Hostname: page-component-5db58dd55d-qmkzp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-05-25T11:09:00.978Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A Sensuous Ethics of Difference

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2020

Rachel McCann
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This essay outlines how Western culture, and in particular the practice of architecture, has failed to develop a nuanced and ethical approach to alterity. It examines Maurice Merleau-Ponty's conception of the flesh as a process of continual self-interrogation through perceptual acts that intertwine communality and difference, establishing a shared world through interlocution, and explores how the work of Merleau-Ponty and Luce Irigaray augment each other to deepen our understanding of alterity. It then examines architectural design as an intercorporeal and intersubjective act that creatively refigures sedimented spatial and social habits. Using the example of an architectural design studio, it demonstrates how designers can critically confront nuances of alterity through investigating the corporeal and social depths of architecture.

Information

Type
Creating Ethical Spaces
Information
Hypatia , Volume 26 , Issue 3: Special Issue: Ethics of Embodiment , Summer 2011 , pp. 497 - 517
Copyright
Copyright © 2011 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Abram, David. 1996. The spell of the sensuous: Perception and language in a more‐than‐human world. New York: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
Davis, Duane H. 1989. Reversible subjectivity: The problem of transcendence and language. In Merleau‐Ponty: Critical essays, ed. Pietersma, Henry. Washington, D.C.: University Press of America.Google Scholar
Dillon, Martin C. 1997. Merleau‐Ponty's ontology. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
Fielding, Helen. 2006. White logic and the constancy of color. In Feminist interpretations of Maurice Merleau‐Ponty, ed. Olkowski, Dorothea and Weiss, Gail. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press.Google Scholar
Ghirardo, Diane. 1996. The architecture of deceit. In Theorizing a new agenda for architecture: An anthology of architectural theory 1965–1995. Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press.Google Scholar
Grosz, Elizabeth. 1991. Sexual subversions: Three French feminists. St Leonards, New South Wales, Australia: Allen & Unwin Academic.Google Scholar
Grosz, Elizabeth. 1999. Woman, chora, dwelling. In Gender space architecture: An interdisciplinary introduction, ed. Rendell, Jane, Penner, Barbara, and Borden, Iain. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
hooks, bell. 1999. Choosing the margin as a space of radical openness. In Gender space architecture: An interdisciplinary introduction, ed. Rendell, Jane, Penner, Barbara, and Borden, Iain. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Irigaray, Luce. 1993. An ethics of sexual difference. Trans. Carolyn Burke and Fill Gillian. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Jameson, Fredric. 1997. Is space political? In Rethinking architecture: A reader in cultural theory, ed. Leach, Neil. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kirby, Vicki. 2006. Culpability and the double cross: Irigaray with Merleau‐Ponty. In Feminist interpretations of Maurice Merleau‐Ponty, ed. Olkowski, Dorothea and Weiss, Gail. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press.Google Scholar
Lorraine, Tamsin. 1999. Irigaray and Deleuze: Experiments in visceral philosophy. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Mazis, Glen. 1996. Matter, dream, and the murmurs among things. In Merleau‐Ponty: Difference, materiality, painting, ed. Fóti, Véronique M.Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press.Google Scholar
Mazis, Glen. 2002. Earthbodies: Rediscovering our planetary senses. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Merleau‐Ponty, Maurice. 1964a. The primacy of perception, ed. Edie, James M.Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
Merleau‐Ponty, Maurice. 1964b. Signs. Trans. Richard C. McCleary. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
Merleau‐Ponty, Maurice. 1968. The visible and the invisible, ed. Lefort, Claude. Trans. Alphonso Lingis. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
Merleau‐Ponty, Maurice. 1973. Dialogue and the perception of the other. In The prose of the world, ed. Lefort, Claude. Trans. John O'Neill. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
Merleau‐Ponty, Maurice. 1993. Eye and mind. In The Merleau‐Ponty aesthetics reader: Philosophy and painting, ed. Johnson, Galen A.Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
Merleau‐Ponty, Maurice. 2004. The world of perception. Trans. Oliver Davis. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ross, Stephen David. 1995. Plenishment in the earth: An ethic of inclusion. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Scott Brown, Denise. 1999. Room at the top? Sexism and the star system in architecture. In Gender space architecture: An interdisciplinary introduction, ed. Rendell, Jane, Penner, Barbara, and Borden, Iain. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Yeo, Michael. 1992. Perceiving/reading the other: Ethical dimensions. In Merleau‐Ponty, hermeneutics, and postmodernism, ed. Busch, Thomas W. and Gallagher, Shaun. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar