Contronatura. Sul ruolo dell’eccezione umana nella teoria dell’espressione in Merleau-Ponty: l’approdo alla «letteratura assoluta»

This paper focuses on several issues related to Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of expression. Given the recent editing of Le problème de la parole, this contribution holds a specific interpretation concerning the emergence of truth in ‘literature’, i. e. in ‘written texts’, inside his epistemology. According to this account, literature allows reaching a new and superior dimension of knowledge, due to the specific tool ‘writing’ offers to modern days artists, poets, novelists. I argue this faculty, this capacity of data storage and subsequent sublimation of words’ recollection in literature, may be seen as something only human beings can do as such: in my view, this brings to identify the ‘unnatural’ nature of human expression, i. e., the ability to cross natural borders of space and time through the means of culture and technique. Furthermore, this contribution offers a recap of Merleau-Ponty’s new foundation of the sensible world, arguing the superiority of humankind as a supervenient cultural being, despite the fact ‘man’ originally raises within his Umwelt as a natural one.