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Die Phänomenologie der Rheumatologie: Behinderung, Merleau-Ponty und der Irrtum des maximalen Griffs

  • Gayle Salamon
Published/Copyright: March 14, 2024

Abstract

This paper charts the concepts of grip and the bodily auxiliary in Maurice Merleau-Ponty to consider how they find expression in disability narratives. Arguing against the notion of “maximal grip” that some commentators have used to explicate intentionality in Merleau-Ponty, I argue that grip in his texts functions instead as a compensatory effort to stave off uncertainty, lack of mastery, and ambiguity. Nearly without exception in Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception, the mobilisation of “grip” is a signal of impending loss and is offered as a strategy for managing failure rather than as an example of sure-footed mastery. I read Merleau-Ponty alongside Mary Felstiner’s Out of Joint: A Public and Private Story of Arthritis to explore these other, attenuated dimensions of grip as an example of a way of thinking disabled embodiment otherwise.

Literatur

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Published Online: 2024-03-14
Published in Print: 2024-03-25

© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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