philosophy. She argues specifically that Merleau-Ponty’s contested distinction between “a synchronic linguistics of speech (parole)” and “a diachronic linguistics of language (langue)” (Signs, 1964, p. 86), which gives primacy to la parole over la langue, and raises the possibility of a systematic study of la parole, contains a more faithful response to Saussure’s own project than the received structuralist view that la langue alone constitutes the proper object of linguistic study.
103. Chiasmi International: Volume > 15
James Mensch The Intertwining as a Form of our Motion of Existence
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Patočka and Merleau-Ponty are both interested in appearing as such. Both attempt to understand this in terms of the body. Despite this agreement, there is a fundamental difference. For Merleau-Ponty, the body’s determination of appearing is ultimately a function of its intertwining with the world. Indeed, its very status as an animated body or “flesh” involves the fact that, located in the world, it also is able to internalize the world that encloses it. This intertwining or “chiasm” is its form as flesh. For Patočka, by contrast, what is crucial is the body’s motility, a motility whose sense embraces all of its actions. He claims that “movement … first makes this or that being apparent, causes it to manifest itself in its own original manner.” I bring these approaches into dialogue by seeing Merleau-Ponty’s chiasm, not just as the form of flesh, but also as the form of its movement.
104. Chiasmi International: Volume > 15
Emmanuel Alloa The Diacritical Nature of Meaning: Merleau-Ponty With Saussure
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“What we have learned from Saussure” affirms Merleau-Ponty “is that, taken singly, signs do not signify anything, and that each one of them does not so much express a meaning as mark a divergence of meaning between itself and other signs.” While it has often been stressed that Merleau-Ponty was arguably among the earliest philosophical readers of Saussure, the real impact of this reading on Merleau-Ponty’s thinking has rarely been assessed in detail. By focusing on the middle period – the years between the publication of the Phenomenology of Perception and the abandonment of the book project The Prose of the World – a special interest in language and its ideality becomes all the more evident. Now this period is crucial for understanding the turn of the later years: similarly to Saussure, who shifted the problem of meaning from a problem of referentiality to an issue of self-differentiation of the linguistic field, Merleau-Ponty shifts his account of perception from a relationship based on sensory subjects and perceived objects to an immanent differentiation of the sensible world. The genesis ofan articulated world can be conceptualized with the experience of children’s language acquisition and the phenomenon of “deflation.” At a certain point in her development, the child interrupts her incessant babbling and learns to shape pauses and silences, which are the precondition for meaningful sounds. Learning how to speak – as it were – would thus be learning how not to speak. The child may only enter a specific language by means of a phonematic restriction; to become a member of a language community is to lose the capacity to speak all languages.
105. Chiasmi International: Volume > 16
Laura McMahon The Phantom Organic: Merleau-Ponty and the “Psychoanalysis of Nature”
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In a working note to The Visible and the Invisible (1964), Maurice Merleau-Ponty makes an enigmatic call for “a psychoanalysis of Nature.” This paper argues that there are two interrelated ways in which this call might be taken up. First, it might be taken as the demand to give voice to the deep sense of a nature, conceived in terms of unconscious desire rather than scientific rationality, that precedes and exceeds human life. Second, we might do a psychoanalysis of our relationship to nature, of the ways in which modern thought tends to deny and repress the unconscious, organic desire at its heart. This paper addresses the psychoanalysis of nature in both these senses. The first part of this paper takes up Merleau-Ponty’s well-known discussion of the phantom limb in Phenomenology of Perception (1945) in order to give a critique the mind-body dualism implicit in traditional attempts to account for this and related phenomena, and in order to present Merleau-Ponty’s own account of the phantom limb in terms of being in the world. Second, I argue that being in the world requires that we repress not only aspects of our personal pasts, but also our organic nature itself. Third, I argue that much of modern scientific thinking tends to deny the bodily and unconscious dimensions of conscious life—it is this denial that calls for a psychoanalysis in the second sense of studying our troubled and repressive relationship to nature. This denial of our own naturalness is accompanied by a denial of the unconscious and irrational nature of nature itself; finally, I will speak to the ways in which psychoanalysis might go further back than we might expect—beyond our childhoods and to the organic heartbeat of life itself.
