This article aims to establish an understanding of Merleau-Ponty’s view of creative expression, and of its phenomenological function, setting out from the intriguing statement in his essay “Cézanne’s Doubt” that the painter (or writer or philosopher) finds himself in the situation of the first human being trying to express herself. Although the importance of primary or creative expression in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy is well known, there is no consensus among commentators with respect to how this notion is to be understood, and (...) of its apparently paradoxical relation to experience in his philosophy. On the one hand, Merleau-Ponty seems to presuppose that there is an original meaning pre-given in experience; on the other hand, expression is described as a hazardous enterprise, because the meaning to be expressed does not exist before expression has succeeded. In order to resolve this tension, I explore the significance of the precariousness of creative expression, arguing that it must be related to its other side: the constituted, all too often petrified meaning that we must start out from. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Merleau-Ponty’s seminal book, Phenomenology of Perception, stands as a positive resource for articulating both trans experiences and trans identities within both a wrong-body model and a multiple worlds of sense model of trans philosophy. I begin my paper by highlighting the complex relation between Talia Bettcher’s proposed multiple worlds of sense model and the wrong-body model. As the dismissal of either model appears undesirable, I suggest that we attempt to combine the two models. To (...) do this, I turn to Georgia Warnke’s contextual understanding of identity as I ultimately juxtapose her work with Merleau-Ponty in order to give a positive account of trans identities that will function as a bridge between Merleau-Ponty and Bettcher. I then turn to discuss the basic ideas within Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception that are used to ground Rubin’s wrong-body model. As I contend that Merleau-Ponty has more to offer what Rubin attributes to him, I then turn to key passages concerning Merleau-Ponty’s understanding of the sexual schema and the intrinsic ambiguity of the body. By incorporating both concepts into a discussion of trans philosophy, I argue that Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology offers a non-essentialist account of sexuality that both phenomenologically legitimates and grounds the wide spectrum of trans experiences and trans identities as well as Warnke’s contextual identity through, what I call, our ambiguous-being-in-the-world. Such an account, I conclude, makes possible a combined wrong-body model and multiple worlds of sense model of trans philosophy. (shrink)