from Hypatia Volume 12, Number 1Domination and Dialogue in Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception
Shannon Sullivan
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Merleau-Ponty's claim in Phenomenology of Perception (1962) that the anonymous body guarantees an intersubjective world is problematic because it omits the particularities of bodies. This omission produces an account of "dialogue" with another in which I solipsistically hear only myself and dominate others with my intentionality. This essay develops an alternative to projective intentionality called "hypothetical construction," in which meaning is socially constructed through an appreciation of the differences of others.
While thankful to Merleau-Ponty for his work's emphasis upon the body, feminist philosophers have noted that in his work the body has no gender and that, as a result, his account of embodied existence is not neutral, but androcentric (see, for example, Allen 1982; Butler 1989; McMillan 1987; and Young 1990, 14-15, 141-209). In this paper, I demonstrate specifically how and why the assumption of a neutral human subject-body in Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception produces an account of embodied existence that is problematic. For Merleau-Ponty, bodily existence is projective and projection is part of an intersubjective dialogue between the embodied subject and the world. However, as we will see, because the body is an anonymous body that has no particularity--such as that provided by gender, sexuality, class, race, age, culture, nationality, individual experiences and upbringing, and more--Merleau-Ponty's intersubjective dialogue often turns out to be a solipsistic subject's monologue that includes an elimination of others in its very "communication" with them. Because the particularities of bodies have been overlooked, Merleau-Ponty's account of intersubjectivity is built upon the domination of others.
Rather than accept Merleau-Ponty's version of dialogue as domination, we should question and replace it with a type of dialogue that includes a dependence upon, not a domination of others. With the term "dependence," I am not suggesting submission as an ideal in opposition to that of Merleau-Ponty's domination. Rather, we need to disrupt and go beyond the worn-out opposition between domination and submission, aggression and passivity--oppositions that offer to the oppressed, as the only option for liberation, becoming the oppressor herself. I will suggest one such alternative model of dialogue at the end of this essay, which I will call hypothetical construction. By calling this model "hypothetical construction," I attempt to indicate a transactional or interactive way of building meaning in and for my world that is contingent upon others (thus hypothetical) because it is built with (con-structed) them.
Before we examine alternatives to projection, we must first investigate in more detail the meaning of "projective human existence." Merleau-Ponty tells us that projection is that "normal function" that is "centrifugal"; that is, it "throws out its own background," which is the backdrop of a meaningful world against and in which I live (Merleau-Ponty 1962, 110, 111). In contrast to the centrifugal power of projection is the centripetal movement that characterizes the bodily existence of Schneider, a man whose occipital lobe has been damaged by shrapnel and thus who does not inhabit his world normally. Centripetal existence operates against a given background. Schneider "spins" his existence in such a way that the givenness of his world is a force directed in toward the center, at which he is stationed and in which he is constrained. The meaning of his world is that which presses in against him. Rather than existing such that he spins out the backdrop that is the fund of the meaning in his life, he accepts and is restricted to the meaning that is given to him by the world.
Schneider's centripetal existence can be seen in his sexuality, specifically in the way he engages (or, rather, fails to fully engage) in sexual encounters. When in an erotic situation, he is incapable of "maintaining it or following it through to complete satisfaction," as is evident when his "half-fulfilled desire vanishes" if "orgasm occurs first in [his] partner and she moves away" (Merleau-Ponty 1962, 155-56). The ultimate meaning and result of this erotic situation are things that are given to Schneider by his world. Rather than take up the situation and follow it through to its fulfillment (i.e., his own orgasm), Schneider accepts and thus is restricted by the meaning that his partner has given to it.
Schneider's lack of projective powers means that for him "the world exists only as one ready-made or congealed, whereas for the normal person his projects polarize the world, bringing magically to view a host of signs which guide action" (Merleau-Ponty 1962, 112). The normal person has projects by which meaning is constituted in that person's world. Merleau-Ponty calls the function of producing meaning a "summoning," which refers to "the sense in which the medium summons an absent person and causes him to appear" (Merleau-Ponty 1962, 112). Things are "absent" in the sense that they are in the background of my existence and thus do not have a place in my existential field. They are summoned forth and given a place in my perceptual field, becoming a meaningful component of my world. In summoning figures from the background to the foreground, I pull the absent into the present; I "breath[e] a spirit into them" and thereby assign life and meaning to the previously lifeless and meaningless (Merleau-Ponty 1962, 121).
Significantly, my ability to summon or project does not mean that I am the sole creator of meaning in my world. Summoning and projection are bodily, and for that reason my world is objective. Merleau-Ponty describes the objectivity of my world in this way: "the normal subject penetrates into the object by perception, assimilating its structure into his substance, and through this body the object directly regulates his movements" (Merleau-Ponty 1962, 132, emphasis added). While my world does have the meaning that I assign to it, my contribution is only one half of the dialogue that takes place between subject and object, the dialogue that makes the relationship between subject and object reciprocal.
Merleau-Ponty's example of typing illustrates the way in which my body makes reciprocity possible: intentional threads run out from my body, reaching out toward the typewriter and incorporating the typewriter into my world in a meaningful way. Incorporation and assimilation occur because my body has a knowledge of the keyboard, built through my familiarity with the keyboard. The keyboard has a meaningful place within my world because, through my body's familiarity with the keyboard gained through the repeated use of it, a piece of plastic and metal has become an extension of my intentionality. That is, it has become the means by which I take up my world and find a place for my goals and aims in the world.
