Back to the World of Light: On Tactile Subject in Melville and Merleau-Ponty
Resource
NTU Studies in Language and Literature, 20, 097-130
Journal
NTU Studies in Language and Literature
Journal Issue
20
Pages
097-130
Date Issued
2008-12
Date
2008-12
Author(s)
Su, C.H.
Abstract
Western philosophical tradition ever since Plato has, as many culture critics show, been dominated by vision. It is widely accepted that this hegemony of vision has conspired with Cartesianism to forge the foundation of dualism for traditional epistemology which celebrates the human mind, reason, and consciousness at the cost of bodily senses and the materiality in which every living being is embedded. Scholars of contemporary cultural studies try to bridge this gap by resorting to twentieth century continental philosophers, such as Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, Irigaray, to name but a few. Among them, Merleau-Ponty has offered a promising model for reviving the body and rethinking a non-dualistic relation between subject and object. In this study, I would like to show that, although situated in historical contexts quite different from each other, Merleau-Ponty and Melville challenge the hegemony of vision in a very similar way—emphasizing the encroachment of touch and vision. Their recasting of seeing corresponds with the paradigm shift in optics at the turn of the nineteenth century, when the traditional Newtonian corpuscular theory was replaced by the new wave theory of light. With the new paradigm in mind, Melville in Moby-Dick has subverted the inside/outside dichotomy posed by traditional epistemology and made a significant contribution to contemporary discussion of the body, a revolutionary insight which marks his affinity with Merleau-Pontian phenomenology.
Subjects
觸覺主體
光的波動說
梅洛龐蒂現象學
《莫比．迪克》
笛卡爾式透視論
暗箱
tactile subject
wave theory of light
Merleau-Pontian Phenomenology
Moby-Dick
Cartesian Perspectivalism
camera obscura
Type
journal article
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