Wondering the World Directly – or, How Movement Outruns the Subject. (September 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Manning, Erin
• Editors: Henriques, Julian; Tiainen, Milla; Väliaho, Pasi
• Is Part Of: Body & society. Volume 20:Number 3/4(2014:Sep./Dec.)
• Page Start: 162
• Page End: 188
• Publication Date: 2014-09
• Subjects: body -- movement -- phenomenology -- process philosophy -- subject; Human body -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; 306.4613
• DOI: 10.1177/1357034X14546357
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1357-034X

Abstract

Turning to the moment when phenomenology (Maurice Merleau-Ponty) meets process philosophy (Alfred North Whitehead), this article turns around three questions: (a) How does movement produce a body? (b) What kind of subject is introduced in the thought of Merleau-Ponty and how does this subject engage with or interfere with the activity here considered as 'body'? (c) What happens when phenomenology (Merleau-Ponty) meets process philosophy (Alfred North Whitehead)? and builds around three propositions (a) There is never a body as such: what we know are edgings and contourings, forces and intensities: a body is its movement (b) Movement is not to be reduced to displacement (c) A philosophy of the body never begins with the body: it bodies .