However, not only is the keyboard an extension of my intentions; in turn, the keyboard also regulates my body. "The subject who learns to type incorporates the key-bank space into his bodily space" (Merleau-Ponty 1962, 145). The keyboard has a certain shape and manner of operating that call for a certain bodily comportment in order to use it. Because of my familiarity with the keyboard, my body develops certain habits in using it; that is, my body knows how to use the keys without positing them as objective locations. My fingers learn how and where to stretch to type certain words, and that knowledge becomes sedimented and in-corp-orated--part of my body.
Thus, the habits that I develop because of the particular structure of the keyboard compose my body knowledge of the keyboard--that is, they compose me, which is to say that to some degree the keyboard contributes to my composition. This example is one way of illustrating Merleau-Ponty's point that "my life must have a significance that I do not constitute" (Merleau-Ponty 1962, 448). While existence is centrifugal and the body is the means by which I project my world, because it is the body that appropriates and constitutes my world, the constitution of my world is a dialogical one. Even as I throw out my world, I always already find myself situated within the world, surrounded by an unreflective fund of experience which is presupposed by my acts. My world is arranged around me such that it speaks to me of myself, but that arrangement happens by means of a "drawing together, by the subject, of the meaning diffused through the object . . . [as well as] by the object, of the subject's intentions" (Merleau-Ponty 1962, 132).
But what exactly does it mean to refer to the meaning that is diffused through an object? Where or how does the object get the meaning it contributes to my dialogue with it? These are important questions because in order to engage in a dialogue with another, the other's contribution must not be just my words coming from another's mouth. In other words, if projection is not to become the way in which a subject, albeit an embodied one, solipsistically constructs his world--which it would indeed become if the objects that exist in my world merely reflect myself and my meanings back to me--we must explore the question of how others have their meaning apart from me; that is, we must further explore how embodied existence guarantees that the subject encounters another in his or her world.
Merleau-Ponty's response to these questions is that an object can confront me with its own meaning because its meaning is a product of another subject's projects; that is, as we have seen, through projection things without significance become objects with significance. My intentionality turns a heavy object into a paperweight; because of my need to hold papers down, a random stone nearby becomes a cultural object. Human existence "projects itself into the environment in the shape of cultural objects" (Merleau-Ponty 1962, 354); "the spontaneous acts through which man has patterned his life [are] deposited, like some sediment, outside himself and lead an anonymous existence as things" (Merleau-Ponty 1962, 348). Things in the world are the objectified intentionality of a subject; things approach me with a meaning that is not mine because their meaning, at least in part, is constituted by a subject who is not me. Thus, because "in the cultural object, I feel the close presence of others" (Merleau-Ponty 1962, 348), a paperweight can enter my world with a meaning diffused throughout it. It is through my perception of a human act--that is, another human's possible use of this object that I ran across--that the object presents its meaning to me.
Because Merleau-Ponty claims that, due to the projective intentionality of other subjects, objects in my world have a meaning that is not mine, our investigation into the meaning of objects has led us to the question of the existence of other subjects. The meaning of an object as something independent from me hinges upon the existence of other projecting subjects, and so we must examine the way in which the body ensures the existence of other subjects. Merleau-Ponty acknowledges that we risk solipsism when we turn an objectifying gaze onto one another and see each other as something to observe, not someone with which to communicate. But this lack of communication is possible only because it takes place against a backdrop of possible communication, a backdrop provided by the body. Another may try to avoid communicating with me, "but let [another subject] . . . even make a gesture of impatience, and already he ceases to transcend me" (Merleau-Ponty 1962, 361). With the mere movement of the body, others become accessible to and communicate with me.
The body is able to be the backdrop that ensures communication because of its anonymity. Just "as the parts of my body together compromise a system, so my body and the other's are one whole, two sides of one and the same phenomenon, and the anonymous existence of which my body is the ever-renewed trace henceforth inhabits both bodies simultaneously" (Merleau-Ponty 1962, 354). Anonymous existence is that level of human existence that is pre-personal. Of course, there is a personal level of bodily existence in which I can distinguish my body from yours. But beneath that personal level is a pre-personal level of existence in which there is a commonness between and a quasi indifferentiation from other bodies. The original wholeness that precedes our individuation and the distinctions we make between the one and the many and between subject and object is the link that provides the possibility of communication between you and me (see Bourgeois and Rosenthal 1990, 122-23).
Complementary to the characterization of anonymous existence as pre-personal is Merleau-Ponty's description of it as impersonal (Merleau-Ponty 1962, 356). On a fundamental level, my existence is impersonal because the other's "living body has the same structure as mine" (Merleau-Ponty 1962, 353). I am like you and you are like me on some fundamental level. As the word "anonymous" indicates, my bodily identity is unknown in that it is not uniquely mine; in some sense it is that of anyone and thus of everyone. The trace of anonymous existence that appears in both of our bodies referred to by Merleau-Ponty is found in their similarity. Once again, this is not to say that my body is not mine, but that I "share" my body with others because of our bodies' similar structure.
