Normality, Abnormality, and Pathology in Merleau-Ponty (SUNY in Contemporary Continental Philosophy)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s work draws our attention to how the body is always our way of having a world and never merely a thing in the world. Our conception of the body must take account of our cultures, our historically located sciences, and our interpersonal relations and cannot reduce the body to a biological given. Normality, Abnormality, and Pathology in Merleau-Ponty takes up Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of the body to explore the ideas of normality, abnormality, and pathology. Focusing on the lived experiences of various styles of embodiment, the book challenges our usual conceptions of normality and abnormality and shows how seemingly objective scientific research, such as the study of pathological symptoms, is inadequate to the phenomena it purports to comprehend. The book offers new insights into our understandings of health and illness, ability and disability, and the scientific and cultural practices that both enable and limit our capacity for diverse experiences. Contents 6 Acknowledgments 10 Introduction Normality, Abnormality, and Pathology in Merleau-Ponty’s Work 12 The Case of Schneider: Merleau-Ponty’s Dynamic Conception of Embodiment 13 Part I—Grounding a Phenomenology of Normality, Abnormality, and Pathology 20 Part II—Practical Phenomenological Applications of Merleau-Ponty’s Theories of Normality, Abnormality, and Pathology 22 Notes 25 Part I Grounding a Phenomenology of Normality, Abnormality, and Pathology 28 Chapter 1 Toward a Phenomenology of Abnormality 30 Introduction 30 Illness in the Phenomenology of Perception 32 The Normal and the Pathological According to Goldstein and Canguilhem 35 The Silence of Health 37 Quantification of Pathology 39 Statistics and Abnormality 42 A Phenomenology of the Abnormal 46 Notes 48 Chapter 2 What Can We Learn about the Normal from the Pathological? Merleau-Ponty, Goldstein, and Neuropsychology 52 Introduction 52 Kurt Goldstein 54 The Prescription 58 Phenomenological Reduction-by-Proxy 66 Notes 68 Chapter 3 Merleau-Ponty and Ab/Normal Phenomenology: The Husserlian Roots of Merleau-Ponty’s Account of Expression 74 Introduction 74 Husserl’s Account of Expression 75 Merleau-Ponty’s Account of Expression 77 Merleau-Ponty as Ab/Normal Phenomenologist 81 Notes 85 Chapter 4 The Abnormalcy of “Normalcy”: Merleau-Ponty, Russon, and the Normativity of Experience 90 Introduction 90 Russon and the “Ideal of Normalcy” 91 Merleau-Ponty and “Psychological Rigidity” 98 Schizophrenic Hallucination 101 Notes 105 Chapter 5 The Need for Merleau-Ponty in Foucault’s Account of the Abnormal 108 Introduction 108 Foucault’s Account of the Abnormal 110 Questioning Foucault’s Account 113 Merleau-Ponty’s Aid 113 Rooting Historical Structures in Phenomenological Patterns 114 Hope of Application 118 Conclusion 121 Notes 122 Part II Practical Phenomenological Applications of Merleau-Ponty’s Theories of Normality, Abnormality, and Pathology 128 Chapter 6 Meandering Peripheries: A Ground without Figure for Relief 130 Introduction 130 A Description of my “Dream Eye” 132 Merleau-Ponty on Figure-Ground in Vision 135 In/Determinacy 138 Conclusion 145 Notes 147 Chapter 7 The Insight of Dispossession: Examining the Phenomenological and Political Significance of Merleau-Ponty’s Account of the Spatial Level 152 Introduction 152 Possession 153 Dispossession 158 Politics of Belonging 166 Conclusion 168 Notes 170 Chapter 8 Moving without Movement: Merleau-Ponty’s “I can” and the Memoirs of Bodily Immobility 176 Introduction 176 Continuity and LIS 178 Butterflies 182 Merleau-Ponty and Bodily Movement 188 Notes 193 Chapter 9 A Whole New World: Reimagining Divergent Sensory and Perceptual Experiences in Autism through Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception 198 Introduction 198 Autism: A Brief Overview 200 Autism and the Senses 201 Phenomenology of Sensation and Perception 204 Things and Orientation 207 Notes 211 Chapter 10 Health and Other Reveries: Homo Curare, Homo Faber, and the Realization of Care 214 Introduction 214 Would You Like to Know When Your Child Will Die? 217 Homo Curare, Homo Faber, and Flesh 222 Existential Homeostasis and Existential Support 225 Justice and the Realization of Care 227 In Defense of Reveries of Egalitarian Health 229 Notes 231 Chapter 11 The Desexualization of Disabled People as Existential Harm and the Importance of Ambiguity 236 Introduction 236 Merleau-Ponty, Embodiment, and Social Identity 237 Sexuality and Human Existence 239 Theorizing the Harm of Desexualization of Disabled People 242 Inspiration Porn, Devoteeism, and Derivatization 246 Merleau-Ponty and Desexualization of Disabled People 250 Conclusion 252 Notes 253 Works Cited 260 Contributors 280 Index 284 Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s work draws our attention to how the body is always our way of having a world and never merely a thing in the world. Our conception of the body must take account of our cultures, our historically located sciences, and our interpersonal relations and cannot reduce the body to a biological given. __Normality, Abnormality, and Pathology in Merleau-Ponty__ takes up Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of the body to explore the ideas of normality, abnormality, and pathology. Focusing on the lived experiences of various styles of embodiment, the book challenges our usual conceptions of normality and abnormality and shows how seemingly objective scientific research, such as the study of pathological symptoms, is inadequate to the phenomena it purports to comprehend. The book offers new insights into our understandings of health and illness, ability and disability, and the scientific and cultural practices that both enable and limit our capacity for diverse experiences.