106. Chiasmi International: Volume > 16
Dylan Trigg The Role of the Earth in Merleau-Ponty’s Archaeological Phenomenology
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This paper argues that the concept of the Earth plays a pivotal role in Merleau-Ponty’s thinking in two ways. First, the concept assumes a special importance in terms of Merleau-Ponty’s relation to Husserl via the fragment known as “The Earth Does Not Move.” Two, from this fragment, the Earth marks a key theme around which Merleau-Ponty’s late philosophy revolves. In particular, it is with the concept of the Earth that Merleau-Ponty will develop his archaeologically oriented phenomenology. To defend this claim, the paper unfolds in three stages. First, I provide a preliminary reading of Husserl’s fragment, focusing in particular on the co-constitution of body and Earth. Two, I turn to Merleau-Ponty’s interpretations of this fragment, especially in the lectures on nature and then in the later lectures on Husserl. From these varying interpretations, the germs of Merleau-Ponty’s archaeological phenomenology are conceived. Accordingly, in the final part of the paper, I claim that Merleau-Ponty’s account of the Earth is Husserlian insofar as it reinforces the primordial “ground (sol) of experience” but at the same time marks a departure from Husserl insofar as the Earth registers a brute or wild layer that resists phenomenology.
107. Chiasmi International: Volume > 16
Luca Vanzago Raw Being and the Darkness of Nature. On Merleau-Ponty’s Appropriation of Schelling
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In this article, we will reflect on the theoretical strategy implemented by Merleau-Ponty in his reading of Schelling. The purpose is not to verify the philological accuracy of his reading, but rather to examine two different yet interconnected questions: on the one hand, to study the sense Schelling’s concept of Nature takes in Merleau-Ponty’s ontological project; on the other, to discuss the role that Schelling’s philosophy effectively plays in the way that Merleau-Ponty approaches the problem of Nature. These two questions should not be equated, since the first aspect concerns the evaluation of Merleau-Ponty’s project and thus of the specific function played by his reading of Schelling in the ontology of the flesh. The second, however, concerns the problems raised by this very project, which will appear more clearly if we consider Schelling’s philosophy in its general development, over and above what is said by Merleau-Ponty. In fact, he has a tendency to privilege the early Schelling, closer to Hegel and to speculative idealism, but he only makes a few allusions to the more mature ideas, which Schelling mainly explains in the unfinished treatise on the ages of the world, from which Merleau-Ponty draws, nevertheless, the theme of the barbarous principle. The task, consequently, is to understand the extent to which Merleau-Ponty was able to incorporate the “abyssal” value of this notion, developed by Schelling especially when he sought to distance himself from his own transcendental idealist philosophy.We will thus ask whether Merleau-Ponty’s reading is partial, and if we can find, nonetheless, certain indications that show at which point he was able to take up the direction in which Schelling addressed the theme of Nature as barbarous principle. At stake is the question of the negativity, the latency, the opacity of Nature. In the first part of the essay, we briefly explain Merleau-Ponty’s interpretation of Schelling in his course on Nature at the Collège de France in 1956-1957. In the second part, we present an interpretation of Schelling’s notion of the barbarous principle in light of the treatise on the ages of the world, and in particular the second draft, which is more speculative and audacious. In the third part, finally, we propose an interpretation of Merleau-Ponty’s position which can show us, at least indirectly, how the notion of flesh can recognize Schelling’s theoretical indications in their more pessimistic and radical valence, centered on the notion of de-cision (Ent-Scheidung) as ontological divide. While not clearly argued, in part due to the nature of the unfinished manuscript of The Visible and the Invisible, this notion is given an implicit treatment in this work that helps deepen the interpretation of the ontology of the flesh in the sense of a renewed mediation on negativity.
