In this paper I attempt to develop several ways Merleau-Ponty's ontology might contribute to an environmental ethic through a redefinition of his concept of flesh in terms of a general theory of affectivity. Currently accepted interpretations of the concept such as those in Abram, Toadvine, Barbaras, and Dastur rely upon conceiving flesh as a perceptual experience. I contest this interpretation and argue that a more productive conception of flesh emerges when understood in terms of Heidegger's philosophy. The (...) paper concludes with a consideration of the normative significance of flesh by examining the role of “wildness“ within a place-based ethic. (shrink)

'As an introduction to early modern thinking and the impact of past ideas on present lives, this book can find few equals and no superiors. Porter is a witty, humane writer with an extraordinary vocabulary and a sparkling sense of fun. Whether he is quoting from obscure medical texts or analysing scabrous diaries, dishing the dirt on long-dead bigwigs or evoking sympathy for human suffering, his grasp is masterly and his erudition appealing. I wish I could read it again for (...) the first time: you can.' Times Educational Supplement, Book of the Week In this startlingly brilliant sequel to the prize-winning ENLIGHTENMENT Roy Porter completes his lifetime's work, offering a magical, enthusiastic and charming account of the writings of some of the most attractive figures ever to write English. (shrink)

메를로-퐁티의 지각 철학에는 이렇다 할 건축에 대한 얘기가 없지만 그럼에도 불구하고 오늘날 일군의 건축가와 건축 이론가들에게 새로운 건축 이론을 형성하는 데 있어 큰 영감의 원천이 되고 있다. 그중에는 핀란드의 건축가 이자 건축 이론가인 유하니 팔라스마가 있다. 팔라스마는 메를로-퐁티의 지각철학을 자신이 전개한 건축 이론의 기초로 삼았지만, 그렇다고 해서 그의 건축적 경험 이론과 메를로-퐁티의 지각 이론이 전적으로 합치되는 것은 아니다. 반대로 이론의 핵심 부분에서 양자 사이에는 미묘한 대립이 발견된다. 따라서 이 글에서 우리는 먼저 팔라스마의 건축 현상학을 몇 가지 쟁점을 통해 고찰하였다. 그리고 (...) 이어 메를로-퐁티의 지각 철학을 참조하면서 그것의 타당성과 의미를 논의하였다. 논의의 결과 우리는 팔라스마 건축 이론의 의의뿐만 아니라 그 한계를 보다 분명히 인식할 수 있었다. (shrink)

Many people believe that if we could produce meat without animal suffering—say, in ‘humane’ or ‘happy’ farms, or by growing it in a lab from biopsied cells—there would be no moral problem with doing so. This chapter argues otherwise. There is something morally ‘off’ with eating the flesh of sentient beings however it is produced. It is ‘off’ because anyone who truly understands the intimate relationship that an animal’s body stands in to all the value and disvalue in their (...) lives would not want to eat flesh. The chapter concludes by arguing that, as a society, we should not switch over to ‘happy’ or lab-grown meat. Instead, it is imperative that we pursue a public reckoning on our treatment of animals in factory farms, not only for the sake of animals, but for the sake of humanity itself. (shrink)

Human flesh search engine can be a double-edged sword, bringing convenience on the one hand and leading to infringement of personal privacy on the other hand. This paper discusses the ethical problems brought about by the human flesh search engine, as well as possible solutions.

In Telling Flesh, Vicki Kirby addresses a major theoretical issue at the intersection of the social sciences and feminist theory -- the separation of nature from culture. Kirby focuses particularly on postmodern approaches to corporeality, and explores how these approaches confine the body within questions about meaning and interpretation. Kirby explores the implications of this containment in the work of Jane Gallop, Judith Butler, and Drucilla Cornell, as well as in recent cyber-criticism. By analysing the inadvertent repetition of the (...) nature/culture division in this work, Kirby offers a powerful reassessment of dualism itself. (shrink)

This new collection of challenging literary studies plays with a foundational definition of Western culture: the word become flesh.

