Incorporated recognizability

A handshake between Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Judith Butler

Martin Huth

pp. 119-145

in: Beata Stawarska, Patrick R. Flack (eds), Merleau-Ponty and structuralism, Acta Structuralica 2, 2018.

Abstract

Merleau-Pont's influential analyses of operative (corporeal) intentionality and the habitual body are this paper´s starting point for an interpretation and extension of Judith Butler´s concept of recognizability. Butler provides a theory of a differential allocation of recognition regarding vulnerability, which is established and elaborated in her newer books Precarious Life and Frames of War. On the level of public representation, there are groups that are marginalized, invisible or not recognizable due to their particular status as out-groups. Her examples are mostly focused on populations that are considered as enemies in the context of US politics and media after 9/11. These reflections on a structural allocation of recognition of lives as vulnerable can be widened by a synthesis with Merleau-Ponty´s reflections on the habitual body (in contrast to the body at this moment). Our habituations from early childhood form our most basic behaviors (the use of our senses, rudimentary movements, postures, and gestures). The lived body (Leib, corps propre) serves as a carrier of our behavior particularly not against the background of a separation between natural behavior and socially constructed meanings and purposes of our conduct. According to Merleau-Ponty, in the bodily behavior nature and culture are always-already merged.
Hence, cultural constructions of supposedly deserved compassion with vulnerable individuals, and in contrast the creation of distance and de-emphasis of compassion for enemies and horrible appearances (see Julia Kristeva´s Powers of Horror) that should be kept in distance and that should not be empathized in, are efficacious already on the level of perceptions and the production of affects. As a keystone of a logos of the aesthetic world, they pre-determine our structures of experiences and the paths of intentionality. A tacit recognizability is inscribed in the body on the level of basic behavior. It is expressed in habits of looking at, postures, and gestures that happen in a pre- or proto-intentional sphere. Thus, our immediate reactions and the accompanying affects towards children (e.g. compassion, perceived neediness – often resembling our reactions to some animals), homeless people (e.g. disgust, turning away) or drug addicts (e.g. disgust, fear, attributions of blame) differ significantly due to incorporated structures of recognition. It can be concluded that ethics and politics should regard these structural patterns of recognition not only on the level of representation and discourse but also on the level of tacit habituations, Gestalt perceptions, and immediate bodily reactions.

Cited authors

Merleau-Ponty Maurice

Butler Judith