An ambiguos attitude. Renewing Merleau-Ponty’s Relationship with Visual Studies

Résumé

Following the lead of early 20th century authors such as E. Husserl and H. Bergson, the works of M. Merleau-Ponty have always entertained the notion of reconstituting philosophical and scientific knowledge through a specific «attitude» in which the lines between the specificity of scientific thinking and the coproreal, perceptive, «living» thought would be increasingly blurred. The philosopher’s attitude comes to designate a certain posture of the body. In this project, pictural and cinematic images took on a reflexive role towards philosophical speech. However, the transversal spread of this «attitude» towards various scientific objects (social sciences, ethnology, neurology), has been perceived as a quiet failure as early as the early 70’s. The contemporary field of Visual Studies appears as a shining exception, in which this philosophical project finds new life. In this article, I would follow the recent studies spanning the last decade (M.Carbone, L.Angelino, A-C. Dalmasso, P. Rodrigo,…), which have renewed the links between Merleau-Ponty and visual studies, and argue that his philosophical «attitude» could find a unique and particularly powerful validation when confronted to the study of the visual in its contemporary forms.