In the literature on medical ethics, it is generally admitted that vulnerable persons or groups deserve special attention, care or protection. One can define vulnerable persons as those having a greater likelihood of being wronged – that is, of being denied adequate satisfaction of certain legitimate claims. The conjunction of these two points entails what we call the Special Protection Thesis. It asserts that persons with a greater likelihood of being denied adequate satisfaction of their legitimate claims deserve special attention, (...) care or protection. Such a thesis remains vague, however, as long as we do not know what legitimate claims are. This article aims at dispelling this vagueness by exploring what claims we have in relation to health care – thus fleshing out a claim-based conception of vulnerability. We argue that the Special Protection Thesis must be enriched as follows: If individual or group X has a greater likelihood of being denied adequate satisfaction of some of their legitimate claims to physical integrity, autonomy, freedom, social provision, impartial quality of government, social bases of self-respect or communal belonging, then X deserves special attention, care or protection. With this improved understanding of vulnerability, vulnerability talk in healthcare ethics can escape vagueness and serve as an adequate basis for practice. (shrink)

Julian of Norwich (b. 1342) anticipated the ontological and epistemological work on sexed embodiment pioneered in the work of Merleau-Ponty and Irigaray in the 20th century. Her epistemology of sensual ‘showings’ helped reconfigure women’s embodiment and speech acts (‘bodytalk’): by recognizing cognitive emotions and the knowledge-producing body; and by envisioning the intertwining of human flesh with All That Is. The paper next examines Merleau-Ponty’s somatic discourse on the chiasmic flesh, which leads to a discussion of Irigaray’s work on (...) poetic mimesis. (shrink)

A groundbreaking search for the origins of this expression, Flesh Becomes Word traces the scapegoat to its origins in Mesopotamian ritual across centuries of typological interpretation and religious reflection, to its first informal uses in ...

This chapter contains sections titled: Hunting as the Pursuit of Wild “Life” Carnal Bonds and the Way of All Flesh Saintly Chewing and the Corruption of the Flesh The Vital Paradox: The Acceptance of Death as Affirmation of Life Notes.

Synthetic meat made from animal cells will transform how we eat. It will reduce suffering by eliminating the need to raise and slaughter animals. But it will also have big public health benefits if it becomes widely consumed. In this paper, we discuss how “clean meat” can reduce the risks associated with intensive animal farming, including antibiotic resistance, environmental pollution, and zoonotic viral diseases like influenza and coronavirus. Since the most common objection to clean meat is that some people find (...) it “disgusting” or “unnatural,” we explore the psychology of disgust to find possible counter-measures. We argue that the public health benefits of clean meat give us strong moral reasons to promote its development and consumption in a way that the public is likely to support. We end by depicting the change from farmed animals to clean meat as a collective action problem and suggest that social norms rather than coercive laws should be employed to solve the problem. (shrink)

The history of the sublime within aesthetics has tended to focus on the natural world. Within this history, the sublime has been a category reserved for awe-inspiring and overwhelming experiences, in which the finite subject is dwarfed by a more expansive force. Despite subjectivity being foremost in this topic, what has been overlooked, is the role the body plays in being the centre of aesthetic experience. In this paper, I will turn the tide on this omission and thematize the role (...) of the body within the experience of the sublime. My plan for reconsidering this movement is to unite Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, Wrath of God with the late thought of Merleau-Ponty, especially his enigmatic notion of "flesh". In both Herzog and Merleau-Ponty, a philosophy of nature exists which challenges the dichotomy between the autonomous self encountering the objective realm of wilderness. In each case, an ambiguity undercuts the idea of wilderness existing "there" while human subjectivity remains placed "here." I will "read" the film as an instant of the chiasmatic relation between nature and humanity. Doing so, I will suggest that the reversibility between the body and the environment can be seen as an amplification of Merleau-Ponty’s notion of "wild being". (shrink)

Embodied cognition emphasizes the importance of the body to cognition, but what is the nature of this importance? For some advocates, the body provides a computational resource within the context of a larger cognitive system. For others, the body constrains cognition, such that differently embodied organisms will differ cognitively as well. I examine these distinct conceptions of embodiment, defending the greater interest of the second. I argue as well that judgments of the body's significance in cognition do not, as contestants (...) on both sides of the debate often insist, depend on showing the body to be a constituent in cognition. (shrink)

The Catholic dimension in Foucault’s examination of the Church Fathers is featured because neglect of it may misrepresent the very notions of virginity and of flesh in Confessions of the Flesh. Failure to appreciate the tension between a seditious flesh and an incarnational flesh implicitly confines the Patristic vision to the limited modern field of “sexuality.” The fourth volume might be best interpreted against the background of the investigations that prompted Foucault to immerse himself in religious (...) texts and spiritual experiences: his early writings on literature; the later interest of his lectures in pastoral technologies; and his witnessing of the political-spiritual movements both in Islam and in Catholicism. (shrink)

