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| 2. |
- Foultier, Anna Petronella, 1966-
(författare)
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Creativity in language and expression : Merleau-Ponty and Saussure's principle of analogy
- 2018
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Ingår i: Acta structuralica: International journal for structuralist research. - : sdvig press. - 2504-1657. ; :2, s. 47-68
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- For Merleau-Ponty, the question of phenomenological method was always connected to the problem of expression, in that the results of successful expression can for him amount to a catching of the world “in its nascent state” (“à l’état naissant”). In other words, elucidating the phenomena as they show themselves demands a certain amount of creativity to come through. But even though creative expression is without doubt of chief importance for Merleau-Ponty, it is not so easy to determine what exactly it consists in. Minimally, it is more demanding than simply repeating an already formulated expression. On the other hand, it cannot start from nothing – we must begin within an existing tradition, with its acquired expressions, that we somehow take up and transform. A recurrent image of creative expression comes from Malraux, who claimed that it is a “coherent deformation” of what is given in the world. In this paper, I will use Saussure’s principle of analogy to throw light upon the notion of coherent deformation and of creativity. Although Merleau-Ponty merely mentions this principle in passing, I argue that it can clarify the productivity of language that he saw as crucial also for Saussure’s linguistics.
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| 3. |
- Foultier, Anna Petronella, 1966-
(författare)
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Incarnated Meaning and the Notion of Gestalt in Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology
- 2015
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Ingår i: Chiasmi International. - : Philosophy Documentation Center. - 1637-6757 .- 2155-6415. ; 17, s. 53-75
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Although it is well known that Gestalt theory had an important impact on Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy throughout his career, there is still no detailed study either of its influence on his ideas or of his own understanding of the notoriously polysemic notion of Gestalt. Yet, this notion is a key to Merleau-Ponty’s fundamental project of overcoming “objective thought” and its inherent dichotomies. By indicating how signification or ideality can be immanent in, rather than opposed to, matter, it compels us to redefine both consciousness and the world it is bound up with. The aim of this article is to clarify Merleau-Ponty’s notion of Gestalt against the historical background that he refers to, including Kurt Goldstein’s theory of the organism that was crucial for his interpretation of it.
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| 5. |
- Foultier, Anna Petronella
(författare)
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Language and the Gendered Body : Butler's Early Reading of Merleau-Ponty
- 2013
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Ingår i: Hypatia. - : Cambridge University Press (CUP). - 0887-5367 .- 1527-2001. ; 28:4, s. 767-783
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Through a close reading of Judith Butler's 1989 essay on Merleau-Ponty's theory of sexuality as well as the texts her argument hinges on, this paper addresses the debate about the relation between language and the living, gendered body as it is understood by defenders of poststructural theory on the one hand, and different interpretations of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology on the other. I claim that Butler, in her criticism of the French philosopher's analysis of the famous Schneider case, does not take its wider context into account: either the case study that Merleau-Ponty's discussion is based upon, or its role in his phenomenology of perception. Yet, although Butler does point out certain blind spots in his descriptions regarding the gendered body, it is in the light of her questioning that the true radicality of Merleau-Ponty's ideas can be revealed. A further task for feminist phenomenology should be a thorough assessment of his philosophy from this angle, once the most obvious misunderstandings have been put to the side.
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| 6. |
- Foultier, Anna Petronella
(författare)
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Letting the body find its way: skills, expertise, and Bodily Reflection
- 2023
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Ingår i: Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences. - : Springer. - 1568-7759 .- 1572-8676. ; 22:4, s. 799-820
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- What forms of consciousness can the subject have of her body in action? This is a recurrent issue in contemporary research on skilled movement and expertise, and according to a widespread view, the body makes itself inconspicuous in performance in favour of the object or goal that the activity is directed to. However, this attitude to consciousness in bodily performance seems unsatisfying for an understanding of skilled action, and the work of several researchers can be seen as responding to this view: Montero, Legrand, Ravn and others in the philosophy of expertise and of dance have developed various notions of consciousness and cognition to account for the mindful processes at play in performance.Two related questions can be distinguished here: (1) Is there an inherent conflict between skilled action and at least more than marginal awareness of that action, or is it possible – and even desirable – to reflect on our own performance without considerably impeding on it? (2) What forms of consciousness pertaining to the body in action must we distinguish in order to answer the first question?This paper gives an overview of this discussion, focusing on the second issue, although the first will come into play in so far as it is linked with the latter question. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s analyses of bodily reflection and on dancers’ descriptions, I show that there is, in phenomenological terms, a bodily level of reflection: a fully conscious and exploratory activity that is led by the skilled body, and that is explicitly aimed at by many performers.