108. Chiasmi International: Volume > 16
Leonard Lawlor Nascency and Memory: Reflections on Véronique Fóti’s Tracing Expression in Merleau-Ponty
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This is a review essay on Véronique Fóti’s Tracing Expression in Merleau-Ponty. It attempts to display the pattern that constitutes “the in filigree tracings” of Tracing Expression in Merleau-Ponty. In other words, it reconstructs the conceptual features that go into the “unthought” of expression that Véronique Fóti has given us. The reconstruction takes place in two steps. The first reconstructs the concept of expression itself as Fóti sees it in Merleau-Ponty’s thought. Here, we follow Fóti’s analysis and resolution of what Merleau-Ponty himself called “the paradox of expression.” Fóti’s “resolution” of the paradox takes us then to a second step, in which we determine Fóti’s “radicalization” of the paradox. The radicalization of the paradox takes place through specific criticisms that Fóti levels against Merleau-Ponty’s writings on painting. These criticisms allow us to see that the unthought of expression lies in nascency. Fóti’s new concept of expression revolves around the idea of nascency. Nascency allows Fóti not only to envision a metaphysics of expression but also and especially an ethics. However, Fóti’s stress of nascency raises a difficult question that she does not pose. While the word “nascency” appears countless times in Tracing Expression in Merleau-Ponty, the word “death,” as far as I can tell, appears only twice in the entire book. I argue that the absence of death in Tracing Expression in Merleau-Ponty conjoined with the stress of nascency opens out onto the question of memory, hence the title of my presentation, “Nascency and Memory.” Tracing Expression in Merleau-Ponty exhibits a compelling combination of modesty and ambition. Undoubtedly, the modesty results from Fóti’s long-standing devotion to Merleau-Ponty’s thought. This devotion, however, did not stop her from recognizing the “failures” of Merleau-Ponty’s thinking. The ability to see beyond the thinking to which one is most devoted is truly one of the marks of a great philosopher.
109. Chiasmi International: Volume > 16
Véronique M. Fóti Neither Pure Nascency nor Mortality: Crossing-Out Absolutes in the Event of Presencing
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Since both these readings of Tracing Expression converge on a number of focal issues, namely the diacriticity and creativity of expression, memory, temporality, and the trace, the relation of artistic creation to the proto-artistic creativity of nature, and the elemental or what Toadvine calls “the end of the world,” I enter into dialogue with both interlocutors on these issues.Given the differential character of expression and the silences that permeate the sedimentation that it draws upon, nothing is replicatively bodied forth by it, and itsspontaneity remains intact. While Lawlor suggests that a fundamental negation is at the core of of manifestation, I call attention to the need to guard against absolutizing the negative or giving it a “secondary positivity.”I do not think that there is any fundamental tension, for Merleau-Ponty, between nascency and memory, given that sedimentation, as “the trace of the forgotten” remains efficacious as the exigency of a future. The basic character of the trace is not that of a mere residue but is akin to the archē-trace; and the past that it refers to iis immemorial. It is important, in this context, to bear in mind the event- and the field-character of institution.I do not think that my emphasis on the autonomy of art breaks the contitnuity between art and the proto-artistic creativity of nature. Firstly, Merleau-Ponty’s ownunderstanding of painting as a “secret science” (which I am critical of) interrogatively addresses, not perceptual configurations, but “wild being” and thus presencing itself, whereas the autonomy I call attention to is not a pure transcendence. Indeed, Merleau-Ponty, in “Cézanne’s Doubt,” stresses that Cézanne’s approach to his work undercuts conceptual dichotomies (such as immanence and transcendence).As concerns an understanding of non-figurative painting as an initmation of “the end of the world,” understood as a return to the pure elements in a paroxysm of sheer materiality, I voice three reservations. These concern, firstly, any unitary understanding of “world,” secondly a reductive understanding of the primordial elements, and thirdly that there cannot be any genuine art in the absence of perceptual configuration, or in sheer formlessness. Notwithstanding these reservations, however, I am profoundly appreciative of Lawlor’s and Toadvine’s intellectually engaged and perceptive readings of Tracing Expression.