In _Sentient Flesh _R. A. Judy takes up freedman Tom Windham’s 1937 remark “we should have our liberty 'cause... us is human flesh" as a point of departure for an extended meditation on questions of the human, epistemology, and the historical ways in which the black being is understood. Drawing on numerous fields, from literary theory and musicology, to political theory and phenomenology, as well as Greek and Arabic philosophy, Judy engages literary texts and performative practices such as (...) music and dance that express knowledge and conceptions of humanity appositional to those grounding modern racialized capitalism. Operating as critiques of Western humanism, these practices and modes of being-in-the-world—which he theorizes as “thinking in disorder,” or “poiēsis in black”—foreground the irreducible concomitance of flesh, thinking, and personhood. As Judy demonstrates, recognizing this concomitance is central to finding a way past the destructive force of ontology that still holds us in thrall. Erudite and capacious, _Sentient Flesh _offers a major intervention in the black study of life. (shrink)

Not all homo sapiens are human subjects. This paper explores the lived experience of homo sapiens but not human that I call “lived flesh.” A lived experience/distinction that shouldn’t be possible on Merleau-Ponty’s account of human subjectivity in Phenomenology of Perception and “The Intertwining – The Chiasm.” The use of flesh is deliberate and emerges from my engagement with Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception and “The Intertwining – The Chiasm” through Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Hortense Spillers’ “Interstices: A Small Drama (...) of Words” and “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book,” Amber Musser’s Sensual Excess: Queer Femininity and Brown Jouissance, and Audre Lorde’s Zami: A New Spelling of My Name. The affective, experiential, and ethical practices of american Blackwomxn in these texts problematize Merleau-Ponty’s account of human subjectivity and his account of the generality of Being (“The Intertwining – The Chiasm”). Merleau-Ponty’s effacement of raced, sexed, and gendered difference results in a construct of the human subject that cannot include all homo sapiens. (shrink)

Technology has been at the centre of existentialist (e.g. Heidegger) and sociological (e.g. Marcuse) critique for a long time. The latest versions of criticism rely on the results of “science and technology studies”: they argue that essentialist conceptualisations of technology should be replaced while aiming at “democratizing technology” (e.g. Feenberg). However, even these approaches are characterised by a shortcoming when it comes to providing a normative basis: as contemporary technology intermeshes with the elementary levels of existence (such as perception or (...) cognition), it remains in the blind spot of those users, who could “democratize” it through their critique. Accordingly, the formal normative bases (e.g. the one provided by Feenberg, who relies on Habermas’ democracy principle), need to be complemented with substantive claims. For this purpose, a phenomenological-existentialist framework is elaborated with the help of Merleau-Ponty and Levinas. It is argued that due to the ongoing expansion of social systems relying on various forms of technology (Luhmann), the “mediated flesh” becomes rigid. By losing the plasticity of the chiasm, subjects are exposed to existential crises unmanageable by mere technology (e.g. mental disorders). Such experience of technologically induced social suffering could serve as a normative basis for criticising the over-expansion of technology. (shrink)

Flesh of My Flesh is a collection of articles by today's most respected scientists, philosophers, bioethicists, theologians, and law professors about whether we should allow human cloning. It includes historical pieces to provide background for the current debate. Religious, philosophical, and legal points of view are all represented.

The Flesh of Images: Merleau-Ponty Between Painting and Cinema, by Mauro Carbone, is his third book in a body of work interpreting Merleau-Ponty’s ontology of Flesh: The Thinking of the Sensible: M...

Highlights Merleau-Ponty’s interest in film and connects it to his aesthetic theory.

This paper attempts to draw out the political import of Merleau-Ponty’s ontology of the flesh, by engaging the critique levelled against it by his student and literary executor Claude Lefort. In suggesting a tension in Merleau-Ponty’s work that obscures alterity, Lefort seems to miss the rich political import of Merleau-Ponty’s ontology of the flesh. Founded in his development of the concepts of écart and reversibility, Merleau-Ponty’s ontological position breaks with many of the standard tenets of political thinking, and (...) offers a multifaceted conception of alterity. I will suggest that Lefort’s own claim to alterity buckles under the immanent weight of his critique of Merleau-Ponty, offering at best a conception of otherness limited to a self-relational non-identity. This conception ultimately fails to adequately consider the relations existing between different beings-in-the-world. In thinking being as flesh, Merleau-Ponty offers us an ethico-political optic that attempts to think alterity and ontology in a manner that unhinges us from our closed and autonomous being, opening us to the world, others and to the non-identical becoming that characterizes being as such. (shrink)

