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The Natural & Cultural in Humans Through the Process of 'Escape'

By Virginia Craft

Merleau-Ponty believes that the way we act and our manner of being in the world is reflected by our sexuality and expressed
through language. He illustrates this in his Phenomenology of Perception by saying, "All that we are, we are on the basis of a de
facto situation which we appropriate to ourselves and which we ceaselessly transform by a sort of escape which is never an
unconditioned freedom" (Phenomenology of Perception, 198). Thus, it is not possible to tell, in our behavior, what is natural from
what is cultural. He says, "everything is both manufactured and natural in man" (PP, 220).

For what is cultural starts out as a natural situation for us and is transformed into a cultural meaning through this notion of 'escape.'
Merleau-Ponty believes that sexuality is a way of being in the world that has purpose and that our sexuality expresses aspects of
our existence. He uses Freud's psychoanalysis as an example of this. He thinks, "In so far as a man's sexual history provides a key
to his life, it is because in his sexuality is projected his manner of being towards the world, that is, towards time and other men" (PP,
183). Sexuality is, therefore, (for Merleau-Ponty) a certain way of making meaning of the world; it opens up a meaningful world.

Merleau-Ponty shows an example of this through a case where a girl 'loses' her voice after her mom forbids her to see the man she
is in love with. Merleau-Ponty explains the implications of her inability to speak by saying, "In so far as the emotion elects to find its
expression in loss of speech, this is because of all the bodily functions speech is most intimately linked with communal existence, or,
as we shall put it, with co-existence. Loss of speech, then, stands for the refusal of co-existence..." (PP, 186).

This loss of speech is, then, a renouncement of verbal communication with others, thus an 'escape' from the situation and (in a way)
a break with life itself. However this 'escape' the girl is foregoing is never an absolute means for freedom. As easily as the situation
was brought into her life that caused the 'escape', the situation can become affected by other external causes resulting in a
renouncement of this rejection. "It is true that loss of voice is not a paralysis, and this is proved by the fact that, treated by
psychological means and left free by her family to see the man she loves, the girl recovers her power of speech" (PP, 187).

In the case of Schneider's sexuality, he does not live in a sexual world. Schneider is a man that, due to complications, is unable to
perform 'abstract movements' ("extend your arm parallel to the floor", PP, 103-4) and can only perform 'concrete movements' without
having to watch his limbs move. His structure of sexuality changed in that he no longer seeks out sexual partners, has to be
stimulated directly to have any kind of pleasure and he is not attracted to anyone (since people all look the same to him). He has a
sort of originary intentionality in that he cannot directly relate to others anymore.

Schneider's lack of sexual schema is projected through his physical lack of desire or sexual value and the lack of will to express
sexuality (beyond a neutral state) through his objective body and toward another body. His body has undergone a kind of 'escape'
because his cultural and historical behavior is such that it has affected his initial natural behavior (for example, his sexual will), and
thus has become one (indistinguishable) in his behavior. Schneider's case shows "...all human 'functions', from sexuality to motility
and intelligence, are rigorously unified in one synthesis, it is impossible to distinguish in the total being of man a bodily organization
to be treated as a contingent fact, and other attributes necessarily entering into his make-up. Everything in man is a necessity" (PP,
197). In both cases (the girl who loses her speech and Schneider's case), the differing expressions of sexuality in the patients is
all-encompassing with their existence.

The notion of 'escape' also makes difficult attempts to distinguish the natural from the cultural in the area of language and
expression. For Merleau-Ponty, our thoughts are not possible without words. He rejects the notion that words are arbitrary in relation
to thought (for example, the word "dog" in French is "chien", and thus the word itself varies with different languages). Rather, he
believes that thoughts and words are motivated by each other. In the case of amnesia patients, concerning colors, "The same
patients who cannot name colours set before them, are equally incapable of classifying them in the performance of a set task...

They have thus become unable to subsume the sensory givens under a category...Even when, at the beginning of the test, they
proceed correctly, it is not the conformity of the samples to an idea which guides them, but the experience of an immediate
resemblance..." (PP, 204). Merleau-Ponty points out that this analysis of the amnesia patients' relation to colors and their inability to
categorize sensory givens brings to light that naming a thing is a matter separating ourselves "away from its individual and unique
characteristics to see it as representative of an essence or a category..." (PP, 204). To fully recognize an object is to name it.

Merleau-Ponty believes that words have a meaning and style to them, and that words are aspects of bodily expression. They have a
meaning in that until we give our thought words, we do not know what it is. Merleau-Ponty, thus, expresses the notion of the spoken
and the speaking in language; sedimentation being the spoken and spontaneity being the speaking. In the case of Schneider, his
use of language is trapped in sedimentation and he cannot abstractly form authentic speech.
 He merely lives in the moment of the past; he cannot create, he has no spontaneity. Just as Schneider is not capable of forming
authentic speech, he also is unable to express language through the naturalness of bodily gestures. The de facto of his situation is
such that his body and his mind could not move past his cultural behaviors which were transformed by the 'escape' that merged his
natural and current cultural behaviors together, thus affecting whole aspects of his life.

Culture's effects on our natural behaviors are also expressed through that of different languages. Sedimentation gives us a shared
world of meanings which are attached to the culture from which they spring. Equally, bodily gestures differ with each culture based
on the emotional aspects of how that culture experiences the world. Merleau-Ponty expresses this through his example, saying, "It is
not only the gesture which is contingent in relation to the body's organization, it is the manner itself in which we meet the situation
and live it.

The angry Japanese smiles, the westerner goes red and stamps his foot or else goes pale and hisses his words...What is important
is how they use their bodies, the simultaneous patterning of body and world in emotion" (PP, 219). Merleau-Ponty further says, "It is
no more natural, and no less conventional, to shout in anger or to kiss in love than to call a table 'a table'" (PP, 220). Here he shows
that there will always be a cultural aspect to affect our natural behavior.

Merleau-Ponty expresses in his Phenomenology of Perception how we transform our de facto situations by a process of 'escape'
that is, however, never unconditioned freedom. This is apparent through our sexuality (as a manner of being projected toward the
world) and language (through the expression of speech and bodily gestures), in relation to the cultural effects they have on our
natural behaviors.

Virginia Craft, Language and Sexuality in Merleau-Ponty's "Phenomenology of Perception", Associated Content.

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