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‘Overwriting the Body: Saint-Exupery, Merleau-Ponty, Nancy’ Dr Eran Dorfman (Public Lecture, Bristol, 7 June 2012)

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Research Summary: Overwriting the Body

Topic: Phenomenology of the body in limit-cases (emergency and illness)
Primary Thinkers: Saint-Exupéry, Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Luc Nancy
Key Concepts: Emergency experience, illness as bodily disruption, writing as overwriting and resistance to repression
Case Studies: Saint-Exupéry's Flight to Arras and Nancy's The Intruder
Central Argument: Writing serves to counteract everyday bodily repression by articulating the body's revelation in crisis states where the everyday body is exposed as illusory.
Philosophical Framework: Existential phenomenology examining how embodied consciousness confronts limit-cases of threat and malfunction.
Event Details: Public lecture, Royal Institute of Philosophy & UWE Applied Philosophy Research Group, Bristol, 7 June 2012, free admission.

Royal Institute of Philosophy & UWE Applied Philosophy Research Group presents:
Dr Eran Dorfman (Free University, Berlin)
‘Overwriting the Body: Saint-Exupery, Merleau-Ponty, Nancy’

Date: Thursday 07 June 2012
Venue: Goldbrick House, 69 Park Street, Bristol
Time: 19:00-20:30
Cost: Free
Register via email to Havi Carel

Dr Dorfman will examine two limit-cases in which the body is threatened. The first is the experience of emergency as it is described by Saint-Exupéry in his Flight to Arras. The second experience is that of illness, as it is described by Nancy in his autobiographical book The Intruder. Here, too, the everyday body is discovered as an illusion, but the new body which shows itself is rather a malfunctioning machine. The paper concludes with a reflection on the role of writing in describing both the everyday body and the body in limit-cases, and suggests that the role of writing about one own’s body is to fight the everyday tendency towards repression, through an understanding of writing as overwriting.

All welcome

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