The ontology developed by Merleau-Ponty in the final stage of his work is centered on the concept of flesh, giving this notion its most general scope by complementing the idea of “flesh of the body” with that of a “flesh of the world.” This paper seeks to evaluate the possibility of reading this philosophy of the flesh as a materialist ontology. For this purpose, the possibility is considered of interpreting the concept of flesh as a (...) new figure of matter, despite Merleau-Ponty’s claims that seem to preclude this interpretation. In concluding, the paper briefly discusses the potential contribution of this interpretation to approaching certain conceptual problems in contemporary science. It is argued that this approach can help to promote a more productive interchange between Merleau-Ponty’s fundamental thought and the philosophy of science. (shrink)

Theodor Adorno’s 1960–1961 lecture course Ontology and Dialectics, recently translated into English, provides the most systematic articulation of his critique of Martin Heidegger. When Adorno delivered three of the lectures at the Collège de France, Maurice Merleau-Ponty was reportedly scandalised as he was at that time developing his own ontology, informed by Heidegger. However, this article problematises the assumption that Adorno’s negative dialectic and Merleau-Ponty’s late ontology are incompatible. First, Adorno’s criticism of Heidegger’s ontology is delineated, with particular focus on (...) how Adorno argues that Heidegger’s subordination of the human being to being is homologous with the logic of capitalism. Then, we turn to Merleau-Ponty’s own engagement with Heidegger, with particular focus on how Merleau-Ponty cannot be accused of denigrating ontic beings. Finally, it is argued that Merleau-Ponty’s indirect ontology has the same implications as those which allow Adorno to position his dialectical method as politically opposed to Heidegger’s ontology. (shrink)

Reexamines the Western philosophical tradition, looking at the basic concepts of the mind, time, causation, morality, and the self.

Based on Merleau-Pontys’s philosophy of flesh, this paper outlines possibilities for organisational practices towards sustainability development. In order to elucidate these en-fleshed practices, the paper begins by presenting Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of the body and perception as well as his ontology of ‘flesh’. In particular, flesh is interpreted as elemental ‘carnality’ and formative medium. As such, it is processed through sensual and reflexive doubling as a reversibility and chiasm of the sentient and the sensible. This understanding opens for (...) the path to a post-dualistic, transformative approach towards processes of post-dualistic ‘wild being and ‘inter-be(com)ing’ in organisations. These concepts of Flesh are related to affect and imagination as well as organization and sustainability. The paper then offers some practical and political as well as research implications and concludes with some final perspectives on possible enfleshed inter-practices of sustainability. (shrink)

This essay is a second attempt to reconcile the perspectives of Merleau-Ponty and Guattari, following on the examination of the unconscious in a previous issue of Chiasmi. Here the focus concerns an ontology that overcomes the dualistic heritage of Western metaphysics. More precisely, I compare the concept of flesh as Merleau-Ponty employs it in his later texts with that of the machine as Guattari uses this from the end of the 1960s until his last writings in the early 1990s. (...) The machine concerns the potential for transformation in a given social and political configuration, so that the ontology to be drawn from this concept is a thought of transformation. The position of individual subjectivity in this context is not so different from that granted to it by Merleau-Ponty in his last writings: a curvature of the flesh or, as Deleuze and Guattari write about the artisan in A Thousand Plateaus, “one who is determined in such a way as to follow a flow of matter.”Cet essai est une deuxième tentative de rapprochement des perspectives de Merleau-Ponty et de Guattari, après la problématique de l’inconscient traitée dans un précédent numéro de Chiasmi. Cette fois elle a lieu sous l’angle d’une ontologie qui surmonte l’héritage dualiste de la métaphysique occidentale. Plus précisément, je mets en comparaison la notion de chair telle que Merleau-Ponty la met en oeuvre dans ses textes tardifs et celle de machine telle que Guattari l’emploie depuis la fin des années 1960 jusqu’à ses derniers écrits du début des années 1990. La machine concerne le potentiel de transformation dans une configuration sociale et politique donnée, de sorte que l’ontologie qu’on peut tirer de cette notion est une pensée de la transformation. La position de la subjectivité individuelle dans ce contexte n’est pas très différente de celle que lui accorde Merleau-Ponty dans ses derniers écrits : une courbure de la chair, ou comme l’écrivent Deleuze et Guattari dans Mille plateaux à propos de l’artisan, « celui qui est déterminé à suivre un flux de matière ».Questo saggio è un secondo tentativo di avvicinare le prospettive di Merleau-Ponty e di Guattari, dopo quanto fatto in un precedente numero di Chiasmi attorno alla problematica dell’inconscio. Questa volta, tale raffronto sarà nella prospettiva di un’ontologia che superi l’eredità dualistica della metafisica occidentale. Più precisamente, intendo confrontare la nozione di carne, nel modo in cui essa prende corpo nei testi dell’ultimo Merleau-Ponty, e quella di macchina di Guattari, nella maniera in cui è caratterizzata dall’autore a partire dalla fine degli anni Sessanta fino ai suoi ultimi scritti dell’inizio degli anni Novanta. La macchina riguarda il potenziale di trasformazione in una configurazione sociale e politica data, e quindi l’ontologia che ne deriva implica un pensiero della trasformazione. In questo contesto, la posizione della soggettività individuale non è molto diversa da quella caratterizzata da Merleau-Ponty nei suoi ultimi scritti: una curvatura della carne, o, come scrivono Deleuze e Guattari in Millepiani a proposito dell’artigiano, “colui che è determinato a seguire un flusso di materia”. (shrink)