110. Chiasmi International: Volume > 16
Angelica Nuzzo Merleau-Ponty and Classical German Philosophy: Transcendental Philosophy after Kant
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This essay examines the presence of Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel in Merleau-Ponty’s thought. The perspective adopted here is methodological. Central to this is the choice of “transcendental phenomenology,” understood as a rehabilitation of the idealism and subjectivism proper to the transcendentalism of Kant and Fichte—the choice by which Merleau-Ponty refuses to abandon transcendental philosophy, like Hegel on the contrary did with his dialectical-speculative philosophy, and follows instead the phenomenological perspective suggested for the first time by Schelling.
111. Chiasmi International: Volume > 16
Ted Toadvine Diacritics of the Inexpressible: Tracing Expression with Véronique Fóti
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Véronique Fóti’s Tracing Expression in Merleau-Ponty demonstrates how the problem of expression motivates and unifies Merleau-Ponty’s investigations of art, life, nature, and ontology, culminating in a timely conception of nature as a differential expressive matrix. The key to this expressive ontology is diacritical difference. We raise three questions for this diacritical ontology: how it embodies the memory of the world, how it is interrupted by transcendence, and how it dissolves into elementality. Our inquiry points towards a diacritics of the inexpressible.
112. Chiasmi International: Volume > 16
David Morris Bringing Phenomenology Down to Earth: Passivity, Development, and Merleau-Ponty’s Transformation of Philosophy
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I suggest how Merleau-Pontian sense hinges on an ontology in which passivity and what I call “development” are fundamental. This means, though, that the possibility of philosophy cannot be guaranteed in advance: philosophy is a joint operation of philosophers and being, and is radically contingent on a pre-philosophical field. Merleau-Ponty thus transforms philosophy, revealing a philosophy of tomorrow: a new way of doing philosophy that, because it is grounded in pre-reflective contingency, has to wait to describe its beginnings, and so has to keep studying its beginnings tomorrow. This does not destroy Husserl’s project of a transcendental philosophy, it just accepts that the transcendental conditions of philosophy cannot be constituted or even revealed via wholly active or autonomous reflection. Merleau-Ponty thus brings phenomenology down to earth by expanding it into a phenomenology of life and earth that describes the concrete beginnings of phenomena and phenomenology.
113. Chiasmi International: Volume > 18
Federico Leoni Introduction
114. Chiasmi International: Volume > 18
Federico Leoni Introduction. Another Unconscious
115. Chiasmi International: Volume > 18
Roberta Lanfredini Emotion and Affection Between Phenomenology and Psychoanalysis: Behavior, Body, Memory
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The notion of emotion in phenomenology involves the centrality of the concept of “value.” This general assumption is here articulated in three theses. The first thesis concerns the public, expressive and behavioral nature of emotion. The second thesis relates to its corporeal and material nature. The third maintains that the structure of emotion is essentially temporal. Each of these arguments converges in emphasizing the irruption of an impersonal dimension into human consciousness, and in particular into emotional consciousness. The objective of this essay is to probe this sub-categorical, or inter-corporeal, dimension from the dual viewpoint of phenomenology and psychoanalysis.La notion d’émotion en phénoménologie implique la centralité du concept de « valeur ». Cette supposition est ici articulée en trois thèses. La première concerne la nature publique, expressive et comportementale de l’émotion. La seconde se rapporte à la nature corporelle et matérielle de l’émotion. La troisième soutient que la tructure de l’émotion est essentiellement temporelle. Ces trois arguments permettent de souligner l’irruption d’une dimension impersonnelle au sein de la conscience humaine, et en particulier dans la conscience émotionnelle. L’objectif de cet essai est de sonder cette dimension sous-catégorique, ou inter-corporelle, à partir du double point de vue de la phénoménologie et de la psychanalyse. La nozione di emozione in fenomenologia implica la centralità del concetto di “valore”. Nel presente articolo, questo assunto generale è articolato secondo tre tesi. La prima concerne l’aspetto pubblico, espressivo e comportamentale dell’emozione. La seconda ha a che fare con la sua natura corporea e materiale. La terza afferma il carattere essenzialmente temporale dell’emozione. Queste argomentazioni convergono nel tentativo di mettere in luce l’irruzione di una dimensione impersonale nella coscienza umana, e in particolare nella coscienza emozionale. L’obiettivo di questo studio è esaminare questa dimensione sub-categoriale, o inter-corporea, dal duplice punto di vista della fenomenologia e della psicoanalisi.
