The Virtual Body

Abstract

The imagination is a central theme in Merleau-Ponty's philosophy. is by means of the imagination that we are able to free ourselves from ordinary experience and explore a world of possibility. The artist creates new structures and symbols that allow the audience to see reality in a new way. Likewise the phenomenal body develops habits of motility and perception into new structures that endow our world with a dimension of possibility. From the most mundane experience to the most sublime aesthetic creation, the body is at work in transforming ordinary experience into a world of human freedom and personal expression. Traditional interpretations of MerleauPonty's early philosophy suggest that he considers imagination to be secondary to perception. The few explicit references to imagination in The Structure of Behavior1 and Phenomenology of Perception2 tend to endorse the theory of imagination presented by JeanPaul Sartre in his two books, L'imagination and L'imaginaire,3 in the imagination is described as an escape from reality and as the full expression of the freedom of consciousness from the limitations of the body. MerleauPonty's focus on perception as a fundamental mode of existence may also suggest that he is more concerned for reality than the imaginary, and thus continuing the phenomenological method of Edmund Husserl in his attempt to uncover the roots of intentionality. Although Merleau-Ponty later claims that the imagination and perception are mutually engaged in ordinary and aesthetic experience (in such works as Eye and Mind and The Visible and the Invisible),4 he is seen by many scholars in his earlier works to hold to a philosophy of presence based on the fundamental experience of perception. This essay challenges the traditional interpretation of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy of imagination by focusing on the way that he describes perception and embodiment. The phenomenal body involves a dialectic between habitual behavior and what Merleau-Ponty calls the virtual body, the ability to imagine alternative perspectives and modes of embodiment and to use that ability to develop habits into symbolic activity. The to and fro movement between acquired and creative modes of embodiment underlies both ordinary perception and aesthetic activity, instilling in the heart of embodied existence an element of creativity and imagination. Perception is also shown to involve a complex structure of absence and presence when reinterpreted on the basis of the virtual body. The traditional interpretation of Merleau-Ponty's theory of imagination overlooks the essential link that the virtual body provides between his texts on perception at the beginning of his career and his later work on the ontology of flesh. Sartre and Imagination as Fancy is quite common to think of the imagination as an escape from reality. While viewing a film or reading a novel, we are able to lose ourselves in the world of fiction, leaving everyday concerns behind. This attitude can lead to the view that the imagination is at best an entertainment, and at worst a means for avoiding the harsh realities of life. In his voluminous study of the imagination, Sartre claims that it is a fundamental mode of human existence. is by means of the imagination, he claims, that we are able to best experience the freedom of consciousness. Since the imagination surpasses the confines of perceptual experience, it allows consciousness to freely explore new meanings. In the free play of imagining, we are able to discover what is involved in negating reality as in-itself and in being the nothingness by a meaning for reality is constituted-the nothingness that, in Being and Nothingness, is identical to consciousness.5 It is the appearance of the imaginary before consciousness, he says, which permits the grasping of the process of turning the world into nothingness as its essential condition and as its primary structure. …