Volume 3, Issue 1, March 2019, Page 81-85.

During the Corona pandemic, it became clear that people are vulnerable to potentially harmful nonhuman agents, as well as that our own biological existence potentially poses a threat to others, and vice versa. This suggests a certain reciprocity in our relations with both humans and nonhumans. In his The Visible and the Invisible, Merleau-Ponty introduces the notion of the flesh to capture this reciprocity. Building on this idea, he proposes to understand our relationships with other humans, as well as (...) those with nonhuman beings as having a chiasmic structure: to sense, or perceive another entity in a particular way simultaneously implies to be sensed or perceived in a particular way by this other entity. In this paper, we show how a postphenomenological perspective expands on Merleau-Ponty: first, it more radically interprets Merleau-Ponty’s notion of flesh by not only considering it to be a medium that is the condition of possibility for vision but as pointing to the constitution of an intercorporeal field in which entities—both human and nonhuman—mutually sense one another. Second, it augments Merleau-Ponty’s thought by drawing attention to how technologies mediate chiasmic relations. This is clarified through the example of the facemask, which reveals the chiasmic structure of our relation with nonhuman entities, and shows that technologies co-constitute interpersonal relationships by making humans present to one another in a particular way. We suggest that these aspects are not unique to the facemask, but point to a general technologically mediated chiasmic structure of human-world relations. (shrink)

This essay considers the two-way relation between critical realism and psychoanalysis. Critical realism vindicates and deepens our understanding of ontology by drawing on the sciences for which it...

This book models an ex-centric orientation to the study of modern formation as the study of the hyper-signification of difference as racialization/racism. As Black flesh came to be identified as persistent baseline for difference, it opens windows onto mimetic translations of all modern subjectivities.

Certain forms of art privilege the ellipsis. For example, in poetry, one has only to think of Mallarmé's Un Coup de dés for ellipsis to mark its peculiar trace upon the processes of meaning. Nonetheless, because ellipsis situates itself so curiously between meaning and signification, a formal definition may seem too categorical in explaining what ellipsis can do in its between-state, flanked by visuality, semiotics and signification. This article examines how Merleau- Ponty, Derrida and Deleuze, employ textual-visual and ontological-perceptual strategies (...) for making sense of this slippery signifier. These strategies allow us to think through examples of ellipsis in the writing of Hélène Cixous and in the photographs of Robert Frank, in terms of semantic, affective, aesthetic and material qualities. (shrink)