116. Chiasmi International: Volume > 18
Riccardo Panattoni Possible Autobiographies: Hallucinations, Dreams, and Butterflies
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This essay revolves around certain core themes that return in cycles and intertwine with each other at the intersection of several authors: hallucination in Phenomenology of Perception, from which I closely re-read the passages concerning the difficult relationship of discernibility and indiscernibility between hallucinatory and perceived things, which in the experience of the patient tends toward a kind of superimposition that gives life to an image and that is more than one yet less than two; the look, the encounter, and the dream in Jacques Lacan’s Seminar XI, which I re-read starting from the famous parable of Chuang-Tse who dreams of being a butterfly dreaming of being Chuang-Tse; Georges Didi-Huberman’s reflections on the relation of encounter, image, and memory that again rely on the figure of the butterfly, its ephemeral appearance, the contradictory attempt to follow and capture it, the utopia of the collector who loses it in catching it; and, finally, the double return of the figure of the butterfly in the pages of Walter Benjamin’s Berlin Childhood and in Winfried Sebald’s novel, Austerlitz.Cet essai tourne autour de certains noyaux thématiques qui reviennent de manière cyclique et qui s’entrelacent l’un dans l’autre dans les croisements des auteurs examiné : l’hallucination dans Phénoménologie de la perception, dont je relis minutieusement les pages consacrées à la question du rapport difficile, tout ensemble de discernabilité et d’indiscernabilité entre chose hallucinée et chose perçue, qui dans l’expérience du patient tendent à une sorte de surimpression qui donne vie à une image et qui est plus qu’un et moins que deux ; le regard, la rencontre et le rêve dans le Séminaire XI de Jacques Lacan, relu à partir de la célèbre parabole de Chuang-Tse qui rêve d’être un papillon qui rêve d’être Chuang-Tse ; et encore, les réflexions que consacre Georges Didi-Huberman au rapport entre rencontre, image et mémoire, se référant à son tour à la figure du papillon, à son apparition éphémère, à la tentative contradictoire de le suivre et de le capturer, à l’utopie du collectionneur qui le perd en l’attrapant ; enfin, le double retour de la figure du papillon dans les pages de l’Enfance berlinoise de Walter Benjamin et dans le roman de Winfried Sebald, Austerlitz.Questo saggio ruota attorno ad alcuni nuclei tematici che ritornano ciclicamente e si intrecciano l’uno all’altro nel trascorrere dall’uno all’altro degli autori esaminati: l’allucinazione in Fenomenologia della percezione, le cui pagine vengono rilette con minuziosa attenzione isolando la questione del difficile rapporto, insieme di discernibilità e indiscernibilità tra cosa allucinata e cosa percepita, che nell’esperienza del paziente tendono a una sorta di sovraimpressione che dà vita a un’immagine che è più di un uno e meno di un due; lo sguardo, l’incontro e il sogno nel Seminario XI di Jacques Lacan, riletto a partire dalla celebre parabola di Chuang-tse che sogna di essere una farfalla che sogna di essere Chuang-tse; e ancora, le riflessioni che Georges Didi-Huberman dedica al rapporto tra incontro, immagine, memoria, affidandosi a sua volta alla figura della farfalla, alla sua apparizione effimera, al tentativo contraddittorio di inseguirla e catturarla, all’utopia del collezionista che la fa propria perdendola; infine, il doppio ritorno della figura della farfalla nelle pagine di Infanzia berlinese di Walter Benjamin e nel romanzo di Winfried Sebald, Austerlitz.
