CONTACT/IMPROV: A SYNAESTHETIC REJOINDER TO DERRIDA'S READING OF MERLEAU-PONTY

"Haptocentrism" reduces the multiple aporias of touch brilliantly analyzed by Aristotle in De Anima to an anthropology of the hand as "the" organ of touch.2 While the critique of the metaphysics of sight aims at subject-object relations, Derrida's critique of haptics aims at...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Philosophy today (Celina) 2007-01, Vol.51, p.42
Main Author: Flakne, April
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aristotle
Derrida, Jacques
Hierarchies
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1908-61)
Metaphysics
Otherness
Philosophy
Synaesthesia
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:"Haptocentrism" reduces the multiple aporias of touch brilliantly analyzed by Aristotle in De Anima to an anthropology of the hand as "the" organ of touch.2 While the critique of the metaphysics of sight aims at subject-object relations, Derrida's critique of haptics aims at apperception, "the feeling that one feels," especially as this is cast as a mode of self-reflection governed by the human hand associated with human making and mastery. Instead, along with Nancy, Derrida endorses a view of the body or flesh as multiple and fluid points of contact, a view that seeks to reconfigure oppositions between integrity and alterity.3 Now Derrida admits that "The [haptic] tradition becomes complicated, with the risk of being interrupted, in Merleau-Ponty' (OT, 41)."
ISSN:0031-8256
2329-8596
DOI:10.5840/philtoday200751supplement6