Baupolizeiverordnung für die zum Landespolizeibezirk Berlin gehörigen, außerhalb der Ringbahn belegenen Teile von Deutsch-Wilmersdorf, Schöneberg, Rixdorf, Lichtenberg, Boxhagen-Rummelsburg und Stralau vom 15. März 1910

Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie

Title:: Die Phänomenologie der Rheumatologie: Behinderung, Merleau-Ponty und der Irrtum des maximalen Griffs

Information:: Abstract: This paper charts the concepts of grip and the bodily auxiliary in Maurice Merleau-Ponty to consider how they find expression in disability narratives. Arguing against the notion of “maximal grip” that some commentators have used to explicate intentionality in Merleau-Ponty, I argue that grip in his texts functions instead as a compensatory effort to stave off uncertainty, lack of mastery, and ambiguity. Nearly without exception in Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception, the mobilisation of “grip” is a signal of impending loss and is offered as a strategy for managing failure rather than as an example of sure-footed mastery. I read Merleau-Ponty alongside Mary Felstiner’s Out of Joint: A Public and Private Story of Arthritis to explore these other, attenuated dimensions of grip as an example of a way of thinking disabled embodiment otherwise.

Keywords:: Maurice Merleau-Ponty ; disability ; embodiment ; bodily functions ; critical phenomenology