Expressing the world

Merleau-Ponty and feminist debates on nature/culture

Kathleen Lennon

pp. 125-144

in: Clara Fischer, Luna Dolezal (eds), New feminist perspectives on embodiment, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018

Abstract

Feminist critical engagement with those sciences which have been put to work to legitimise oppressive social relations, made explicit the cultural situatedness of science and its mediation by the imaginaries in which scientists are placed. In response, what has been termed the "new materialism,' claims to bring "the materiality of the human body and the natural world into the forefront of feminist theory and practice,' in the face of, what it suggests were, overly constructivist accounts emerging from such feminist critique. I link these discussions to the writings of Merleau-Ponty. I suggest that the picture which Merleau-Ponty offers, of our bodies expressing the world, provides a metaphysics which undercuts the apparent opposition of these schools of thought.

Cited authors

Merleau-Ponty Maurice