Overwriting the body
Saint-Exupéry, Merleau-Ponty, Nancy
pp. 293-308
Abstract
In this paper I examine two limit cases in which the body is threatened: the experience of emergency as described by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's Flight to Arras, and the experience of illness as described by Jean-Luc Nancy in his autobiographical essay The Intruder. In the first case, the everyday relationship to the body is revealed to be illusionary; the body becomes a powerful yet obedient machine. In the second case, the everyday relationship to the body is also suspended, but this time in favor of a weak and objectified body. I argue that these apparently opposite experiences actually presuppose a similar notion of the everyday body, which I further conceptualize, through Merleau-Ponty and his analysis of the body, as deficient and therefore inherently repressed. The paper concludes with the suggestion that writing about one's own body may be seen as a way to fight the everyday tendency towards repression, and I propose overwriting as a term that can capture this process.
Publication details
Published in:
(2016) Continental Philosophy Review 49 (3).
Pages: 293-308
DOI: 10.1007/s11007-015-9344-2
Full citation:
Dorfman Eran (2016) „Overwriting the body: Saint-Exupéry, Merleau-Ponty, Nancy“. Continental Philosophy Review 49 (3), 293–308.