117. Chiasmi International: Volume > 18
Luca Vanzago The Flesh Between: Some Remarks on André Green’s Remarks on Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology and its Relationship to Psychoanalysis
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In this paper I aim to discuss an essay written by the French psychoanalyst André Green on occasion of the publication in 1964 of The Visible and the Invisible, in order to frame it within the context of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy for the sake of letting emerge both the critical importance and some structural issues implied in Green’s reading.Green’s study clearly points out that the question concerning Merleau-Ponty’s notion of “flesh” represents a fundamental theme for psychoanalysis, in connection with Lacan’s interpretation of the unconscious as “structured as a language.” As Green would more widely stress in further works, he disagrees with Lacan and follows Merleau-Ponty on this point.At the same time, Green remarks that in Merleau-Ponty’s perspective there still remain two unsolved issues: his conceiving of the unconscious basically as “other side” and not, like in Freud, in terms of “other scene;” and the question concerning affects, seen as not sufficiently worked out within Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological perspective. Yet, even if it is possible to accept some of the critical remarks made by Green, it is nevertheless also necessary to reformulate them within a wider and deeper reading of the ontology of the flesh.Le but de cet article est de discuter un essai écrit par le psychanalyste André Green à l’occasion de la publication en 1964 du Visible et l’Invisible, afin de le questionner dans le contexte de la philosophie de Merleau-Ponty et de laisser émerger à la fois l’importance critique et quelque problèmes implicites de la lecture de Green.L’étude de Green montre clairement que la question concernant la notion merleau-pontienne de « chair » représente un thème fondamental pour la psychanalyse, en rapport avec l’interprétation lacanienne de l’inconscient, selon lui, « structuré comme un langage ». Dans ses travaux suivants, Green insistera sur son désaccord avec Lacan et suivra Merleau-Ponty sur ce point. Au même moment, Green remarque que dans la perspective merleau-pontienne, il demeure deux problèmes non résolus : sa conception de l’inconscient en termes d’« autre côté » et non, comme chez Freud, d’« autre scène » ; et la question concernant les affects, qui n’est pas suffisamment travaillée au sein de la perspective phénoménologique de Merleau-Ponty. Cependant, bien qu’il soit possible d’accepter certaines remarques critiques de Green, il est néanmoins nécessaire de les reformuler au sein d’une lecture plus vaste et plus profonde de l’ontologie de la chair. In questo saggio ci si propone di discutere un saggio dello psicoanalista André Green, scritto in occasione della pubblicazione di Il visibile e l’invisibile in Francia nel 1964, e contenente alcune notazioni molto importanti per comprendere un determinato modo di ricezione dell’ontologia fenomenologica di Merleau-Ponty da parte di uno psicoanalista originale e competente sia in materia di fenomenologia sia di psicoanalisi.Lo studio di Green mostra un significato particolare sia in quanto segnala molto per tempo l’importanza dell’opera di Merleau-Ponty per la psicoanalisi, sia perché indica chiaramente alcuni snodi problematici che in seguito sarebbero stati spesso rielaborati da parte di lettori dell’opera di Merleau-Ponty appartenenti al movimento psicoanalitico. In questo saggio ci si propone dunque di esaminare le notazioni di Green e di metterle nel contesto del pensiero di Merleau-Ponty al fine di farne emergere sia l’importanza critica sia però anche alcuni problemi di fondo.Lo studio di Green indica con chiarezza come la questione della carne costituisca un tema fondamentale anche per la ricerca psicoanalitica, in particolare in relazione all’interpretazione data da Lacan al concetto di inconscio “strutturato come un linguaggio”. Come avrebbe in seguito più ampiamente mostrato, Green non è d’accordo con Lacan e in questo segue alcune indicazioni di Merleau-Ponty. Al contempo, non manca di far notare due problematiche irrisolte nell’ottica di Merleau-Ponty: il concepire fondamentalmente l’inconscio come “altro lato” e non, come in Freud, in termini di “altra scena”; in secondo luogo il problema dell’affetto, come tema irrisolto all’interno della prospettiva fenomenologica di Merleau-Ponty.Seguendo lo snodo di questo studio è possibile così far emergere con chiarezza il significato innovativo del concetto merleau-pontyano di carne, anche al di là dell’interpretazione di Green, quale possibile sfondo ontologico di una indagine categoriale sui concetti portanti della psicoanalisi. In definitiva se è lecito recepire alcune delle critiche mosse da Green a Merleau-Ponty, è però anche necessario riformularle all’interno di una più approfondita lettura dell’ontologia della carne.