In perhaps slightly different ways, both the descriptions "pre-personal" and "impersonal" point to a fundamental aspect of each of our bodies that is the same. This, of course, does not mean that our bodies are identical. Bodies do differ but beneath their differences lies an original similarity or common ground not yet marked by our differences. And this similarity provides the basic possibility for communication since, thanks to it, each of our bodies can grasp the corporeal intentions of another. Remembering that "I experience my own body as the power of adopting certain forms of behaviour and a certain world" (Merleau-Ponty 1962, 353-54), we can say that "it is precisely my body which perceives the body of another" because my body "discovers in that other body a miraculous prolongation of my own intentions, a familiar way of dealing with the world" (Merleau-Ponty 1962, 354). Because my body and your body are experienced on a level prior to individuation, we can recognize each other's intentions in one another. Because of the body and the knowledge it provides, we gain an understanding of each other that makes co-existence possible. I am not lost in my own world of meaning because when I see your body in action, the objects around it take on a significance beyond that which I give them. Those objects "are no longer simply what I myself could make of them, they are what this other pattern of behaviour is about to make of them" (Merleau-Ponty 1962, 353), the meaning of which I can understand thanks to our embodiedness. Just as the baby embodies the parent's intentions by pretending to bite as the parent playfully bites the baby's finger, I can recognize your manner of dealing with an object because I can perceive your intentions in my body. The ability to recognize the intentionality of others as they project themselves into the world teaches me that others exist.
However, Merleau-Ponty fails to realize that I have not necessarily been taught the existence of others in my easy recognition of the familiar in another. He wrongly assumes that I can depend on the body to provide me with a familiar world in my perception of pattern of behaviors. Instead, I often find such a familiar world because I can see nothing but my own intentions in another's behavior. Rather than making dialogue possible, conceiving of communication as prolonging my intentions actually impedes dialogue.
Suppose that I suggest to a friend an interpretation of some recent event, say the presidential election, and the pattern of behavior with which I am presented is this: a loud voice, a body and face that lean sharply toward me, and vigorous and forceful gestures in the air with his arms and hands. My body "replies" by drawing itself in; my body becomes still and quiet and, subtly but literally, constricts itself by pulling my arms and legs in and slightly tucking in my head to take up as little space as possible. If I am to "discover in that other body [i.e., my friends' body] a miraculous prolongation of my own intentions" (Merleau-Ponty 1962, 354), then what I discover is an angry and hostile attack of my suggestion. And, if my friend discovers in my body a prolongation of his own intentions, he discovers a haughty disinterest in and dismissal of his comments. But do my friend and I really hear what each other's body has said, or have we merely imposed our intentionality upon the other's body? It is true that if I manifested my friend's pattern of behavior, I would be angrily attacking another's ideas. As a woman and given my particular upbringing as a child, my body "reads" the vigor and force of the body that confronts me as evidence of hostile aggression. But I also know (as a result of many painful misunderstandings of him) that as a man my friend's style of engagement in and excitement by an idea includes the very behaviors described above. Furthermore, according to my reading of my body, my apparent withdrawal does not signal an intentional ignoring of my friend but instead means that I am protecting myself because I feel as if I am being attacked. If I omit the particularities of gender and upbringing from my reading of another's body and from my reading of his reading of my body and instead assume a pre-gender or "pre-upbringing" similarity of the meaning of bodily behavior, then I risk completely misunderstanding what his body communicates to me and what my body communicates to him.1
An Asian student of mine tends to tilt her head deferentially downward when talking with her professors so that she does not look them in the eye. While this pattern of behavior speaks of respect for authority in her home nation, it tends to speak of disrespect and inattentiveness in the United States. Unless her body is read as having a particular culture and nationality--and, I suspect, gender is especially relevant in this case as well--I and her other professors will not understand what her body communicates to us. Likewise, she has told me that the relatively loose and uncontained way that we in the United States comport our bodies, which I tend to read as being relaxed and confident, appears rude and disrespectful to her. (Mis)reading the familiar in each other's bodies in this case would tell both the student and her professors that the other was disrespectful, producing hostile and disrespectful working relationships between them out of sincere attempts to be friendly and easy-going in the one case and polite and respectful in the other.
Examples of such miscommunication are easy to come by once we begin searching for them. The drooping, slumping body of a student in my class tends to speak to me of negligence and laziness, but it might merely be a sign of exhaustion and not necessarily indicate boredom or disinterest in my class at all. A friend's cold, unapproachable body may be a sign of worry over and preoccupation with something at work, not a rebuff of my attentions as I had thought. A colleague's touching and squeezing my arm might be merely an expression of friendship and not a sexual approach, as it seemed. A neighbor's vigorous snow shoveling might be an instance of exercise and not an expression of pent-up anger or frustration, as I thought. 2
My goal with these examples has not been to give exhaustive accounts of which particularities are relevant or how they are relevant to the meaning of the situations at hand. All the examples need much greater detail about the bodies involved because the particularities in each example a/effect, in different ways, the way I (mis)read the behaviors in each of the situations (and they, mine). Rather, the examples illuminate the problematic nature of Merleau-Ponty's characterization of the body and its patterns of behavior as anonymous. By appealing to the anonymous body in his explanation of intersubjectivity, Merleau-Ponty adheres to the very philosophical tradition with which he was trying to break. Throughout the history of philosophy, philosophers have claimed that there is an essential "core" in humans that underlies all of their cultural (and other) differences. Some have called this core "Reason"; others, "the Universal Mind"; and still others, "the Transcendental Ego." Merleau-Ponty differs from these philosophers merely by locating this fundamental core in the body. On his account, individual bodies have some sort of universally shared commonality that is then overlaid by the differences that our particularities give them. While such an account eliminates our concerns about how community might be possible in the face of differences between people, it does so at the expense of the differences themselves.
