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The Crystallization of the Impossible: Derrida and Merleau-Ponty at the Threshold of Phenomenology
Author(s) -
Sabrina Aggleton
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
zenodo (cern european organization for nuclear research)
Language(s) - English
DOI - 10.5281/zenodo.260125
Subject(s) - phenomenology (philosophy) , psychoanalysis , philosophy , epistemology , psychology , aesthetics
I examine the ways that Jacques Derrida and Maurice Merleau-Ponty challenge phenomenology by rethinking presence as a relation of intimacy and alterity. Both argue that self-presence in phenomenology cannot exclude the mundane; it can only be, as Merleau-Ponty says, "a crystallization of the impossible." Drawing on this phrase, I challenge Derrida's reading of Merleau-Ponty, specifically his criticism that Merleau-Ponty privileges intimacy over alterity. Merleau-Ponty describes the chiasm as a hiatus, but whereas Derrida would insist the hiatus is an abyss, Merleau-Ponty conceives it ontologically as the fullness of an embrace. The radicality of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology can be rescued from Derrida's criticism by understanding how the embrace of self and world, located at the very threshold of contact, is a crystallization of the impossible

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