Volume 50, Issue 3, July 2019, Page 278-279.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:632 Feminist Studies 42, no. 3. © 2016 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Nikki Lane Bringing Flesh to Theory: Ethnography, Black Queer Theory, and Studying Black Sexualities As Dorothy Hodgson tells us, the most common features of an ethnographic project involve “talking to, participating with, and observing the people who produce... texts, exploring the contexts of their ideas and actions, and often studying how their situations, ideas, and actions (...) change over time.”1 Practically, this often involves spending months, and more often years, in a particular field site, where one develops relationships with members of the group, community, or institution being studied. Ethnographers are positioned in a place to observe, but also place their bodies on the line—participating, when possible, in the quotidian practices of the group. This observation and participation is captured in the form of “field notes” that may relay in the form of “thick description,” what the ethnographer sees as she observes and participates in various cultural and social practices.2 As such, ethnography requires reflexivity because the ethnographer must constantly consider how her body is affecting and is effected by the communities and institutions in which she is embedded. The benefit of this reflexive ethnographic approach is that, as Faye Ginsburg notes, it “has the capacity to reveal the fault lines in 1. Dorothy Louise Hodgson, “Of Modernity/Modernities, Gender, and Ethnography,” in Gendered Modernities: Ethnographic Perspectives, ed. Dorothy Louise Hodgson (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 17. 2. Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York: Basic Books, 1973). Nikki Lane 633 communities, social movements, and institutions, which frequently run along class, race, and generational lines, and that might easily be missed by more deductive and quantitative methodologies.”3 MarlonM.Bailey’s ButchQueensUpinPumps, Jafari S. Allen’s ¡Venceremos?, Mignon Moore’s Invisible Families, and Mireille Miller-Young’s A Taste for Brown Sugar represent an exciting trend within an interdisciplinary body of research that I am referring to as Black sexuality studies. What links these projects is their use of ethnographic methodologies to understand how Blackness informs racialized gender and sexuality in the everyday experiences of their interlocutors. In relying on ethnography, to varying degrees, they are in conversation with and expand upon methodological trends within Black feminist studies and Black queer studies. Further, the Black sexuality studies projects reviewed here question the (hetero)normative bent within the field of African American studies, the normatively white subject position that exists within queer theory, and the lack of attention to issues of sexual pleasure within Black feminist theory. They also challenge theorists of race and sexuality to move 3. Faye Ginsburg, “Ethnography and American Studies,” Cultural Anthropology 21, no. 3 (2006), 492. Books Discussed in This Essay¡Venceremos? The Erotics of Black Self-making in Cuba. By Jafari S. Allen. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011. Butch Queens Up in Pumps: Gender, Performance, and Ballroom Culture in Detroit. By Marlon M. Bailey. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013. Invisible Families: Gay Identities, Relationships, and Motherhood among Black Women. By Mignon Moore. Oakland: University of California Press, 2011. A Taste for Brown Sugar: Black Women in Pornography. By Mireille Miller-Young. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014. 634 Nikki Lane in the direction of interrogating the flesh, because they go to the site— the place where the body acts, feels, and engages the world—asking the simple question articulated best by E. Patrick Johnson: “What is the utility of queer [or feminist] theory on the front lines, in the trenches, on the street, or anyplace where the racialized and sexualized body is beaten, starved, fired, cursed—indeed, where the body is the site of trauma?”4 In my discussion of these texts, I will focus on how each utilizes ethnographic methodologies in distinct ways. I will argue that regardless of how they employ ethnography’s methods, they make two very important contributions to fields of Black feminist theory and Black queer theory. First, they add information about the lived experiences of Black sexual subjectivity to the ethnographic record. By adding these experiences to the record, they become part of the limited but growing body of available knowledge about the everyday experiences of Black people within the African... (shrink)

According to Conceptual Metaphor Theory , the Source-Path-Goal schema constitutes a central concept in cognition. Apart from literally structuring “movement“, SPG also shapes our understanding of “purposive activity“, including questing and story-telling. A problem in CMT, however, is that the existence of image schemas is almost exclusively postulated on the basis of verbal expressions. To examine the claim that people recruit image schemas such as SPG to make sense of life, it is essential to examine non-verbal modalities. Animation has highly (...) medium-specific opportunities to exploit SPG by its emphasis on “manner of movement“ and “balance“. Three animation films exemplifying MOVEMENT, QUEST, and STORY are analyzed in terms of SPG to chart how they exploit this schema. We end the paper by positioning our findings with respect to recent discussions about image schemas in Hampe and by suggesting avenues for further research. (shrink)

According to Conceptual Metaphor Theory, the Source-Path-Goal schema constitutes a central concept in cognition. Apart from literally structuring “movement”, SPG also shapes our understanding of “purposive activity”, including questing and story-telling. A problem in CMT, however, is that the existence of image schemas is almost exclusively postulated on the basis of verbal expressions. To examine the claim that people recruit image schemas such as SPG to make sense of life, it is essential to examine non-verbal modalities. Animation has highly medium-specific (...) opportunities to exploit SPG by its emphasis on “manner of movement” and “balance”. Three animation films exemplifying MOVEMENT, QUEST, and STORY are analyzed in terms of SPG to chart how they exploit this schema. We end the paper by positioning our findings with respect to recent discussions about image schemas in Hampe and by suggesting avenues for further research. (shrink)