Scott L. Marratto, The Intercorporeal Self: Merleau-Ponty on Subjectivity. Albany:SUNY Press, 2012; 242 pages. Review by Laura McMahon, Villanova University Scott Marratto’s excellent book on Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s concept of subjectivity accomplishes several things at once. First and foremost, Marratto outlines with clarity and rigor a vision of human subjectivity as a dynamic and incomplete process of emergence that occurs in the relation between body and world, rather than—as many versions of the modern subject seem to suggest—a reified conscious interiority. Second, he engages with contemporary research in cognitive science in order both to find support for many of Merleau-Ponty’s theses and to clarify how the latter’s positions ultimately remain ontologically distinct from these later developments in philosophical and scientific research. Third, Marratto situates Merleau-Ponty’s understanding of subjectivity within the discourse of recent critiques of the modern subject, arguing convincingly that Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology in fact anticipates post-structuralist concerns rather then itself falling prey to them. Finally, though it is expressly not his aim to trace the temporal development of Merleau-Ponty’s thought, Marratto discovers in Phenomenology of Perception (1945)—the chief textual focus of The Intercorporeal Self—ontological themes which resonate across Merleau-Ponty’s corpus... ...
Posted on: Thu, 11 Jul 2013 04:11:10 +0000
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