If, however, we hold that our bodies are the intersections of gender, race, class, age, sexuality, nationality, culture, experiences and upbringing, and more, and thus that they have no essential core unmarked by these differences, do we not then affirm people's differences at the expense of possible community? While the question of communicative co-existence does become a much more complicated and difficult one when we reject the anonymous body, this does not necessarily mean that dialogue with another is then impossible. Nor does it necessarily mean that no common ground between bodies can exist. It does mean, however, that we cannot assume that the body automatically provides a common ground, uninscribed by differences and particularities, as the basis for communication and community. There are no shortcuts provided by the body 3 --to assume that there are, as Merleau-Ponty does with his positing of an anonymous body, is merely to impose my way of understanding and taking up my world on another and thus fail to realize that others may take up their worlds differently. When I impose on another the way that I take up my world--which is constituted by the particularities of my culture, gender, sexuality, class, nationality, race, upbringing, positions of authority that I am in, and so on--I dominate her by refusing to recognize who she is--that is, all the particularities that constitute her. I dominate her by taking my particular intentionality as normative and overlooking the possibly different contributions of meaning to the world that another intentional subject might make. Avoiding such domination means that any kind of common ground between subjects must take those subjects' differences into account. Thus a common ground is something for which we must strive, not a starting point from which we depart. Our similarities are something which must be created so that we can co-exist as subjects, not something we must assume as a transcendental condition for the possibility of communication. 4
Merleau-Ponty writes that embodied existence is not self-transparent. However, his insistence upon the opacity of the body seems to lapse when he gazes upon the body of another, turning his phenomenology of perception into something Elizabeth Spelman might call "boomerang perception," in which "I look at you and come right back to myself" (Spelman 1988, 12). Although Merleau-Ponty at one point admits that another "may one day shatter the image that I have formed of him" (Merleau-Ponty 1962, 361), we need to remind ourselves not to slip back, as Merleau-Ponty does, into thinking that others' bodies speak to me in a straightforward manner that needs no interpretation by my (different) body. I cannot assume that I hear another's body correctly, and if I listen without paying attention to the particularities of others' bodies--which includes recognizing that different particularities, such as gender, race and class, may affect our (mis)readings of each other in different ways 5 --I am almost sure to misunderstand. In that case, communication does not occur between me and another because others are only reflections of me back to myself.
Whether impersonal or pre-personal, Merleau-Ponty's anonymous body imposes a commonality upon different bodies and in doing so, impedes the very dialogue between embodied subjects that his account seeks to make possible. The anonymity of the body reveals itself to be a naïve assumption of a primordial connectedness between others rather than an explanation of how community might be achieved given the particular ways that various people live their bodies. Only if we rid ourselves of Merleau-Ponty's anonymous body, do we create a genuine option of breaking out of the solipsistic subjectivity against which Merleau-Ponty tries to argue. Taking seriously the idea of others as different from me does not make community impossible; rather, it is crucial to any sort of genuine possibility for dialogue with others.
How then might dialogue be achieved? We have already taken the first step when we begin to question whether what we assumed was taking place actually is occurring. The first step is akin to Socratic wisdom/ignorance: we must realize that communication may not be occurring before we can begin to work toward it. In attending to bodies as woven with a variety of different, particular strands, dialogue with another becomes possible because acknowledging those bodily structures disturbs my assumption that I already know what another's body will say to me. 6 Rather than try to discover the familiar in another, we need to first make what seems familiar to us strange. 7 When I am open to the strangeness of another--that is, when I have rid myself of the assumption that I already know what another says to me--then a second step becomes possible: not intentionality as projective, which shows itself to be a solipsistic imposition of meaning upon my world since it is based upon my "dialogue" with myself, but intentionality as constructive, made possible by hypothetical construction, in which I offer meaning to another as a hypothesis.
While an offer of a hypothesis may be a strange metaphor (we usually say that we put forth--pro-ject--a hypothesis, after all), I use the phrase deliberately. Hypothesis is my contribution to the construction of the meaning of an encounter with another. In contrast to the imposition of meaning provided by projection, hypothesis is that meaning which requests and is non-dogmatically open to suggestions and modifications provided by another. It includes what Lorraine Code calls a "resourceful" skepticism, which is not the nihilistic belief that no meaning can be found but instead a wariness of hasty conclusions and an appreciation of and readiness to reconsider one's judgments (Code 1995, 55). Resourceful skepticism is important because the meaning of a particular encounter or situation is transactional; that is, meaning is seen as something to be mutually negotiated and developed by all the parties involved in the situation. Hypothetical construction thus suggests a way that my world takes on meaning with and through others because meaning is seen as a con-struction: a building-together of meaning through debate, conflict, negotiation, disagreement, and agreement. That my hypothesis (that is, the meaning I initially give the encounter) is offered, not projected, indicates that the meaning is an invitation presented to another, which he or she can choose to accept, reject, revise, or supplement as part of the negotiation of meaning. The hypothesis is offered as an invitation to another to participate in and thus make possible a negotiated construction of meaning.
