The Problem of Habitual Body and Memory in Hegel and Merleau-Ponty

2017 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisa Magrì

AbstractIn this paper, I shall focus on the relation between habitual body and memory in Hegel’s Philosophy of Subjective Spirit and Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception. Both Hegel and Merleau-Ponty defend a view of the self that is centred on the role of habituality as embodied activity situated in a context. However, both philosophers avoid committing to what Edward Casey has defined habitual body memory, i.e., an active immanence of the past in the body that informs present bodily actions in an efficacious, orienting and regular manner. I shall explore the reasons why neither Hegel nor Merleau-Ponty develops an explicit account of habitual body memory. This will shed light not only on Hegel’s account of lived experience, but also on Hegel and Merleau-Ponty’s common concern with the habitual body.

Author(s):  
Ariela Battán Horenstein

 RESUMEN:Este artículo aborda la concepción de la cognición encarnada propuesta por M. Merleau-Pontyen dos momentos de su obra, en el contexto de Fenomenología de la percepción y en el Lo visible y lo invisible. El objetivo del artículo consiste en describir las consecuencias epistemo1 Este trabajo ha sido realizado en el marco del PIP CONICET 114-20110100073, «La posibilidad de fundamentación fenomenológica de la intencionalidad corporal: análisis y descripción de la relación percepción y movimiento», 2012-2014 y del Proyecto de Investigación «Fenomenología del cuerpo y análisis del dolor» (FFI 2013-43240-P). Dirección General de Investigación Científica y Técnica. Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad. España. Director: Dr. Agustín Serrano de Haro. Agradezco los comentarios de la Lic. Paula Diaz Romero y las instancias de discusión de las ideas previas al trabajo que tuvieron lugar en el marco de reuniones del grupo de investigación «Fenomenología de la corporeidad» (SECYT-UNC).estudio de la estrecha relación entre percepción y movimiento permitiría aclarar el modelo de cognición encarnada propuesto por Merleau-Ponty y contribuiría a comprender el rol centrallógicas del giro ontológico operado en la última etapa del pensamiento merleau-pontyano. El del cuerpo en la cognición.PALABRAS CLAVES:FENOMENOLOGÍA-CUERPO-GIRO-ONTOLÓGICO-GIRO EPISTEMOLÓGICOABSTRACT:This article addresses Merleau-Ponty´s conception of embodied cognition in two moments ofhis work, in the context of Phenomenology of Perception and The Visible and the Invisible.The central aim of this article consists in describing the epistemological consequences of theontological turn given by merleau-pontian later thought. The study of the close relationship between perception and movement would shed light on the model of embodied cognition proposedby Merleau-Ponty and could contribute to understand the central role of the body in cognition. KEYWORDSPHENOMENOLOGY-BODY-ONTOLOGICAL TURN-EPISTEMOLOGICAL TURN 


Somatechnics ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 288-303
Author(s):  
Michael Connors Jackman

This article investigates the ways in which the work of The Body Politic (TBP), the first major lesbian and gay newspaper in Canada, comes to be commemorated in queer publics and how it figures in the memories of those who were involved in producing the paper. In revisiting a critical point in the history of TBP from 1985 when controversy erupted over race and racism within the editorial collective, this discussion considers the role of memory in the reproduction of whiteness and in the rupture of standard narratives about the past. As the controversy continues to haunt contemporary queer activism in Canada, the productive work of memory must be considered an essential aspect of how, when and for what reasons the work of TBP comes to be commemorated. By revisiting the events of 1985 and by sifting through interviews with individuals who contributed to the work of TBP, this article complicates the narrative of TBP as a bluntly racist endeavour whilst questioning the white privilege and racially-charged demands that undergird its commemoration. The work of producing and preserving queer history is a vital means of challenging the intentional and strategic erasure of queer existence, but those who engage in such efforts must remain attentive to the unequal terrain of social relations within which remembering forms its objects.


Rhizomata ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-217
Author(s):  
Matthew Sharpe

Abstract This paper examines the central criticisms that come, broadly, from the modern, ‘analytic’ tradition, of Pierre Hadot’s idea of ancient philosophy as a way of life.: Firstly, ancient philosophy just did not or could not have involved anything like the ‘spiritual practices’ or ‘technologies of the self’, aiming at curing subjects’ unnecessary desires or bettering their lives, contra Hadot and Foucault et al. Secondly, any such metaphilosophical account of putative ‘philosophy’ must unacceptably downplay the role of ‘serious philosophical reasoning’ or ‘rigorous argument’ in philosophy. Thirdly, claims that ancient philosophy aimed at securing wisdom by a variety of means including but not restricted to rational inquiry are accordingly false also as historical claims about the ancient philosophers. Fourthly, to the extent that we must (despite (3)) admit that some ancient thinkers did engage in or recommend extra-cognitive forms of transformative practice, these thinkers were not true or ‘mainline’ philosophers. I contend that the historical claims (3) and (4) are highly contestable, risking erroneously projecting a later modern conception of philosophy back onto the past. Of the theoretical or metaphilosophical claims (1) and (2), I argue that the second claim, as framed here, points to real, hard questions that surround the conception(s) of philosophy as a way of life.