118. Chiasmi International: Volume > 18
Gianluca Solla Merleau-Ponty’s Echo
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In a note from the course on passivity, we find a reflection by Merleau-Ponty on the nature of the dream as an echo. Between wakefulness and sleep, but also between dream and waking, the echo would never cease to structure our whole psychic life through its reverberations, building bridges between dimensions that language can only separate. The dream would therefore be the event of a certain echo, each time unique. Hence Merleau-Ponty’s idea of making this echo an ally for understanding the dream, a theoretical schema that transforms the concepts of understanding and psychical hermeneutics as well as our representation of voice and sound.Dans une note du cours sur la passivité, on trouve une réflexion de Merleau-Ponty sur la nature du rêve en tant qu’écho. Entre éveil et sommeil, mais aussi entre rêve et veille, l’écho n’arrêterait pas de structurer par sa réverbération notre entière vie psychique, en construisant des ponts entre des dimensions que la langue ne saurait que séparer. Le rêve serait donc l’événement d’un certain écho, à chaque fois unique. D’où l’idée de Merleau-Ponty de faire de cet écho un allié pour la compréhension du rêve, schéma théorique qui transforme tantôt les notions de compréhension et d’herméneutique psychique, tantôt la représentation que l’on a de la voix et du son.In un appunto per il corso sulla passività Merleau-Ponty ha annotato un inconsueto pensiero sulla natura del sogno come eco. Tra veglia e sonno, ma anche tra sogno e veglia, quest’eco non smetterebbe di strutturare sulla sua riverberazione l’intera nostra vita psichica, costruendo ponti tra dimensioni che la lingua solitamente separa. Il sogno sarebbe dunque l’evento di un’eco singolare, ogni volta unica. Da qui l’idea di Merleau-Ponty di fare proprio di questa eco l’alleato per la comprensione del sogno, disegno teorico che trasforma tanto le nozioni di comprensione e di ermeneutica psichica, quanto la rappresentazione che della voce e del suono diamo abitualmente.
119. Chiasmi International: Volume > 18
Silvia Lippi Hallucination as Theorized by Merleau-Ponty and Lacan: How Perception, Reality and the Real Are Interconnected
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Starting with Freud’s views on the differences in how reality is approached in neurosis and in psychosis, the article analyzes how Merleau-Ponty and Lacan understand hallucinatory phenomena. For Merleau-Ponty, the perceived object is an actual reality, while Lacan questions both the unity and the facticity of this object. Lacan, following Freud, highlights the fantasmatic aspect of reality, which he distinguishes from the real. Merleau-Ponty, in contrast, focuses on the interaction of subject and object in hallucinations, which he relates to ordinary perception. He views hallucination as an error of consciousness; Lacan finds in it a new reality, which is neither more nor less false than the reality of neurosis.À partir des points de vue de Freud concernant les différentes manières dont la réalité est approchée dans la névrose et dans la psychose, cet article analyse comment Merleau-Ponty et Lacan comprennent le phénomène hallucinatoire. Pour Merleau-Ponty, l’objet perçu est une réalité actuelle, tandis que Lacan questionne à la fois l’unité et la facticité de cet objet. Lacan, suivant Freud, souligne l’aspect fantasmatique de la réalité, qu’il distingue du réel. Merleau-Ponty en revanche, met l’accent sur l’interaction du sujet et de l’objet dans les hallucinations, qu’il rapporte à la perception ordinaire. Il conçoit l’hallucination comme une erreur de la conscience ; Lacan y trouve une nouvelle réalité, qui n’est ni plus ni moins fausse que la réalité de la névrose. A partire dalla distinzione delineata da Freud riguardo al modo in cui la realtà è affrontata nella nevrosi e nella psicosi, il presente articolo prende in esame il modo in cui Merleau-Ponty e Lacan comprendono i fenomeni allucinatori. Per Merleau-Ponty l’oggetto percepito è una realtà attuale, laddove invece Lacan pone in questione al contempo l’unicità e la fatticità di tale oggetto. Seguendo Freud, Lacan sottolinea l’aspetto fantasmatico della realtà, che egli distingue da ciò che chiama reale. Al contrario Merleau-Ponty si concentra sull’interazione tra soggetto e oggetto, nel suo esame delle allucinazioni, che collega alla percezione ordinaria. L’allucinazione è allora vista come un errore della coscienza, mentre Lacan individua in essa una nuova realtà, da considerare come né più falsa, né meno falsa della realtà della nevrosi.
