Monstrous body: between alienness and ownness

Q4 Arts and Humanities
Anna Alichniewicz
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Abstract

Monstrosity has its recognized place in cultural narratives but in philosophical discourse it remains mostly untouched. In my paper I make an attempt at phenomenological inquiry into the experience of the Other’s monstrous body. I am beginning with some remarks concerning Georges Canguilhem and Michel Foucault, the philosophers who devoted some attention to the problem of monstrosity and the monstrous, but my analysis is mainly based on the works of Bernhard Waldenfels, Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Waldenfels emphasizes that the corporeal self is somehow perceived as alien, always somewhat distanced and not totally graspable. He also argues that the closer the Other, the stronger activation of the boundary between the spheres of the ownness and the alienness is caused. A promising framework for the analysis of the ambivalent reaction brought about by the encounter with a monstrous human body can be provided by Husserl’s phenomenological inquiry into the process of pairing, developed in his Cartesian meditations. It seems that in this experience the pairing process is frustrating and deranged because the process of apperception is disturbed by a cluster of untypical or quite unique characteristics of the monstrous body. In result, its sense remains unclear, puzzling and challenging. Interesting light on the experience of the Other’s monstrous body could shed Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, especially the ideas of flesh and chiasm outlined in his last work. The radical character of the monster, while does not render it something totally different from the own, elucidates, however, the contingency of the order under which the human corporeality is subsumed.
怪异的身体:在异己和拥有之间
怪物在文化叙事中有其公认的地位,但在哲学话语中,它几乎未被触及。在我的论文中,我试图从现象学的角度探究他者的怪物身体的经验。我将以一些关于乔治·冈居朗和米歇尔·福柯的评论开始,这两位哲学家对怪物和怪物的问题给予了一些关注,但我的分析主要基于伯恩哈德·瓦尔登费尔斯、埃德蒙·胡塞尔和莫里斯·梅洛-庞蒂的作品。瓦尔登费尔斯强调,肉体的自我在某种程度上被认为是陌生的,总是有些距离,不是完全可以掌握的。他还认为,离他者越近,就越能激活自身和异化领域之间的边界。胡塞尔对配对过程的现象学研究,在他的笛卡儿式沉思中发展起来,提供了一个有希望的框架,来分析与一个怪异的人体相遇所带来的矛盾反应。在这种经历中,配对过程似乎是令人沮丧和疯狂的,因为统觉过程被怪物身体的一组非典型或相当独特的特征所干扰。结果,它的意义仍然不明确,令人困惑和具有挑战性。梅洛-庞蒂的现象学,尤其是他最后一部作品中概述的肉体和交叉的概念,对他的怪物身体体验的有趣启示可能会得到揭示。怪物的激进性,虽然没有使它与自己完全不同,但却说明了人类肉体所包含的秩序的偶然性。
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来源期刊
Argument  Biannual Philosophical Journal
Argument Biannual Philosophical Journal Arts and Humanities-Religious Studies
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