Tag: Merleau-Ponty

May 10, 2013

The Language of Foreignness – Introduction
“I could not live in India: I don’t know the language.” Foreign language is for many the first thing to which foreignness is synonymous. Being a foreigner would mean not just living in a foreign country, but more immediately, more stressfully, living in a different and foreign linguistic environment…

May 10, 2013

The Language of Foreignness – Part 1.2.2
Two decades after Heidegger’s Being and Time, and not without the mediation of Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) attempted a profound application of the German fathers of phenomenology to one particular question: perception…

May 10, 2013

The Language of Foreignness – Part 2.2
And as for the language, well I don’t know. English is comfortable, or rather, comforting. A foreign language, for the one who always found himself to be the foreigner. The easy foreign language, so foreign that it is even foreign to most people one encounters in India. Funny thing. And foreign to me, indeed. A safe terrain to express my thoughts…

May 10, 2013

The Language of Foreignness – Conclusion
Alain Badiou’s mention of philosophy as foreignness is not an unprepared statement. For the thinker, the foreign is truly a character, if not, the main character, the main aspect, of the philosophical approach: “I think it is very important to understand this: genuine philosophical commitment, in situations, creates a foreignness…”