2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 37
Author(s):  
Jamal Subhi Ismail Nafi’

<p>This article is an attempt to explore the inclusion and the use of superstitious elements in Mark Twain’s novel <em>The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn</em> (1884) and Shakespeare’s play <em>Macbeth</em> (1611). Superstition involves a deep belief in the magic and the occult, to almost to an extent of obsession, which is contrary to realism. Through the analytical and psychological approaches, this paper tries to shed light on Twain’s and Shakespeare’s use of supernaturalism in their respective stories, and the extent the main characters are influenced by it. A glance at both stories reveals that characters are highly affected by superstitions, more than they are influenced by their religious beliefs, or other social factors and values. The researcher also tries to explore the role played by superstition, represented by fate and the supernatural in determining the course of actions characters undertake in both dramas. The paper concluded that the people who lived in the past were superstitious to an extent of letting magic, omens; signs, etc. affect and determine their lives; actions and future decisions. They determine their destiny and make it very difficult for them to avoid it, alter it or think rationally and independently. And that, man’s actions are not isolated, but closely connected to the various forces operating in the universe.</p>


Author(s):  
Daniil Koloskov

In this article, I will pursue three aims. First, I would like to demonstrate the non-transcendental character of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, namely, his claim that a strict division between a priori and a posteriori is an abstraction that derives from a more primordial unity that is given in our lived experience. I will criticize authors such as H. Dreyfus and T. Carman who treat the body and bodily character of our existence as a classical Kantian a priori that functions as a condition of experience without itself being a part of the experience. The claim I would like to defend in this regard is that reflections on the conditions of our experience must themselves be a part of our experience. The second task is to show how Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of temporality helps him to avoid this strict division between a priori and a posteriori. Based on this, I will elucidate some of the most obscure passages of Phenomenology of Perception. Finally, I will claim that the notion of optimal grip can neither be explained by the reference to our body, as Carman claims, or to brains, organisms and their copings with the environment, as Dreyfus argues. Instead, I will claim that the maximal grip is rather a consolidation or intensification of the temporal ecstasy.


This book explores the history of health care in postcolonial state-making and the fragmentation of the health system in Syria during the conflict. It analyzes the role of international humanitarian law (IHL) in enabling attacks on health facilities and distinguishes the differences between humanitarian solutions and refugee populations’ expectations. It also describes the way in which humanitarian actors have fed the war economy. The book highlights the lived experience of siege in all its layers. It examines how humanitarian actors have become part of the information wars that have raged throughout the past ten years and how they have chosen to position themselves in the face of grave violations of IHL.


Author(s):  
David W. Kling

The concluding chapter provides summary observations of the book’s themes that highlight the complex, multifaceted dimension of conversion throughout twenty centuries of Christian history. These include the convert’s cognizance of divine presence; the crucial importance of historical context (political, religious, institutional, and socioeconomic factors); continuity and discontinuity (how much of the new displaces the old in conversion?); nominal, incomplete, and “true” conversions; personal testimonies and narratives (the autobiographical impulse attests to the converted life); the role of gender; identity and the self; agency (are converts actors or are they being acted upon?); the mechanisms behind and the motivations for conversion; the body as a site of conversion; the role of music; conversion as event and process; coercive practices; and forms of communication in the converting process.


Author(s):  
Richard H. Brown

The introduction to this study explores the notion of audiovisuality as it pertains to John Cage’s interaction with avant-garde filmmakers. Moving from the corporeal notion of Cage’s “everyday awareness,” audiovisuality is akin to the lived phenomenal experience. Artworks expressing such an awareness point to our understanding of the self and the lived experience. Such a framework allows for the exploration of a number of issues concerning “Cage Studies,” the flood of academic literature from the past two decades that has attempted to situate Cage’s complex aesthetic stances within 20th- and 21st-century theories of history.


Author(s):  
Youn Kim

Listening is generally discussed in connection with auditory perception, with the ear as the primary perceptual organ. Recently, however, more comprehensive approaches are being emphasized along with the need to understand listening in the context of cultural and historical changes. This chapter investigates the plasticity of the idea of listening, both across disciplines and across historical contexts. By engaging with various discourses on seeing, hearing, and kinesthetics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the present chapter examines how a holistic conceptualization of listening that goes beyond the ear and functions in the context of the whole human body emerged and argues how understanding the past can shed light on the current understanding of music and the body.


2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 110-129
Author(s):  
Ruth Anna Spooner ◽  
Rachel Sutton-Spence ◽  
Miriam Nathan Lerner ◽  
Kenny Lerner

Abstract We report here on strategies used in the art of literary translation between ASL and English through the self-reflections of three ASL-English “translators” as they grapple with the varying degrees of translator visibility that push them beyond the traditional expectations of faceless translators into becoming performers of the translated texts. During translation, their faces, hands, and/or voices embody the text, becoming an integral part of the piece, which adds layers of complexity to the ways we think about the translator’s role and the process of translation. We hope that our reflections will challenge prevailing notions about creating, performing, and translating ASL literature, as well as raise questions about recasting the role of the translator and the body in sign language translation.


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