Hypothetical construction is a conscious, interpretative activity, which works to disrupt the habitual ways that we "read" each other as we take up our world. By disrupting those readings and bringing conscious reflection to bear upon them, hypothetical construction makes possible their reworking so that we can broaden the meaning of our world and, if desired, change the habitual ways we interact bodily with each other. Put another way, hypothetical construction disturbs my intentionality, allowing me to alter my intentionality such that it becomes constructive instead of projective. This is not to claim that our phenomenological intentionality is something we consciously choose, as if we could, merely through a sheer act of will, decide how we wanted to take up our world. We always already find ourselves in our world, having taken it up in our own particular "style," with our particular bodily practices and habits. But hypothetical construction does acknowledge the plasticity of our intentionality and the interconstituency of the body and mind, the unconscious and conscious, the automatic and the willed. As Elizabeth Grosz has argued, "the body is a pliable entity whose determinate form is provided . . . through the interaction of modes of psychical and physical inscription" (Grosz 1994, 187). Her Möbius strip model, in which subjectivity is conceived as a three-dimensional, inverted figure-eight, challenges the duality of body and mind without collapsing them into a monism. The model helps us to see how the body and mind twist into one another, mutually a/effecting one another. Once again, this is not to grant the subject a disembodied will. Rather, it is to conceive of the subject as corporeal and material--that is, to think the body "as the very 'stuff' of subjectivity" (Grosz 1994, ix)--but in a non-physicalist manner that recognizes the psychic element of our corporeality.
The psychic element of our corporeality means that we can gradually reshape the corporeal way we take up our world, that we can, to some degree, restyle our intentionality. By consciously thinking of my bodily comportment as a hypothesis, as an offering of meaning to another, I can become aware of what the meaning that I offer others is; that is, I read my own body, as well as the bodies of others, and my reading of myself needs to be done interactively with them. I am not transparent to myself, nor is there necessarily only one way to read my body (or others' bodies). For these reasons, I cannot claim absolute authority for my particular interpretation of my body. 8 For example, in the case of my seemingly aggressive and hostile friend, I read my shrinking, withdrawing body as a message to my friend that he was overwhelming me and a request that he "back off" a bit. But, because on the model of hypothetical construction, meaning is a social product, that interpretation is no more "right" (or "wrong") than his interpretation of my body as haughty and aloof. Like all texts to be read, my body supports a number of possible interpretations (which is not to say that there are no incorrect interpretations), and the plurality of them and thus the ambiguity of my body must be taken into account by all parties involved when trying to communicate with one another. The meaning of my body, as well as that of others, is intersubjective; that is, it is a product of consensus that comes about through the "dialogue" that others and I undertake in unspoken, bodily ways, as well as verbal ones. 9 For that reason, I should see my own particular interpretation of my body as a hypothesis or as a "working truth" about the meaning of my body that is subject to revision based on the contribution of meaning made by another.
With the awareness of the plurality of the meaning of my body--and only once I have this awareness--I can deliberately and consciously comport myself differently. When interacting with my aggressive friend, this means that I look him in the eye, I lean toward him, actively listening to him, and I speak up, even if only to tell him that he is overwhelming me. At first, this will be difficult and awkward; it will jar with the usual way I take up my world and not feel "natural." But, after time and with practice, it will begin to change what counts as "natural" for me; that is, my bodily habits and style will begin to in-corp-orate these new practices, gradually changing the way that I habitually take up my world. This means that when interacting with my friend I am no longer uncomfortable being fully present, both bodily and verbally, in a lively and engaging conversation.
I have described the process of altering intentionality via hypothetical construction as if only one party is involved, but implicit in my description and vital to the success of hypothetical construction--that is, to dialogue and community with another--is the participation of the other parties in the process as well. In hypothetical construction, the other person is also (re)reading his or her body, learning about the multiple messages it sends in its conversation with another, and coming to see his or her own reading of his or her body as a hypothesis. With that knowledge, he or she can begin to change his or her bodily comportment and habits, gradually incorporating new ways of taking up his/her world. In the case of my friend, he realized that his body communicated an aggressive attack, as well as excitement about the issue at hand. Knowing that, he began to tone down his bodily gestures, tempering them so that they were less strident and intimidating.
Furthermore, my friend's change in bodily comportment is intimately related to my own. My blossoming assertiveness helps bring about my friend's tempering of himself: because I no longer withdraw from my friend and our encounter, he no longer must go to extremes to draw me into the conversation. And, since he no longer goes to such extremes, I no longer tend to withdraw, which in turn gives me more space in which to approach him, and so on. Thus what hypothetical construction involves is something like a hermeneutic circle. In order for me to stop withdrawing, my friend must temper his aggressiveness, but in order for him to temper himself, I must stop withdrawing. How then does the change in our intentionality ever begin? As is the case with all hermeneutic circles, there is no "proper" starting place to prescribe. One must find a way to jump into the circle, making a small change at one point on the circle, which has the potential to affect the entire circle itself.
