Null-body, protean body, potent body, neutral body, wild body. Behnke, E. A. In Morris, D. & Maclaren, K., editors, Time, Memory, Institution: Merleau-Ponty's New Ontology of Self, pages 69–90. Ohio University Press, Athens, 2015.
abstract   bibtex   
[first paragraph] In the opening paragraph of the summary of his January–May 1960 course on “Husserl at the Limits of Philosophy,” Merleau-Ponty reminds us that what we might think of as the “complete” works of an individual are—from the point of view of the person concerned—precisely his or her incomplete works, presenting “merely the overall direction of a search which was trans- formed into a ‘work' [oeuvre] by the ever premature interruption of a life's work” (TL, 113–14/159–60). The work itself “is never completed; it is always in progress,” and returning to the work each day “is always only a question of advancing the line of the already opened furrow,” of prolonging this arc while going beyond it, until one day the body fails, is “written off” (PW, 67/94–95; cf. S, 58/73). But with this, more is lost than the brute fact of an individual life; as Claude Lefort says of Merleau-Ponty himself, “The writer disappears just when he was preparing for new beginnings, and the creation is interrupted” (VI, xiv/341; my emphasis). The “living historicity” of the effort whereby the artist or writer carries on the tradition that he or she has founded (PW, 73/103; cf. S, 63/79) is robbed of its future, stranded, with the “outline of what is to come (Urstiftung)” (TL, 115/161) left unfinished.
@incollection{Behnke2015,
abstract = {[first paragraph] In the opening paragraph of the summary of his January–May 1960 course on “Husserl at the Limits of Philosophy,” Merleau-Ponty reminds us that what we might think of as the “complete” works of an individual are—from the point of view of the person concerned—precisely his or her incomplete works, presenting “merely the overall direction of a search which was trans- formed into a ‘work' [oeuvre] by the ever premature interruption of a life's work” (TL, 113–14/159–60). The work itself “is never completed; it is always in progress,” and returning to the work each day “is always only a question of advancing the line of the already opened furrow,” of prolonging this arc while going beyond it, until one day the body fails, is “written off” (PW, 67/94–95; cf. S, 58/73). But with this, more is lost than the brute fact of an individual life; as Claude Lefort says of Merleau-Ponty himself, “The writer disappears just when he was preparing for new beginnings, and the creation is interrupted” (VI, xiv/341; my emphasis). The “living historicity” of the effort whereby the artist or writer carries on the tradition that he or she has founded (PW, 73/103; cf. S, 63/79) is robbed of its future, stranded, with the “outline of what is to come (Urstiftung)” (TL, 115/161) left unfinished.},
address = {Athens},
author = {Behnke, Elizabeth A.},
booktitle = {Time, Memory, Institution: Merleau-Ponty's New Ontology of Self},
editor = {Morris, David and Maclaren, Kym},
file = {:Users/michaelk/Library/Application Support/Mendeley Desktop/Downloaded/Behnke - 2015 - Null-body, protean body, potent body, neutral body, wild body.pdf:pdf},
pages = {69--90},
publisher = {Ohio University Press},
title = {{Null-body, protean body, potent body, neutral body, wild body}},
year = {2015}
}

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