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Papers by eleni lorandou

In Merleau-Ponty's lectures at the Collège de France, there is a surprizing expression about the ... more In Merleau-Ponty's lectures at the Collège de France, there is a surprizing expression about the body: "machine à vivre", or "machine à voir", that he takes up from the writings of Paul Valéry. This metaphor occurs in the first lectures, when Merleau-Ponty describes the implicit coordination of perception and motility. It is the arrangement, or what he also calls the montage, of our sentient body that defines the meaning of what we perceive, or in other word the "body schema", defined for example in the Résumés as "open to all other bodies that I see, a lexicon of corporeality in general, a system of equivalences between the inside and the outside" (p. 178). This sensing body is also a desiring body, and both these aspects intertwine to form the realm of the unconscious as "sensing itself"; the "primordial unconscious" is this machinic dimension of the body. Merleau-Ponty's approach to the unconscious can be compared and confronted to Lacan's conception under this notion: the automaton, the machine. Such a confrontation should help answering the question of the nature of the unconscious, and thus bridge the gap between phenomenology and psychoanalysis. I will start with describing the use of the word "machine" in Merleau-Ponty's lectures; I will then show the link between this notion and his discussion of psychoanalysis; the third stage will be to present Lacan's conception of the automaton, and then Guattari's notion of the desiring machine. My conclusion will be to articulate and combine those three conceptions and show in what direction Merleau-Ponty might have gone if he had had the chance to develop his views further.

Conference Presentations by eleni lorandou

‘Mimesis as the rhythm of appearance: art and transcendence in Jean-Luc Nancy and Merleau-Ponty’, 2019

In “The pleasure of drawing”, Jean-Luc Nancy refers to drawing as the true form of the thing. Th... more In “The pleasure of drawing”, Jean-Luc Nancy refers to drawing as the true form of the thing. This ‘true’ form is not an already accomplished form but one that involes the gesture that traces it and brings it into appearance. In this context, mimesis is nothing other than the “rhythmics of appearance” through which the mystery of the rising or suspension of the form is recognised. This is where the pleasure of artistic creation lies. For J-L Nancy, drawing reveals, that what one calls “aesthetic” concerns a “feeling” [sentir] but a feeling that is not related to a sensory faculty that records information. It is rather a sensing [ressentir], a “making sense of” or of “letting it be formed”. The donation of form in perception and the aesthetic experience that this givenness entails are apprehended in terms of the encounter of an “outside” and an “inside”, an encounter that is initiated by feeling. In this context, the aesthetic pleasure occurs only insofar as this intertwining remains exposed as such, it is experienced and felt, it is not resolved in indistinction. It is through this opening and sharing between an inside and an outside referring incessantly to one another that the subject (as a relational force, active as much as passive] “affects” itself by distinguishing itself from its own self and by experiencing itself as distinct—“the other in itself, experiencing this alterity as its own, experiencing its self as other”. In “The eye and the mind”, Merleau-Ponty, with reference to the art of painting and the experiences of painters such a Cézanne and Klee describes how space and content merge in their coming-into-being through the visible, where “the body is no longer the means of vision and touch, but their depository”. Here, too, it is question of a sensibility that constitutes itself from within, while the artist finds himself “caught” in a phenomenalising process in which, nevertheless, he partakes. It is not, then, question of how to understand artistic creation but rather of how to make oneself open enough to perceive it as the manifestation of an ontological excess and an act of originating transcendence

In Merleau-Ponty's lectures at the Collège de France, there is a surprizing expression about the ... more In Merleau-Ponty's lectures at the Collège de France, there is a surprizing expression about the body: "machine à vivre", or "machine à voir", that he takes up from the writings of Paul Valéry. This metaphor occurs in the first lectures, when Merleau-Ponty describes the implicit coordination of perception and motility. It is the arrangement, or what he also calls the montage, of our sentient body that defines the meaning of what we perceive, or in other word the "body schema", defined for example in the Résumés as "open to all other bodies that I see, a lexicon of corporeality in general, a system of equivalences between the inside and the outside" (p. 178). This sensing body is also a desiring body, and both these aspects intertwine to form the realm of the unconscious as "sensing itself"; the "primordial unconscious" is this machinic dimension of the body. Merleau-Ponty's approach to the unconscious can be compared and confronted to Lacan's conception under this notion: the automaton, the machine. Such a confrontation should help answering the question of the nature of the unconscious, and thus bridge the gap between phenomenology and psychoanalysis. I will start with describing the use of the word "machine" in Merleau-Ponty's lectures; I will then show the link between this notion and his discussion of psychoanalysis; the third stage will be to present Lacan's conception of the automaton, and then Guattari's notion of the desiring machine. My conclusion will be to articulate and combine those three conceptions and show in what direction Merleau-Ponty might have gone if he had had the chance to develop his views further.

‘Mimesis as the rhythm of appearance: art and transcendence in Jean-Luc Nancy and Merleau-Ponty’, 2019

In “The pleasure of drawing”, Jean-Luc Nancy refers to drawing as the true form of the thing. Th... more In “The pleasure of drawing”, Jean-Luc Nancy refers to drawing as the true form of the thing. This ‘true’ form is not an already accomplished form but one that involes the gesture that traces it and brings it into appearance. In this context, mimesis is nothing other than the “rhythmics of appearance” through which the mystery of the rising or suspension of the form is recognised. This is where the pleasure of artistic creation lies. For J-L Nancy, drawing reveals, that what one calls “aesthetic” concerns a “feeling” [sentir] but a feeling that is not related to a sensory faculty that records information. It is rather a sensing [ressentir], a “making sense of” or of “letting it be formed”. The donation of form in perception and the aesthetic experience that this givenness entails are apprehended in terms of the encounter of an “outside” and an “inside”, an encounter that is initiated by feeling. In this context, the aesthetic pleasure occurs only insofar as this intertwining remains exposed as such, it is experienced and felt, it is not resolved in indistinction. It is through this opening and sharing between an inside and an outside referring incessantly to one another that the subject (as a relational force, active as much as passive] “affects” itself by distinguishing itself from its own self and by experiencing itself as distinct—“the other in itself, experiencing this alterity as its own, experiencing its self as other”. In “The eye and the mind”, Merleau-Ponty, with reference to the art of painting and the experiences of painters such a Cézanne and Klee describes how space and content merge in their coming-into-being through the visible, where “the body is no longer the means of vision and touch, but their depository”. Here, too, it is question of a sensibility that constitutes itself from within, while the artist finds himself “caught” in a phenomenalising process in which, nevertheless, he partakes. It is not, then, question of how to understand artistic creation but rather of how to make oneself open enough to perceive it as the manifestation of an ontological excess and an act of originating transcendence