Importantly, the circular change that hypothetical construction helps make possible is not one in which it is necessary--or even desired--that each party's comportment becomes identical to one another. That is, the point of hypothetical construction is not that all differences are smoothed out in the process of constructing the communal meaning of bodies and their encounters with one another. Rather, it is to negotiate a meaning that acknowledges and respects the various and different meanings that individuals bring to the negotiation. Precisely because different interpretations are respected as valid in hypothetical construction, modifications in bodily comportment may be desired to facilitate improved dialogue. Far from being a homogenization of and disrespect for different interpretations, modifying one's behavior in accord with another's interpretation can be a profound acknowledgement of and respect for that different interpretation.
Respecting another's differences in and through a social construction of meaning suggests that meaning can no longer be thought of solely as a product of a single subject's intentionality. In the case of my friend and me, this means that I realize that I am haughty (as well as overwhelmed) and he recognizes that he is aggressive (as well as excited) even though neither of us intend to be so. That is, each of the other's interpretations of us "count" toward the meaning of our behavior as much as our own interpretations of ourselves do. Thus, for me to address my and my friend's difficulties when communicating is not simply a matter of my getting my friend to realize what I intend, but rather a matter of my recognizing that my haughtiness interferes with our communication. Unless I am unconcerned about improving the dialogue between us, I am led to try to change my body's comportment so that it is no longer haughty, or at least no longer haughty to the degree that it is off-putting to my friend. This does not mean that my bodily gestures must become as vigorous as my friend's in order to convey excitement at and interest in his ideas; my body will probably always be more reserved than his. But it does mean changing the way I take up my world and enter into conversations with him out of consideration for him and his particularities, which lead him to read my body as haughty. Likewise, out of an acknowledgement of and respect for my interpretation of him as aggressive, for which my particularities are responsible, my friend is also led to change his bodily comportment, not so that he becomes as reserved as I am but so that his gestures are less vigorous than they were. Thus, the circle of change in which my friend and I involve ourselves does mean that our bodily comportment is made more similar to that of the other. But moderating our bodies such that their comportments are not extreme does not mean that the extremes are brought to the same point somewhere in the middle of them. Instead, it means finding different points for each of us on a continuum between the extremes through a negotiation that accommodates each of our differences as well as provides for greater communication between us.
Focusing on the hermeneutic circle involved in hypothetical construction helps us recognize that such a circle was already in play between me and another. That is, hypothetical construction makes explicit the bodily dialogue that always already occurs between me and others that I encounter prior to any conscious reflection. For example, before we had even begun the process of hypothetical construction and thus recognized the meaning circulating between our bodies, the meaning of my encounter with my friend was being constructed by our mutual behavior. My reading of him as hostile lead to his reading of me as haughty, which lead to a bodily response on his part that only seemed to confirm my initial reading of his aggressiveness (and so on). This reading of one another is a result of projection, that is, of easily finding the familiar in the body of another through my dialogue with her. Hypothetical construction, which makes dialogue explicit, is crucial in order to prevent the assumption of the familiar in another and thus the narrow reading and misunderstanding of her. We are always intersubjectively working together to construct our world and its meaning, as Merleau-Ponty has claimed, but unless we occasionally reflect on that construction in something like the manner I have shown, we only project meaning onto one another. The domination of others through projection is precisely the result of Merleau-Ponty's account of intersubjectivity: I dominate others in that I eliminate what is particular, unique, or different about them when I impose my own familiar meaning upon them. On Merleau-Ponty's account, any dialogue with another is a sort of ventriloquism in which I place my "words" in the other's "mouth," which can happen in both bodily and verbal ways. When dialogue is only a covert form of ventriloquism, my intersubjective world turns out to be a solipsistic one in which I encounter only myself and my own meaning. Thus, on Merleau-Ponty's account, I eliminate others in my world, as well as the possibility for surprise by and wonder in the face of my world. 10
While different from the account in Phenomenology of Perception that we have been examining, Merleau-Ponty's later answers to the question of how dialogue with another might occur are equally unsatisfactory. In The Visible and the Invisible, Merleau-Ponty appears to offer a solution to the problem of solipsism found in Phenomenology of Perception and an account of intersubjectivity complementary to that of hypothetical construction. In the chapter entitled "The Intertwining--The Chiasm," we find that at this point in his work, Merleau-Ponty has moved from the phenomenological explanation of corporeal communication presented in Phenomenology of Perception to an ontological account of the condition for the possibility of corporeal communication: the presence of the subject and its world for each other (Grosz 1994, 93-103; Madison 1981, 166-84). They are present to one another because of what Merleau-Ponty calls "flesh," a type of Being (but not itself a being) of which subject and object are articulations. Flesh is neither matter nor substance, but an "element" or "prototype" of "Being" that is "the formative medium of the object and the subject" (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 136, 139, 147). Flesh is "a single 'thing' folded back on itself" (Grosz 1994, 95), the "folding" of which gives birth to both subject and object and their interpenetration. Thus the notion of flesh speaks to us of the intertwining of and exchange ("chiasm") between subject and object, which results in a fundamental ambiguity and possible reciprocity between them. As Merleau-Ponty's example of a person's right hand touching her left hand when clasping her hands together demonstrates, each of her hands are both touching and being touched (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 133-34). They are ambiguously subject and object at the same time, reversing their positions as subject-touching and object-touched. While Merleau-Ponty goes on to qualify his claim about reversibility by stating that it is never achieved in fact, but always slips away just as it is about to be realized, he insists this is not a failure because we do experience the transition from subject to object even if the "hinge" attaching them is hidden from us (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 148).
