Textures of light : vision and embodiment in Irigaray, Levinas and Merleau-Ponty

Among recent commentaries on Western twentieth century theorists of vision, those which include Luce Irigaray refer to her as an anti-visual theorist. Such commentaries concentrate on Irigaray's analysis of metaphysical vision as a form of phallocentrism. By way of contrast, this thesis draws a line between the critical project of Speculum, in which Irigaray addresses the photology which is philosophy's concern, and a more provocative alliance which Irigaray makes with certain philosophers, including Merleau-Ponty and Levinas. These philosophers consider vision and embodiment as a nexus of signification, rather than in relation to abstract illumination, metaphysical light, or a disembodied eye. However, despite Merleau-Ponty's break with the concept of perception as a natural coincidence of consciousness and things, and Levinas's break with the self as a thematizable totality, both philosophers adhere to preconceived notions about the invisibility of the feminine. Rather than devalorizing vision, Irigaray's challenge to Merleau-Ponty and Levinas is directed to their myopic sense of vision, which perpetuates feminine invisibility. In particular she identifies their lapses into familiar ways in their accounts of tactility, which for Merleau-Ponty is implicated in visibility and for Levinas is radically separate from visibility. Despite their differences, Irigaray argues that in both accounts, tactility is ultimately subordinated within an ocularcentric visual regime. What is most significant about Irigaray's engagement with Merleau-Ponty and Levinas is the determination with which she extends and develops their idiosyncratic and unique concepts of vision and embodiment, relating their work to an ethics of sexual difference in a way which gestures towards a new genealogy of light

Cleidocranial dysplastic mutant in the mouse : dental findings

Cleidocranial dysplasia is a genetic disorder which affects not only processes of osteogenesis, but also processes of tooth eruption, tooth induction, and craniofacial growth. These last three complications make the condition one which may interest those working in the fields of oral and craniofacial biology. The condition is neither life-threatening nor incapacitating. However, elucidation of the pathological process which it embodies may provide valuable insights into the normal mechanisms of tooth eruption, tooth induction and craniofacial growth, each of which remains a largely unsolved puzzle. The discovery of a mouse mutant which appears to have a genetic disorder homologous to the condition found in humans may provide scientists with an opportunity to study aspects of the disorder in a detailed manner which might otherwise be impossible. The extent to which the condition affects craniofacial growth and the dentition of the Ccd mutant has not been investigated, but if such processes are similarly affected in both mice and humans, then elucidation of these in the House may assist scientists not only in achieving an understanding of human Cleidocranial dysplasia, but may also help with the unravelling of normal mechanisms of craniofacial and dental development

When Too Many Puns Are Never Enough: A Response to Wurgaft's and Shaw's Reviews of Textures of Light

Benjamin Wurgaft \'How Heavy Light Can Be\' _Film-Philosophy_, vol. 6 no. 9, May 2002 Joshua Shaw \'Struggling to See the Light\' _Film-Philosophy_, vol. 6 no. 10, May 200

The enigma of reversibility and the genesis of sense in Merleau-Ponty

This article clarifies Merleau-Ponty’s enigmatic, later concept of reversibility by showing how it is connected to the theme of the genesis of sense. The article first traces reversibility through “Eye and Mind” and The Visible and the Invisible, in ways that link reversibility to a theme of the earlier philosophy, namely an interrelation in which activity and passivity reverse to one another. This linkage is deepened through a detailed study of a passage on touch in the Phenomenology’s chapter on “Sensing,” which shows how reversibility is important to the genesis of sense, not from some already given origin, but through a creative operation within being, beyond the perceiver, wherein the field of perception internally diverges into active and passive moments. The article connects this point about the genesis of sense to themes in Merleau-Ponty’s lectures on institution and passivity. Altogether the article shows how reversibility is a sign of a divergence and thence of a sort of gap or excess in being that allows for a genesis of sense within being itself