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| 7. |
- Foultier, Anna Petronella, 1966-
(författare)
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Merleau-Ponty's Encounter with Saussure's Linguistics : Misreading, Reinterpretation or Prolongation?
- 2013
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Ingår i: Chiasmi International. - : Philosophy Documentation Center. - 1637-6757 .- 2155-6415. ; 15, s. 123-142
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The prevailing judgement of Merleau-Ponty’s encounter with Saussure’s linguistics is that, although important for the evolution of his philosophy of language, it was based on a mistaken or at least highly idiosyncratic interpretation of Saussure’s ideas. Significantly, the rendering of Saussure that has been common both in Merleau-Ponty scholarship and in linguistics has been based on the structuralist development of the Genevan linguist’s ideas. This article argues that a reading of Saussure in light of certain passages of the Course of General Linguistics forgotten by the structuralists, and of the manuscripts related to the published works, can show to the contrary that Merleau-Ponty’s account was sustainable. An understanding of Saussure’s ideas that does not flinch from their paradoxical features can throw light upon the French phenomenologist’s views on language and expression. Moreover, the “linguistic turn” in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophical development, identified by James Edie for example, does not seem to have been so clear-cut as have previously been believed; the influence of Saussure’s thought had certainly begun before he wrote the Phenomenology of Perception.
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| 8. |
- Foultier, Anna Petronella, 1966-
(författare)
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Recasting Objective Thought : The Venture of Expression in Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy
- 2015
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis is about meaning, expression and language in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, and their role in the phenomenological project as a whole. For Merleau-Ponty, expression is the taking up of a meaning given either in perception or in already acquired forms of expression, thereby repeating, transforming or congealing meaning into gestures, utterances, artworks, ideas or theories. Contrary to the predominant view in the literature, the relation of expression to meaning, and in particular the problem of expressing new meanings, was of fundamental importance to Merleau-Ponty from the very beginning, in that it was intrinsically related to the overcoming of what he termed “objective thought”. Admittedly, there is an evolution of his philosophy in this respect: from the early stance where the recasting of certain basic categories is taken as pivotal for the development of a new form of thinking, with arguments drawn also from various empirical and social sciences, to what appears to be an effort at an all-pervading reformulation of philosophical language during his last years. But the remoulding of categories was never for Merleau-Ponty a matter simply of finding a few, better adapted concepts, but from the outset an endeavour to think philosophical arguments through to a point where they reveal their inherent inconsistencies. Recasting philosophical expression is thus a risky enterprise, and this is a point I explore further in Essay 1, that focuses especially upon creative expression in painting and to some extent in literature. In Essay 2 I discuss the notion of Gestalt and how it serves this general project, whereas Essay 3 deals with verbal language, on the basis of Merleau-Ponty’s reading of Saussure’s linguistics. Essay 4 examines bodily expression from the point of view of feminist phenomenology and in particular Judith Butler’s early reading of Merleau-Ponty, and finally Essay 5 discusses expression in the art of dance.
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| 10. |
- Foultier, Anna Petronella, 1966-
(författare)
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The ethical night of libertinism : Beauvoir’s reading of Sade
- 2023
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Ingår i: Continental philosophy review. - : Springer. - 1387-2842 .- 1573-0611 .- 1573-1103. ; 56:1, s. 41-61
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper examines Simone de Beauvoir’s reading of the eighteenth century writer and libertine Marquis de Sade, in her essay "Must we Burn Sade?"; a difficult and bewildering text, both in pure linguistic terms and philosophically. In particular, Beauvoir’s insistence on Sade as a “great moralist” seems hard to reconcile with her emphasis, in The Ethics of Ambiguity, on the interdependency of human beings and her exhortation to us to promote other people’s freedom, as well as the aspiration of The Second Sex to equal relations between the genders. While earlier scholars addressed the ethico-political implications of Beauvoir’s essay, they insisted that the ambiguity so fundamental in her philosophy is denied by the Sadean hero, and that the Other can never be attained in his system. In this essay, I argue that Sade paradoxically emerges as an ethical model in Beauvoir’s text: as a writer, he assumes the ambiguity of the human condition in the extreme. Further, Sade reveals the potential of sexuality if it is explored in a form of eroticism that largely transgresses behavior constructed as normal: his writings open up new forms of existence, where, contrary to prevailing ideas, woman’s sexual freedom is claimed as equal to man’s, where genders are unstable and heterosexuality no longer the standard. Beauvoir’s fascination with Sade in this essay can be linked with the seemingly unresolvable asymmetry in the relation between men and women in The Second Sex: in his writings is revealed sexuality’s potential to subvert patriarchal norms and mystifications, and perhaps, in the end, even gender itself.
