by Emily K. S. Wilkins
Presented at the Ryerson-Concordia graduate conference in December 2011. Re-re-edited for submission. Thanks to Dr. David Morris for comments.
This paper was written to elucidate the relationship between the senses, following the phenomenological claim... more
This paper was written to elucidate the relationship between the senses, following the phenomenological claim (Merleau-Ponty 1945) that each sense constitutes a discrete spatial ‘level’, a unique ‘world’. The evidence for this claim is found in the experience of dis-ability – in particular, the process of either losing the use of a sensory faculty (Cole 1998), or regaining the use of one through surgery – yet it poses a challenge to the typical understanding we have of the senses, which is their perfect harmony and agreement in perception. From this tension the question arises: how do the senses unify in experience, if they do not share an identical spatial structure? Following Merleau-Ponty’s analysis, I have argued that the senses do not comprise a structural (organic) unity, but rather are united by way of an anticipatory structure, a pre-conscious and pre-personal familiarity with the world. To elucidate this notion (and further, to indicate the radical revision of the subject-object binary which it contains) I have introduced the term “Fore-”Self, which makes reference to a similar anticipatory structure proposed by Heidegger (1927), which he termed the “Fore-Structure” of the understanding.
However, Heidegger goes on to claim that: “That which is disclosed in understanding – that which is understood – is already accessible in such a way that its ‘as-which’ can be made to stand out explicitly.” This, he says, “constitutes the interpretation.” This claim marks the point at which Merleau-Ponty departs from Heidegger’s claim; for although Merleau-Ponty would agree that a phenomenological interrogation of what is tacitly understood brings the “Fore-”Structure into view, he would disagree that such a system can (or should) be made explicit, or rendered determinate. The anticipatory structure of the pre-personal is no more transparent to personal existence, than the senses are transparent amongst themselves.
By explicating the unity of the senses as conceived by Merleau-Ponty, my paper charts the conceptual evolution of the “Fore-”Structure toward its emergence in the pre-personal, and makes a methodological amendment to Heidegger’s proposed system of ‘interpretation’. In place of an interpretation that aims to render explicit the relation between the senses (and by extension, the relation between the personal and the pre-personal), I argue for an elabouration of these relations along the structure of the metaphor. The metaphor functions by bringing two contradictory variables into a meaningful relationship, without collapsing their internal difference into a relationship of homogeneity, and without rendering their contents determinate. As such, the metaphor is uniquely suited to the task of comprehending not only the unity of the senses, but also the unity of self: the relationship of our conscious life to ‘that always obscure part of ourselves’ [php207], through which we become oriented toward the possible.
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