Recently, a small group of philosophers have begun to approach the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty as an early form of eco-criticism, an incipient posthumanism that studies the human being as part of a larger animal environment.  In this two-day seminar, we will ask how Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of perception, conducted over the course of a lifetime, led him to sketch out a posthuman eco-phenomenology. 

We will begin by studying what the term “phenomenology” means.  We will then proceed to examine the impact on phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty’s later readings in animal behavior, or ethology.  To reframe his philosophical investigations in terms of issues that concern us today, we will read excerpts from Phenomenology of Perception (1945) and Nature: Course Notes from the Collège de France (1956-1960) alongside contemporary works advancing a posthumanist perspective:  “The Body We Care For” by science studies theorist Vinciane Despret, and one chapter of Wild Things by queer theorist Jack Halberstam.  We will ask the following questions:  Why did Merleau-Ponty turn to the theme nature at the end of his life?  Did his late interest in practices of attunement (“openness”) help him to rethink what it means to be “human”?  How do his concepts of “openness” and “wild Being” allow us to re-imagine what “being present” means?