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| 11. |
- Foultier, Anna Petronella
(författare)
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The First Man Speaking : Merleau-Ponty on Expression as the Task of Phenomenology
- 2015
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Ingår i: Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology. - : Informa UK Limited. - 0007-1773 .- 2332-0486. ; 46:3, s. 195-212
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article aims to establish an understanding of Merleau-Ponty's view of creative expression, and of its phenomenological function, setting out from the intriguing statement in his essay Cezanne's Doubt that the painter (or writer or philosopher) finds himself in the situation of the first human being trying to express herself. Although the importance of primary or creative expression in Merleau-Ponty's philosophy is well known, there is no consensus among commentators with respect to how this notion is to be understood, and of its apparently paradoxical relation to experience in his philosophy. On the one hand, Merleau-Ponty seems to presuppose that there is an original meaning pre-given in experience; on the other hand, expression is described as a hazardous enterprise, because the meaning to be expressed does not exist before expression has succeeded. In order to resolve this tension, I explore the significance of the precariousness of creative expression, arguing that it must be related to its other side: the constituted, all too often petrified meaning that we must start out from.
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| 12. |
- Foultier, Anna Petronella
(författare)
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The Phenomenology of the Body Schema and Contemporary Dance Practice : The Example of “Gaga”
- 2022
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Ingår i: Journal of Aesthetics and Phenomenology. - : Routledge. - 2053-9320 .- 2053-9339. ; 8:1, s. 1-20
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In recent years, the notion of the body schema has been widely discussed, in particular in fields connecting philosophy, cognitive science, and dance studies, as it seems to have bearing across disciplines in a fruitful way. A main source in this literature is Shaun Gallagher’s distinction between the body schema—the “pre-noetic” conditions of bodily performance—and the body image—the body as intentional object—, another is Merleau-Ponty’s writings on the living body, that Gallagher often draws upon. In this paper, I will first discuss Gallagher’s presumed clarification of body schema–body image, and discuss a recent critique by Saint Aubert (2013), who evaluates it against the backdrop of Merleau-Ponty’s thoughts on this issue. While I believe that Saint Aubert’s criticism overshoots the mark, it is useful for a clarification of Gallagher’s analysis and points to a problematic feature, namely the alleged inscrutability of the body schema to phenomenological reflection. This is particularly interesting in relation to contemporary dance and performance practice, where working with—and against—habitual structures is a core element. Certain contemporary training techniques are explicitly aimed at raising awareness of those bodily aspects that condition movement and expression—that Gallagher sees as pertaining to the body schema—and that in ordinary activities often remain hidden. In order to clarify the role that reflection on our own body and its habitual patterns plays in contemporary dance practice, I will examine the movement language and improvisation practice “Gaga,” where this aspect is arguably fundamental.
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| 13. |
- Foultier, Anna Petronella, 1966-
(författare)
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Towards a Phenomenological Account of the Dancing Body : Merleau-Ponty and the Corporeal Schema
- 2013
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Ingår i: Material of Movement and Thought. - : Firework Edition. - 9789187066429
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Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The essay discusses the dancing body from a phenomenological perspective, against the background of the philosophical conception of the lived body in tradition. In the very young discipline of dance theory, there is a shortage of philosophical concepts and analyses that I believe phenomenology can partly remedy. Although Merleau-Ponty has not written on dance other than in passing, I argue that his thoughts on the body-proper are useful in order to elucidate bodily expression in general and the significations that the dancer’s body manifests in performing a choreographic work in particular. The dynamic notion of the corporeal schema that he appeals to can make us understand how significations are inscribed in the body, and thus how something such as an expression or a choreographic language can exist in dance. Further, the specific forms of spatiality that Merleau-Ponty considers are opened up by artworks, within and beyond the concrete space of the physical body, gives us a clue to the elaboration of a phenomenology of dance.