120. Chiasmi International: Volume > 18
Zeynep Direk Phenomenology Encounters Psychoanalysis: Merleau-Ponty’s Response to Lacan’s Mirror Stage
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This essay argues that his encounter with the Lacanian claims about the imaginary and symbolic functions incited Merleau-Ponty to transform his early phenomenology. “The Mirror Stage Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience” forced Merleau-Ponty to reconsider the primacy of the notion of Leib (corps propre) in his early phenomenology. The modification of his phenomenological starting point culminates in the revision of his position on the relation of the imaginary and the symbolic functions to the real from The Phenomenology of Perception to The Visible and the Invisible. I suggest that Merleau-Ponty’s focus on reversibility in The Visible and the Invisible should be read as an ontological elaboration of what is at the core of ‘The Mirror Stage,’ namely, the role of the imaginary and the symbolic functions in the formation of our corporeal visibility.Cet essai démontre que la convergence de Merleau-Ponty avec les revendications lacaniennes concernant l’imaginaire et les fonctions symboliques l’a incité à modifier sa première phénoménologie. « Le stade du miroir comme formateur de la fonction du Je telle qu’elle nous est révélée dans l’expérience psychanalytique » a forcé Merleau-Ponty à reconsidérer la primauté de la notion de Leib (corps propre) issue de sa première phénoménologie. La modification de son point de départ phénoménologique aboutit, depuis la Phénoménologie de la perception jusqu’à Le visible et l’invisible, à la révision de sa position sur la relation de l’imaginaire et des fonctions symboliques au réel. Je suppose que l’attention portée par Merleau-Ponty sur la réversibilité dans Le visible et l’invisible devrait être lue comme l’élaboration ontologique de ce qui est au coeur du « stade du miroir », à savoir le rôle de l’imaginaire et des fonctions symboliques dans la formation de notre visibilité corporelle.Il presente articolo avanza la tesi che l’incontro di Merleau-Ponty con la dimensione simbolica e la dimensione immaginaria descritte da Lacan, ha indotto il filosofo a trasformare la sua prima riflessione fenomenologica. “Lo stadio dello specchio come formatore della funzione dell’io” costrinse Merleau-Ponty a riesaminare il primato della nozione di Leib (corps propre), proprio della prima fase del suo pensiero e della sua adesione alla fenomenologia. La trasformazione del suo punto di partenza fenomenologico culmina in una revisione delle sue posizioni riguardo alla relazione delle funzioni immaginaria e simbolica rispetto al reale, che investe il passaggio da Fenomenologia della percezione al Visibile e l’invisibile. Attraverso questa lettura propongo di comprendere la nozione di reversibilità presente nel Visibile e l’invisibile, come una rielaborazione ontologica del nucleo centrale dello stadio dello specchio, ovvero il ruolo delle funzioni immaginaria e simbolica nella formazione della nostra visibilità corporea.