The ambiguity, reversibility, and intertwining of subject and object described by Merleau-Ponty in The Visible and the Invisible appear to be helpful contributions to an account of how dialogue with another might be possible because these notions attempt to bridge the gap between subject and object, so that contact and communication between them can occur, without eradicating the difference between them by collapsing them into one another. Yet, because the notions of ambiguity, reversibility, and intertwining are based in the ontological notion of flesh, Merleau-Ponty's later work does not assist us with the formation of an account of how dialogue might occur. The hinge about which Merleau-Ponty spoke above is the flesh, which is to say that flesh is the common link that makes connection and communication between subject and object possible. Because a hinge is a third thing that joins two other, separate things, more accurate than "hinge" would be to call flesh the common fabric in which subject and object are differentiable, interwoven threads (see Madison 1984, 174). Subject and object are ambiguous, reversible, and intertwined because they are part of a common Being. That is, in his later work Merleau-Ponty answers our ontic question of how subject and object are different and yet can understand or communicate with one another with the ontological claim that behind our differences lies a sameness--the flesh--that we are.
Replying in this way answers our question of how we might practically create a common point of understanding by asserting that we already share such a common point on an ontological level. This answer is no answer at all but instead a change of the subject. 11 To be fair to Merleau-Ponty, the question he attempts to answer in his later work is not the one I having been asking throughout this essay, as I imply with my use of the term "ontic" above. That question--an ontic one about how particular beings with our particular differences might practically participate in a dialogue with one another that does not overlay another's meaning and perspective with our own--was the one addressed in Phenomenology of Perception, albeit unsuccessfully. However, in his later work, Merleau-Ponty no longer addresses human beings on an ontic level. Rather he moves to a discussion about the Being of beings, which means that we should no longer "merely say--along with intentional analysis--that subject and object do not exist independent of each
other. . . ; for if they exist together and are correlative, this can only be because they are both derivative expressions of a more profound reality that binds them together and which guarantees their cohesion as well as their (relative) opposition" (Madison 1981, 175). With his turn toward the ontological, Merleau-Ponty is no longer concerned with how cohesion and opposition are managed on an ontic level, which means that it may seem unfair to criticize his later work for not providing us with discussions of those matters.However, the fact that he does not discuss these matters and instead shifts from the ontic to the ontological is precisely my concern with and criticism of his later work. 12 By moving from the ontic to the ontological, the topic of discussion for Merleau-Ponty is no longer individual beings but Being, which--since it is neither a being nor a group of beings nor a description of the general characteristics of beings--tells us very little about the concrete, practical ways in which beings live and thus in no way contributes to an understanding of how dialogue with one another might be made possible. This criticism is, in many ways, merely a statement of my personal distaste for ontologies of Being and my preference for pragmatic, practical, "concrete" philosophy, a defense of which would take us far from Merleau-Ponty to a discussion of what philosophy should be and what role an ontology might play in it. 13 Rather than enter into that discussion, I return to Merleau-Ponty's notions of ambiguity and intertwining to suggest that they are promising concepts for use in an account of how dialogue might be possible, but only if detached from the ontology of the flesh that grounds them in Merleau-Ponty's later work. 14 What they might mean apart from an ontology has not been shown by Merleau-Ponty. To construct an ontic meaning for them would involve the "down to earth," practical work of talking about how particular beings interact and how they might change the ways they interact, a project to which I have tried to contribute here.
I will close by revisiting the example of (alleged) sexual inertia discussed earlier, redescribing it as an encounter in which the two people were engaged in hypothetical construction, instead of projective intentionality. Doing so allows us to see that it is not necessarily the case that the pattern of behavior presented to us in the example is an instance of a man's failure to properly follow through in a sexual situation. Instead, the situation might be one in which not just a man, but a man and his partner were constructing the meaning the encounter was to have. Considered as an instance of hypothetical construction, the encounter could have resulted in orgasm for the man, but it did not in this case because his partner's desires and needs were an important component of the encounter. In the encounter, the man's behavior proposed his own orgasm as a hypothetical meaning for the sexual encounter; the hypothesis was then open for revision and change due to his partner's hypothesis about what the encounter might be made to mean. Since his partner's experience was an important part of the meaning of the encounter, then a vanishing erection did not signal a "half-fulfilled desire," but rather indicated a desire that had been satisfied in the mutual pleasure found in the partner's orgasm. In that case, the result of the sexual encounter was not a failure of projection on the part of the man, but a success in constructing a meaningful situation on the part of both parties involved.