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Material of movement and thought : reflections on the dancers´s practice and corporeality
- 2013
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Samlingsverk (redaktörskap) (refereegranskat)abstract
- The articles in this volume have grown out of a research project entitled "FromMovement out of Reflection in Becoming: The Dancer and the Creative Process",gathering both professional dancers and theoreticians, and funded by theSwedish Research Council. The overall goal of the project was to approach anunderstanding and a conceptualization of the artistic process of the dancer, takingthe work in the creation ofina Christe!Johannessen's choreographic pieceNOW SHE KNOWS as a point of departure.The focus was both that of the dancer from within the process, and that ofexterna! observers. These viewpoints were not deadlocked hut rather aimed atan interaction and a dialogue between the theoretical and the practical levels.The research methods grew out of an at times quite intimate teamwork wherethe participants' different approaches came to cross and intersect.A number of issues were explored: How does the dancer work in the processwhere the dance takes shape? How does the understanding of a movementmaterial shift through the actual performing of it? What is it to understandor experience a movement from the perspective of the performer? What is itto understand or experience a movement from the perspective of the spectator?What kind of body is the dan ing body and how can it create a variety ofmeanings? Through what concepts are we to think the dancer's practice andcorporeality?The anthology contains essays by Cecilia Roos, Anna Petronella Foultier,Chrysa Parkinson, Katarina Elam, Cecilia Sjöholm, and Irene Hultman.
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| 15. |
- Roos, Cecilia, et al.
(författare)
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Ord i tankar och rörelse : dansaren och den skapande processen: konstnärlig och humanistisk forskning i samverkan. En delrapport
- 2012
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Forskningsprojektet "Från rörelse ur reflektion i tillblivelse: Dansaren och den konstnärliga processen" startade januari 20 I O med ett tre rigt forskningsstöd från Vetenskapsrådet. Forskargruppen har bestått av Katarina Elam, fil.dr. i estetik och universitetslektor vid Högskolan Väst, Anna Petronella Foultier, doktorand i filosofi på Stockholms Universitet, Chrysa Parkinson professor i dans på DOCH, Cecilia Roos professor i interpretation på DOCH, samt Cecilia Sjöholm, professor i estetik på Södertörns högskola. Vårt övergripande syfte har varit att ur ett såväl praktiskt som ett teoretiskt perspektiv - belyst genom dansarens arbete med ett uruppförande - nänna oss en förståelse och ett begreppsliggörande av den konstnärliga processen genom exemplet dans. Å ena sidan finns dansarens inifrånperspektiv; å andra sidan betraktarens utifrånperspektiv. Genom en dialog mellan dem, i ett slags dubbel rörelse kan ytterligare lager av förståelse för det till-kropp-kommande framträda.Ursprungligen beskrev vi projektet enligt följande:I utgångspunkten för arbetet med det som ska interpreteras analyserar dansaren rörelsematerialet med hjälp av en inre och en yttre blick som inte syftar till att förklara utan nännast till att göra undersökningen mer komplex. Mellan dessa perspektiv - ett intuitivt och ett medvetet - pendlar dansaren i sin utforskning. Den inre blicken bär på minnen, upplevelser, vilja och kreativitet, den yttre snarare på en kalkylerande rationalitet som avläser och registrerar. I rörelsen mellan dessa skapas en glipa, eller ett utrymme, där perspektiven samtidigt sammanfogas. Det här är ett tillstånd i ständig förskjutning där ett absolut gehör för situationens möjligheter eftersträvas. Dit navigerar dansaren medvetet och i den processen gör hon de val som ligger till grund för hennes tolkning. Där manipulerar hon med tiden mellan tanke och handling, intention och impuls, för att låta ett då och ett nu mötas. Ett slags vidgat moment som pekar mot något utan att visa vad det är och det är egentligen mer som en medveten handling i stunden än som ett tillstånd. Det är just denna process som vi har för avsikt att verbalisera och begreppsliggöra.Hur vi idag väljer att beskriva, gestalta och artikulera resultatet av vår forskningsprocess är individuellt. Våra olika perspektiv har alltid varit närvarande i diskussionerna och vad vi har sett och talat om har tveklöst färgats av detta. Likafullt har ofta en annan bild eller beskrivning av en företeelse kunnat kasta nytt ljus över den egna uppfattningen; begrepp har slipats på och getts nya innebörder genom våra långa och återkommande samtal. Dessa samtal har förts så äl under regelrätta seminarier som vid våra fysiska träningspass eller framför en dansvideo. Vi har även haft möjlighet att delta vid ett antal internationella konferenser 1 för konstnärlig forskning vilket ibland har lett till nya vändningar i diskussionerna. Vår förhoppning nu är att våra samlade individuella erfarenheter ska komma att generera nya ideer kring förkroppsligad kunskap och kreativitet. Cecilia Roos, Katarina Elam och Anna Petronel/a Foultier, november 2012
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