Merleau-Ponty Through the Arts: Session 5 - Cinema as Performing Affectivity

Maurice Merleau-Ponty is a key figure in phenomenology, and is considered one of the most influential philosophers of perception, embodiment, and lived experience.

In The World of Perception, Merleau-Ponty expounds upon at least two core premises. First, while not denying the utility of the scientific method, he posits that there is more to understand and appreciate about life that is not easily pinned down by science. Second, he draws contrasts between what he refers to as "the classical world", which for him communicates a perfect and final view of things, and "the modern world", which is messy, unfinished, and disquieting, yet ultimately more consistent with the ambiguity of life as it is. One of his vehicles for illustrating these two core premises is the arts. In fact, he admonishes us that we might "rehabilitate our perception" through considering the differences between classical art and contemporary art.

In this meetup series, we will take up Merleau-Ponty's invitation to understand perception - and life as it is lived - through contemporary arts. Each session has an assigned reading, and then we will watch a film related to the arts and then discuss the film - and the art medium - with respect to the article and Merleau-Ponty's ideas (and related phenomenologists).

If you are new to Merleau-Ponty, you can find The World of Perception here. It is a very accessible series of public lectures transcribed into a book. You may find this useful background reading for this series.

http://timothyquigley.net/cont/mp-wp.pdf

Meetup Rules: this is a hands-raised meetup, prioritizing people who have actually done the reading. You are welcome to attend if you have not done the reading, but comments will be reserved for those who have read ahead of time. Dialogue is meant to be respectful and cordial, with a zero-tolerance policy for anything otherwise.

Session 5: Cinema as Performing Affectivity

Merleau-Ponty’s work had a huge influence on the visual medium, and he is considered one of the premier philosophers on the phenomenology of film. The signature of his approach to perception is that the way we see the world is inseparable from our embodiment.

In this 3-hour meetup, we will explore how Merleau-Ponty’s ideas on visual perception, Gestalt, and affectivity are drawn out through modern cinema. Specifically asking, can a film make you feel the weight of a body that cannot move? We will look at his ideas through the lens of Julian Schnabel’s masterpiece, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. We will move beyond the idea of cinema as a "window" and instead treat it as an extension of our own senses.

Attendees are asked to do the reading ahead of time. In the meetup, we will first watch the film based on the memoir of Jean-Dominique Bauby, the editor of Paris Elle magazine who had a brainstem stroke that left him with locked-in syndrome so that he could only communicate through eye blinks.

In the remaining time, we will discuss the film alongside the following reading:

Cinema as Performing Affectivity: Reassessing
Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Film

https://hermeneia.ro/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/20-Robert-Niculau-Hermeneia35.pdf

—————————————————————-

This will be the last in the series of “Merleau-Ponty Through the Arts”. After a short summer break, I anticipate some time in July we will be starting a regular reading group on Merleau-Ponty and philosophers carrying on his line of thought. Stay tuned!