It is important to note that the purpose of my redescription of Schneider's sexual encounter is not to engage in a discussion of whether or not Schneider in particular is dysfunctional. I trust that he is. Rather, my point is directed at Merleau-Ponty, who, because of his account of projective human existence, tends to interpret behaviors of the type exhibited in this example as dysfunctional. I suggest that he sees them as dysfunctional because, due to projective intentionality, he finds only himself in the situation he is assessing. Merleau-Ponty interprets a body with a once-erect-now-deflating penis that has not experienced orgasm as a failure and a sexual encounter between a man and a woman as meaningful only if the man has an orgasm, telling us a great deal about himself but nothing about what the encounter means to the people involved in it. Of course, it might mean the same thing to them as it does to Merleau-Ponty, and we have no particular reason to believe that the two people were participating in hypothetical construction, as I have portrayed them above. However, Merleau-Ponty has no way of knowing if they experience the sexual encounter as a failure because he is not open to the surprise that the others' bodies might have in store for him--the surprise that behaviors of the sort in question can be an instance of a "successful" encounter, the meaning of which was mutually constructed.
In contrast to projective intentionality, hypothetical construction, and the constructive, dialogical intentionality it helps develop, allow us to make room for surprise in our world. Of course, the flip-side of surprise is often the disturbing and disorienting. By participating in dialogue with another, I not only experience surprise and wonder at her differences but also find myself and my readings of the world disrupted and challenged, upsetting and disorienting the familiar and comfortable style with which I take up my world, an experience which can be painful. Because projective intentionality discourages such painful challenge and disruption, it may make hypothetical construction and constructive intentionality seem an unattractive alternative to it, but only if what I seek is a world solely of my own making. If, instead, what I seek is a genuinely intersubjective world, rich with the plurality and particularities of others, then hypothetical construction can be welcomed for the surprise, wonder, and challenge that it brings.
NOTES
I would like to thank Phillip McReynolds, John Compton, William McKenna, and the editors and anonymous reviewers of Hypatia for their helpful comments and suggestions on this paper and its "parent" paper, of which this is the "child."
1. I am not here claiming or assuming that all men are essentially aggressive and that all women are essentially passive. This account reflects my experience as a woman who understands herself as avoiding aggression and confrontation. However, I would argue that the example illuminates more than just my own experience. Because of the way gender has been historically and socially constructed, women often tend to be less, and men more aggressive. Since gender construction is real even though it is not essential, it must be taken into account when constructing a phenomenology of the body.
2. Of course, the meaning of these bodily gestures and behaviors is more likely ambiguous and not dichotomous as my examples here suggest. However, the ambiguity of bodily behavior only strengthens my point that we cannot merely assume we have read another's body correctly by projecting our own intentionality upon it.
3. Here I adapt Elizabeth Spelman's caution that "there are no short cuts through women's lives" (Spelman 1988, 187).
4. For more on the suggestion that we start with our differences, that difference need not be seen as equivalent as the end of community, and that similarity is a construction, not a given starting-point, see Haber (1994, 113-34) and Spelman (1991, 13).
5. Lugones argues that we should be wary of the "trick of racism" that leads us to think of all differences as the same when theorizing about them (1991, 41).
6. McMillan makes a similar point when she discusses the subversiveness of the presence of others' perceptual fields, although her comments focus on the disruptive power of one particular "strand" of difference, that of "the female other" (1987, 366).
7. Here I borrow and adapt the phrase "make the familiar strange" from William McKenna (personal conversation), who views such a task as the main goal of phenomenology.
8. Code makes a similar point about our inability to claim absolute authority for conceptions of ourselves, although her point is not made with particular respect to interpretations of the body (1995, 51).
9. The verbal component of dialogue in hypothetical construction is particular important for bringing out the ambiguity of bodily behavior. That is, it is important for my realization that there are multiple ways to read my body (and that you read my body differently than I do) that you tell me how you read my body.
10. See Grosz (1994, 192) on the importance of finding a position that allows for us to be surprised by the other, and Irigaray (1984, 72-82) on wonder's ability to prevent assimilation of the other into myself.
11. To the extent that this reply does answer our question, it only seems to repeat Merleau-Ponty's claim in Phenomenology of Perception that we need not strive for common ground because we already have a point of contact from which to begin our dialogue and which guarantees our communication. In this way and for all their differences, the concepts of flesh and the anonymous body seem to function in a similar manner in Merleau-Ponty's later and earlier works.
12. See Irigaray (1984, 151-84) for a different assessment of the problems in The Visible and the Invisible, one that is concerned about the "closed system" and "solipsistic relation to the maternal" set up by Merleau-Ponty in that work.
13. I find an ontology in which the self is relational (Whitbeck 1983) or transactional (Dewey 1988) a promising place to start this discussion. However, it is important that the discussion not remain an ontological one--that is, ontology must eventually be brought to bear upon the concrete specifics of people's everyday lives. As Dewey would argue, a discussion of ontology should not be merely for the sake of ontology itself, but for the sake of creating conceptual tools that can be used to produce change in and improvement of people's lives.
14. I omit reversibility because of my concern that it entails the interchangeability of subjects, which would deny their particular "locatedness" and thus which I do not want to endorse.
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