Feminist Reflections on the Nature/culture Distinction in Merleau-pontyan Philosophy

Open Access
- Author:
- O'mara, Cameron Matthew
- Graduate Program:
- Philosophy
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- April 16, 2013
- Committee Members:
- Leonard Richard Lawlor, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Leonard Richard Lawlor, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Robert Lambert Bernasconi, Committee Member
Veronique Marion Foti, Committee Member
Dr Shannon Sullivan, Committee Member
Claire Mary Colebrook, Committee Member - Keywords:
- Phenomenology
Feminist Philosophy
Nature
Culture
Animality
Merleau-Ponty - Abstract:
- The purpose of this project is twofold: first, I trace the concepts of “nature” and “culture” throughout Merleau-Ponty’s corpus, drawing from select texts that highlight significant moments in the development of his thought. I show how nature and culture function as a problematic dualism that Merleau-Ponty is unable to collapse until his third course on Nature given at the Collège de France. I demonstrate that throughout Merleau-Ponty’s works, the human-animal relation serves to both trouble, yet reiterate this distinction. It is only when Merleau-Ponty begins to understand culture as institution, and to theorize the expressivity inherent in nature via institution, that he finds the means of positing the animal and the human, and later, the natural and the cultural, within a new model of difference that does not suggest an ontological divide between them. This model is what Merleau-Ponty calls the “flesh.” Second, I show how understanding the evolution of these concepts provides us with new ways to use Merleau-Ponty to theorize sexual difference and a multiplicity of gendered identities. I argue that situating nature and culture in the flesh allows us to advance beyond Luce Irigaray’s critique that the flesh does not provide for genuine difference. Following the model of the human-animal Ineinander, I offer a new reading of the flesh as an origin that resists any one gendered signification. Understanding the concept of the flesh in its historical place and the significance of the nature/culture divide in its development within Merleau-Ponty’s corpus opens up new possibilities for feminist appropriations of this ontology. This project thus serves to contribute another dimension to the small, but growing literature that seeks to employ Merleau-Pontyan philosophy in order to account for sexual difference beyond the binary.