The Body of Sense, the Sense of Body

Abstract

The paper traces the intricate relationship between body and sense, as articulated by the contemporary French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, a close collaborator and friend of late Jacques Derrida. Following the latter’s deconstruction of both structuralism and semiology, sense or meaning however returns in Nancy along its route of ‘embodiment’ and ‘otherness’ charted by Merelau-Ponty and Levinas respectively. The body here, is not just the conceptual body of the classical philosophers, but bodies living, dying, and resurrecting as with Jesus’ body. Sense is further anchored in ‘touch’ which involves the contact of extremities, as in writing and in sexual relation. This convergence of the body, touching and writing, referred to as exscription, suggests a deconstructive movement which does not permit the consolidation of any human community. It is also the place of literature which constantly breaks the mythic fusion that holds individuals together in the ‘immanence’ of a community. We also see how this perspective of deconstruction or the ‘unworking’ of the community is further developed in a philosophical and political understanding of the plasticity of the human brain in the works of Catherine Malabou. The paper also throws light upon many other disparate and yet related philosophical currents.